Türkiye should open ways to hold talks with Syrian regime leader Bashar Assad, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahçeli said Tuesday.
Speaking at the party group meeting at Parliament in the capital Ankara, he evaluated President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's recent meeting with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi.
He described it as a "correct contact" and added: "In our opinion, it should be followed by other steps. Not only that, but also ways for a meeting with the president of the Syrian Arab Republic, Bashar Assad, should be opened, and a common will should be formed against terrorist organizations. Türkiye has and is known to have very strong historical ties with Egypt, Syria and Iraq."
Türkiye aims to boost a normalization process with Egypt that started with ministers to a higher level with high-level talks, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said Monday.
Erdoğan and el-Sissi met on Sunday in Qatar for the first time, a picture from the Turkish Presidency showed. Erdoğan briefly met, shook hands and talked to el-Sissi and other leaders.
The president also hinted recently that Türkiye could revisit strained ties with regional countries, including Syria and Egypt, after next year's election.
"We can reconsider ties with the countries that we have problems with," he was quoted as saying by Turkish media last week aboard the presidential plane while returning from a G-20 summit in Indonesia.
Erdoğan previously said he could meet with Assad when the right time comes, reinforcing tentative recent steps to restore ties between the two sides in its southern neighbor's war.
Any normalization between Ankara and Damascus would reshape the decadelong Syrian war. Turkish backing has been vital to sustaining Syrian moderate opposition in their last major territorial foothold in the northwest after Assad defeated the opposition across the rest of the country, aided by Russia and Iran.
Erdoğan reiterated that Türkiye hopes to maximize its cooperation with Egypt and Gulf countries "on a win-win basis," at a time when Ankara intensified diplomacy to mend its fraught ties with Cairo and some Gulf Arab nations after years of tensions.
