Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan may meet with Syrian President Bashar Assad before the Turkish presidential election in Turkey expected in May, the Aydinlik newspaper reported on Tuesday. The meeting between the leaders is expected as part of the third stage of the normalization of the Turkey-Syria relations, the newspaper said.

On December 15, Erdogan said that he had offered to Russian President Vladimir Putin to hold a meeting between the leaders of Turkey, Russia and Syria, which would be preceded by a meeting of the heads of the intelligence services, defense and foreign ministries.

The defense ministers of Russia, Syria and Turkey held trilateral talks in Moscow late last year to discuss ways to resolve the Syrian crisis, according to the Russian Defense Ministry. The talks marked the first official meeting between Ankara and Damascus in 11 years. After the talks, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said that Ankara had proposed to hold a meeting of Turkish and Syrian foreign ministers in the second half of January, possibly in a third country.

Credit : Independent News Pakistan-INP