The Meeting between Officials from Turkey, Syria, Iran, and Russia has been postponed

According to a source from the Turkish foreign ministry, the scheduled meeting of the deputy foreign ministers of Russia, Turkey, Iran, and Syria has been postponed to an unspecified date. The meeting was planned to take place this week in Moscow, as announced by the Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu last week. The goal of the meeting was to address the crisis in Syria before the foreign ministers’ talks scheduled for a later date. The state-run Anadolu Agency had reported that the deputy foreign ministers’ meeting was initially scheduled for March 15-16.

The meeting was delayed due to “technical reasons,” according to a source from the Turkish foreign ministry. However, no further explanation was provided.

Notably, the Syrian and Turkish defense ministers held significant talks in Moscow in December last year, along with their Russian counterpart, in a possible indication of reconciliation between Ankara and Damascus. This meeting marked the highest-level engagement between the two countries since the start of the Syrian conflict over a decade ago.

In January, Cavusoglu said he could meet his Syrian counterpart in February to discuss normalization between the two neighbors.

However, Syrian President Bashar Assad has said he will only meet President Recep Tayyip Erdogan if Turkiye withdraws troops from northern Syria, according to a Russian media interview published on Thursday.
His comments came one day after he met Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is seeking to repair ties between Erdogan and Assad severed after the 2011 Syrian war.
“(Any meeting) is linked to our reaching the point when Turkiye is ready — fully and without any uncertainty — for a complete withdrawal from Syrian territory,” Assad told Russia’s state-run RIA-Novosti news agency.
The Syrian leader, who arrived in Moscow on Tuesday, demanded that Turkiye end its “support for terrorism” alongside a withdrawal, a reference to rebel groups that control regions of northern Syria and oppose Damascus.
“This is the only way in which my meeting with Erdogan could take place,” Assad was cited as saying.
“What significance would any kind of meeting have — and why organize it — if it doesn’t lead to a conclusion of the war in Syria?” he added.
Erdogan and Assad had amicable relations in the 2000s after years of tensions between their countries following the breakup of the Ottoman Empire.
But Syria’s civil war, which has left some 500,000 people dead and displaced millions, strained relations between Damascus and Ankara, which has long supported rebel groups opposed to Assad.
NATO member Turkiye has been a major backer of the political and armed opposition to Syrian President Bashar Assad during the 12-year conflict in Syria, and has sent its own troops into swathes of the country’s north.
Moscow is Assad’s main ally and Russia encouraged a reconciliation with Ankara.