Turkey's president expresses willingness to restore diplomatic ties with Syria

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Turkey's president expresses willingness to restore diplomatic ties with Syria

2024-06-28 21:53 Last Updated At：22:00

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Friday that there is no obstacle preventing Turkey and Syria from restoring diplomatic ties that were cut off at the start of the Syrian civil war more than a decade ago.

His comments came just days after Syrian President Bashar Assad made similar remarks, indicating a willingness among the two neighboring countries to end tensions and normalize relations.

“There is no reason why (diplomatic ties) should not be established,” Erdogan told reporters.

“In the same way that we kept our relations with Syria alive in the past — we had these meetings with Mr Assad that included family meetings — we cannot say that it will not happen again,” Erdogan said. He was referring to a vacation that the Erdogan and Assad families took in southern Turkey in 2008, before their relationship soured.

During the Syrian conflict, Turkey supported armed opposition groups in the country’s northwest aiming to oust Assad from power. The Syrian government has repeatedly condemned Ankara's control over a territory that it took hold of through several military incursions since 2016 targeting U.S.-backed Kurdish forces that Turkey regards as terrorists.

On Wednesday, Syrian state media reported that in a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s special envoy to Syria, Alexander Lavrentiev, Assad “affirmed Syria’s openness to all initiatives related to the relationship between Syria and Turkey, based on the sovereignty of the Syrian state over all its territories on the one hand, and combating all forms of terrorism and its organizations on the other hand.”

The Russian envoy, in turn, said that “the current circumstances seem more suitable than ever for the success of mediations, and that Russia is ready to work to push the negotiations forward, and that the goal is to succeed in restoring relations between Syria and Turkey,” Syrian state-run news agency SANA reported.

Erdogan told reporters that Turkey respects Syria's sovereignty.

“There is no question of us having the aim of interfering in Syria's internal affairs,” Erdogan said. “The people of Syria are our brothers."

Turkey has been trying to mend fences with Syria as the government faces increased pressure at home to repatriate millions of Syrian refugees amid a steep economic downturn and rising anti-refugee sentiment.

Last year, the Turkish and Syrian foreign ministers met in Moscow alongside counterparts from Russia and Iran, marking the highest-level contact between Ankara and Damascus since the start of the Syrian civil war. But those talks and a previous meeting involving the two countries' defense ministers did not bear fruit.

On Friday, hundreds of demonstrators gathered in the opposition-held Syrian city of Idlib and in surrounding areas to protest reports that a key crossing between government-held territory and areas held by Turkish-backed opposition groups in Aleppo province will soon reopen to commercial traffic, for the first time since the beginning of the country’s civil war.

The protesters carried banners saying: “Opening the crossings with the regime is a crime and a betrayal of the blood of the martyrs,” and calling for “opening battles, not crossings.”

LGBTQ+ Pride Month culminates with parades in NYC, San Francisco and beyond

2024-07-01 04:38 Last Updated At：04:40

NEW YORK (AP) — The monthlong celebration of LGBTQ+ Pride reached its exuberant grand finale on Sunday, bringing rainbow-laden revelers to the streets for marquee parades in New York, Chicago, San Francisco and elsewhere across the globe.

The wide-ranging festivities functioned as both jubilant parties and political protests, as participants recognize the community’s gains while also calling attention to recent anti-LGBTQ+ laws, such as bans on transgender health care, passed by Republican-led states.

“We’re at a time where there’s a ton of legislation, anti-LGBTQ+ legislation,” Zach Overton, 47, said at the New York parade. “It feels like we’re taking a step backwards in the fight for equality and so it’s a great moment to come out and be with our community and see all the different colors of the spectrum of our community and remind ourselves what we’re all fighting for.”

Thousands of people gathered along New York’s Fifth Avenue to celebrate Pride. Floats cruised the street as Diane Ross’ “I’m Coming Out” played from loudspeakers. Pride flags filled the horizon, and signs in support of Puerto Rico, Ukraine and Gaza were visible in the crowd.

This year, tensions over the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza also seeped into the celebrations, exposing divisions within a community that is often aligned on political issues.

Protesters temporarily blocked the New York parade on Sunday, chanting: “Free, free, free Palestine!” Police eventually took some of them away.

Pro-Palestinian activists disrupted pride parades earlier in June in Boston, Denver, and Philadelphia. Several groups participating in marches Sunday said they would seek to highlight the victims of the war in Gaza, spurring pushback from supporters of Israel.

“It is certainly a more active presence this year in terms of protest at Pride events,” said Sandra Pérez, the executive director of NYC Pride. “But we were born out of a protest.”

The first pride march was held in New York City in 1970 to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall Inn uprising, a riot that began with a police raid on a Manhattan gay bar.

Nick Taricco, 47, who was at the New York parade with Overton, said he attended Friday's opening of the Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center, where President Joe Biden spoke. Taricco said he has concerns about politics in the U.S., including the presidential election.

“Even given how old he is, I still think that’s the direction we need to go in," Taricco said of Biden. “But it’s a very uncertain time in general in this country.”

Ireland Fernandez-Cosgrove, 23, celebrated at the New York parade.

“New York City is a great place to live, but this is one of the only days where you can come out and be openly queer and you know you’re going to be OK and safe about it," she said. "I came out here today with my partner to be able to be ourselves in public and know that other people are going to be supporting us.”

In addition to the NYC Pride March, the nation’s largest, the city also played host Sunday to the Queer Liberation March, an activism-centered event launched five years ago amid concerns that the more mainstream parade had become too corporate.

Another one of the world’s largest Pride celebrations took place Sunday in San Francisco.

Tens of thousands of revelers packed sidewalks along Chicago’s parade, a scaled-back event from previous years. City officials shortened the North Side route and the number of floats this year from 199 to about 150 over safety and logistical concerns, including to better deploy police into evening hours as post-parade parties have become more disruptive in recent years. Chicago's parade, one of the largest in the U.S., routinely draws about 1 million people, according to the city. Sunday’s crowd estimates were not immediately available.

Additional parades were scheduled in Minneapolis and Seattle.

On top of concerns about protests, federal agencies have warned that foreign terrorist organizations and their supporters could target the parades and adjacent venues. A heavy security presence was expected at all of the events.