Turkish Presidential Spokesman Ibrahim Kalin
On Friday, Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said that the 4-way presidential summit, which will be held in Istanbul on Saturday, will focus on finding new ways to reach a political solution in Syria.
“Our main purpose at this summit will be focusing on what kind of new ways could be found based on not military, but a political solution in Syria,” Kalin said during the international congress in the southeastern Turkish province of Diyarbakır, according to the Turkish Daily Sabah newspaper.
Kalin said he hopes that the summit will help speed up the formation of the committee tasked with rewriting Syria’s constitution, which is facing some delays.
“Our chief concrete expectation of this summit is that steps to be taken for a political solution are finalized and a roadmap is determined,” Kalin said.
While Turkey appears to be very optimistic about the results of the upcoming summit, Russia maintains a more realistic stand. Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that it is hard to determine the issues that will be discussed in the summit, but stressed that a political settlement in Syria is a joint goal.
“There are many approaches. In general, everybody wants to see a political settlement in Syria. This is a shared goal, though certain disagreements may exist regarding the instruments and tactics … It is on all these issues that the watches will be synchronized tomorrow,” the Russian news agency TASS quoted Peskov as saying.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, and France’s President Emmanuel Macron will attend the summit, which will be hosted by Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Staffan de Mistura, the U.N. special envoy for Syria, is also expected to deliver a speech during the summit.
Last week, Peskov said that nobody should expect “breakthrough decisions” from the quadrilateral summit because it is not a “breakthroughs.” This means that the four leaders will likely consider this summit a chance to test the waters.
