In a clear turnaround on its previous stances, Turkey declared Sunday that it was prepared to cooperate with Syrian regime leader Bashar Assad if he were to be democratically elected to power.
The elections must be transparent and held under the supervision of the United Nations, Ankara stated.
“If it is democratic election, and if it is a credible one then everybody should consider (working with him),” Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told a conference in Qatar.
“At the moment, we are trying to draft a constitutions that the Syrians themselves will write,” he continued.
Elections under UN supervision will then follow, the minister stated.
At the end, the Syrian people will decide who runs their country after the elections, Cavusoglu stressed.
In August, Turkish parliament Speaker Binali Yildirim had stated that Assad could temporarily remain in power, “but he could not be part of Syria’s future.”
He suggested that a solution could be reached in cooperation with Russia, Iran and other countries that are concerned with resolving the Syrian crisis.
In September, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had declared that peace efforts in Syria could not continue with Assad still in power.
He deemed Assad a terrorist who had killed over a million of his people, saying it wold be impossible to work with him in the future.
