President Assad unwilling to meet with Erdogan unless it serves Syria’s interests

Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad told Italy’s Rai News 24 that he is not interested in meeting with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan unless it serves the “interests of Syria.”

In his long interview with the Italian news broadcaster, the Syrian President was asked if he would be willing to meet with Erdogan after the latter broke off diplomatic ties with Damascus in 2012.

“I always say: my job is not to be happy with what I’m doing or not happy or whatever. It’s not about my feelings, it’s about the interests of Syria, so wherever our interests go, I will go,” Assad told the interviewer.

In the past, the Syrian President has called his Turkish counterpart a “terrorist supporter” and “Muslim Brotherhood member.”

The Turkish President, in turn, has claimed that he would never “meet with someone who has killed one-million of his own people.”

Despite the absence of diplomatic ties, the two countries still exchange intelligence information, something that was revealed during one of Erdogan’s interviews last year.