Erdoğan, Assad might meet in Uzbekistan: Report

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad might hold a meeting on the sidelines of the upcoming Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit (SCO) in Uzbekistan, according to reporting by Iran’s semi-official agency Tasnim.

Monday August 22 2022 01:13 pm

Duvar English

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad will potentially meet on the sidelines of the upcoming Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit (SCO) in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, according to reporting by Iran’s semi-official agency Tasnim.

The Iranian news outlet underlined that the meeting would take place on the condition of the meeting between the Turkish delegation and Al-Assad.

The 2022 annual summit of the SCO Heads of State Council will be held on September 15-16 in the central Asian country.

After holding a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Sochi earlier this month, Erdoğan had announced that he would participate in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit. Erdoğan had said that Putin had asked him to do so. “The Shangai Organization Summit will be held in Uzbekistan in September. In our meeting, Putin also requested of me, and I will hopefully attend the meeting there,” Erdoğan had said.

Former Turkish Foreign Minister and a senior adviser to Victory Party, Prof. Dr. Şükrü Sina Gürel, said that both Erdoğan and Assad had been invited to the summit and that the two might hold a meeting.

“It turns out Assad has been also invited by Putin. Therefore, both Erdoğan and Assad -- heading the legitimate Syrian administration -- have been invited. This is a hopeful development. They might come together,” Gürel told KRT TV.