Turkey believes that it is right to work on the Syrian refugees issue in cooperation with the Syrian authorities and President Bashar al-Assad, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told Habertürk on Sunday.
"It would be wrong to send them [refugees] without cooperating with al-Assad. Their security must be guaranteed. The UN should be involved in the process. The international community, including the EU, must support this. We have agreed on a roadmap, a special committee will prepare it. We will send more Syrian refugees to the safe zone (mainly the regions bordering Turkey - TASS). And we will start the process of returning [them] to the regions controlled by al-Assad," Cavusoglu said.
At the same time, he said, "it would be wrong to say that 100% of refugees will be returned." "Now there is a need for manpower in the agricultural sector, in industry in Turkey. There is a labor shortage. There are also many Syrians who have to return. We will send them. And we will send a lot of them. The work on scheduling and creating opportunities has begun. We will send them back in cooperation with al-Assad," the Turkish foreign minister said.
At the May 10 talks between the Russian, Iranian, Syrian and Turkish foreign ministers on Syrian issues and the normalization of relations between Ankara and Damascus in Moscow, the sides discussed, in particular, the voluntary and safe return of Syrian refugees to their homeland, as well as the settlement in Syria on the basis of a UN Security Council resolution. The sides decided to form a special committee to develop a roadmap for the normalization, which would include the return of refugees.
GSV "Russia - Islamic World"
Photo: Russian Foreign Ministry
Based on materials from TASS