Bashar Al-Assad: We Would Like To Shape Region's Future With Turkey

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad received Turkish ultranationalist Vatan Party Leader Doğu Perinçek and accompanying delegation at his residence in Damascus on Tuesday. “Before the war we were very optimistic about our relations with Turkey and as Syrians, we were planning to shape the future of our region in cooperation with Turks” Assad said during the meeting.

Welcoming Turkish delegation warmly, President Assad stated that it has been two years no one visited him from Turkey and added that this visit that was made in such hard time, gives a very clear message not only to Syrians but to entire Arab world saying that despite Turkish government’s deadly mistakes Turks and Arabs are still bothers.

Bashar al-Assad also blamed Turkish government during the meeting mentioning briefly about good relations of the two countries just before his country messed up. “Before these negative developments in our country, we were very optimistic about our relations with Turkey. Especially we were wishing to shape the fate, the future of this region together with Turkey. The political and economic cooperation of Turkey and Syria would be very beneficial for the region,” Assad underscored.

Syrian regime leader also expressed that he used to have different dreams about Turkey. “Especially Mediterranean, Black Sea, Caspian and Gulf Sea regions are the heart of the world. We together had a great potential in here. But for implementation of such big projects you need to cooperate with decent leaders. You can’t be successful with dissemblers. This couldn’t be accomplished with bigot and radical people. How a visionless leader who is even not able to represent whole Turkish nation, can lead an important project like this” Assad added.

SHOTLIST
SYRIA, DAMASCUS, 03 MAR 2015

Turkish delegation at Assad's residence
Assad welcomes Perinçek and accompanying delegation
VAR of the meeting

DURATION: 03:46