President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Thursday said the Syrian regime must rapidly engage with its people and “urgently” find a “political solution” to the country’s civil war, adding that Türkiye was working to de-escalate tensions and protect civilians.
“The Syrian regime must urgently engage with its own people to work toward a comprehensive political solution,” Erdoğan said in a call with U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, according to a statement released by the Communications Directorate.
Syria has become a new focus amid anti-regime forces’ lightning advance across the country’s north that last week saw them take the commercial hub of Aleppo from the regime troops.
They captured the key city of Hama on Thursday, bringing them another major victory and dealing a new blow to the Assad regime and his Russian and Iranian allies.
Erdoğan, whose country has become home to about three million Syrian refugees since the war started in 2011, has held a number of discussions with other leaders on the crisis in recent days.
Highlighting that the conflict has reached a “new stage,” he told the U.N. chief that “Türkiye’s biggest wish is that Syria does not become embroiled in bigger instability and see even more civilian victims.”
He asserted that Ankara has been striving hard to de-escalate tensions, protect civilians, and pave the way for the political process, vowing that it will continue to do so.
Key to the anti-regime forces’ successes since the start of the offensive last week was the takeover of Aleppo, which, in more than a decade of war, had never entirely fallen out of regime hands.
Russian aircraft are supporting Syrian regime forces as fierce clashes continue.
Guterres said he told Erdoğan of the “urgent need for immediate humanitarian access to all civilians in need and the return to the U.N. facilitated political process to end the bloodshed.”
“All parties are obligated under international law to protect civilians,” he told reporters on Thursday.
Guterres said the escalating conflict is the result of a “chronic collective failure” of diplomacy, as he called for an end to fighting.
“We are seeing the bitter fruits of a chronic collective failure of previous de-escalation arrangements to produce a genuine nationwide cease-fire or a serious political process to implement Security Council resolutions,” he said.
“After 14 years of conflict, it is high time for all parties to engage seriously with Geir Pedersen, my Special Envoy for Syria, to finally chart a new, inclusive and comprehensive approach to resolving this crisis in line with Security Council resolution 2254,” Guterres said.
That resolution adopted by the Security Council in 2015 established a road map for a political transition in Syria.
“Tens of thousands of civilians are at risk in a region already on fire,” said Guterres.
