Turkish president unlikely to meet with Assad before presidential election

WORLD, March 06 (YPA) -Cagri Erhan, a member of the Turkish Presidency’s Security and Foreign Policies Council that the  Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is unlikely to hold a meeting with his Syrian counterpart, Bashar Assad, until after the presidential election in Turkey.

Erdogan on Wednesday confirmed that the country’s general election would take place on May 14 as scheduled, despite expectations that the earthquakes would cause a postponement.

“It is possible. But as far as I know there is no set date or place for such a meeting. President Erdogan in principle is not against such thing. But these devastating earthquakes changed everything,” Cagri Erhan told Novosti news agency.

All the schedule of the president has changed. He spends three days a week in the area of disasters. It is less than 74 days now till the elections. So, I don’t think that it will be possible to find a way to go just to make a photo with Assad. Maybe it will be after the elections,” Erhan said.

Erdogan said earlier that he had proposed to Russian President Vladimir Putin a meeting of the leaders of Turkey, Russia and Syria, but that should be preceded by a meeting of the heads of the intelligence services, the defense ministry and the foreign ministry.

E.M