Turkey rejects 'fait accompli' in Jerusalem - President Erdogan

Turkey rejects "fait accompli" in Jerusalem, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday. 

"We reject efforts to create new fait accompli in Jerusalem," he said while addressing the 5th Summit of Heads of State of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) in Tajikistan's capital Dushanbe.

Erdogan said Turkey has an active stance on the Palestinian issue.

He also called on all the countries to respect the UN resolutions and the historical and legal status of Jerusalem.

Jerusalem remains at the heart of the perennial Mideast conflict, with Palestinians hoping East Jerusalem – occupied by Israel since 1967 – might eventually serve as the capital of an independent Palestinian state.

Syria

Erdogan said Turkey does its best to end the civil war in Syria and ensure stability there.

He reiterated that Turkey hosts nearly four million Syrians.

Turkey fights against Daesh, YPG/PKK terrorist organisations that threaten Syria's future, he added.

The president also said efforts to eliminate terrorist organisation through another one will only lead to more bloodshed.  

In its more than 30-year terror campaign against Turkey, the PKK has been responsible for the deaths of nearly 40,000 people, including many women and children. The YPG/PKK is its Syrian branch.

TRT World's Hasan Abdullah reports.

In September 2018, Erdogan and Putin, in Sochi, Russia signed a memorandum of understanding creating a demilitarised zone between rebels and regime forces along Idlib’s border.

Idlib is the last de-escalation zone in –– in which acts of aggression are prohibited –– agreed among Turkey, Russia and Iran during the Astana peace talks in Kazakhstan.

The heightened violence in Idlib province and a strip of nearby Hama since April 30 has marked the biggest military escalation between Syrian regime forces and the opposition since last summer.

Tens of thousands of people have fled their homes, many of them sheltering at the Turkish border from air strikes that have killed scores of people.

Turkey had complained to Moscow, which backs the Assad regime, while Russia had said the onus was on Ankara to rein in the opposition.

On Wednesday, Russia and Turkey brokered a complete ceasefire in Syria’s Idlib province between Syrian regime leader Bashar al Assad's forces and the opposition. 

Regional leaders arrive for 5th CICA summit

Top-level politicians across the region – including Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping – are attending the CICA forum.

They were greeted by Tajiki stan's President Emomali Rahmon as they arrived for the fifth edition of the summit in Dushanbe, before posing for a group photo.

The presidents of Tajikistan, Iran, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka will also attend the forum.

In addition, senior-level officials from Bahrain, Vietnam, Egypt, Israel, India, Jordan, Iraq, Qatar, Cambodia, South Korea, Mongolia, the United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, Palestine, Thailand, Belarus, Indonesia, the US, Philippines, Malaysia, Ukraine, and Japan will participate in the event.

The political experts see this year's summit differently, as the US has recently included various Asian countries in its sanction list and repeatedly made threats to these countries.

Artyom Lukin, an International Relations scholar at Far Eastern Federal University in Russia, said the Asian summit bore a meaning of "Eurasianism" among the participant countries.

Noting that the core of Eurasianism was based on Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) that contains eight members, he said the CICA was much more comprehensive with its 27 members and the forum would discuss cooperation and mutual interest in Eurasia.

Lukin went on to say that the forum will see the participation of rival countries such as Iran, Israel, Pakistan, and India; while the US, the EU, and Japan were not member countries.