Assad will not meet with Erdogan, and he wants Turkish troops to leave Syria.

  Bashar al-Assad, the president of Syria, has again said that he doesn't want to meet with Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the president of Turkey, and that Turkish troops must leave Syria. In an exclusive interview with Sky News Arabic on Wednesday, Assad strongly denied reports that he was going to meet with Erdogan soon. This was despite the fact that the Turkish and Syrian defense and foreign ministers had met before to try to make things better between their countries. Those meetings were arranged by Russia and Iran. "The goal of Erdogan's meeting with me is to justify the Turkish occupation of Syria, so the meeting can't happen on Erdogan's terms," Assad said, adding, "Why should I and Erdogan meet? Have soft drinks?"

Erdogan said that Turkey won't leave Syria as long as "terrorism" is a threat to Turkey. In answer, Assad said, "The truth is that terrorism in Syria is a Turkish industry." Both Jabhat al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham are names for the same group, which is all from Turkey. So far, Turkey has paid for them. So, what sort of terrorism does he mean?" To get things back to normal, the leader of Syria said that Ankara must give a timetable for when Turkish troops will leave his country. Erdogan said last month that Ankara hadn't given up on peace talks with Damascus and that he was "open" to meeting with his Syrian colleague. Turkey broke ties with Syria in March 2012. This was a year after foreign-backed rebels started killing people in the Arab country.

Now, after more than a decade, the two countries that are next to each other are making steps toward peace. In October 2019, Turkey sent troops into Syria, which was against the Arab country's territorial unity. Ankara has sent militants to northeastern Syria after Turkish forces invaded across the border to get Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) militants out of the border areas. Ankara sees the US-backed YPG as a terrorist group with ties to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), a group from Turkey that has been trying to get an autonomous Kurdish area since 1984. Since it started, the Turkish attack has killed hundreds of civilians, including dozens of children, according to the Kurdish-led government in northeastern Syria. Since a major foreign-backed uprising began in Syria more than a decade ago, Turkey has also played a big part in helping rebels there.