Quadripartite summit on Syria to be held in early April

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Deputy foreign ministers of Turkey, Syria, Russia and Iran will be held in Moscow in early April, Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov has announced, according to RIA Novosti.

The meeting previously scheduled for March 15-16 was postponed "to an indefinite date." On these dates, Syria's President Bashar Assad visited Moscow to meet his counterpart, Vladimir Putin. The quadripartite summit was postponed due to this meeting, some reports suggested.

About the postponement, Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu had said, "The Russians said, 'We haven't been able to prepare for this, let's postpone it.' But the Syrian regime was there, maybe they made a joint decision. Then they said, 'We'll do it in the future,' and we said, 'Okay'."

The summit will mark a new phase in the normalization process between Turkey and Syria, whose relations have been strained since the start of the war in Syria in 2011.

In late December, defense ministers and intelligence chiefs of Russia, Türkiye and Syria met in Moscow in what was the highest-level meeting between Ankara and Damascus since the beginning of the war.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has said multiple times over the past months that he could meet Assad and "reset" relations with the Damascus government. However, Syria's president conditioned the withdrawal of Turkey's troops from his country to sit down with Erdoğan. (NT/VK)