Page 42 - Syrians in Türkiye - Special Report

GRAND NATIONAL ASSEMBLY OF TÜRKİYE THE OMBUDSMAN INSTITUTION

In the light of the direction from the President of the Republic of Türkiye, Mr. Recep
Tayyip Erdoğan, and the President of Russia, Mr. Vladimir Putin, extensive studies
have been carried out between Russia and Türkiye, resulting in a cease fire in Aleppo
and 45,000 civilians safely evacuated in December 2016. In order to evacuate East
Aleppo, a close working process was carried out with Iran as well as Russia; the Turkish
Minister of Foreign Affairs met with his Russian and Iranian counterparts in Moscow
on December 20, 2016, and the initiative of this three-party process established the basis
for the Astana meetings. In order to extend the ceasefire in East Aleppo throughout the
country, a nationwide ceasefire was declared in an arrangement signed on December 29,
2016, with Türkiye and Russia as the guarantor states, and went into effect on December
30. The high-level Astana meetings on the Syrian issue, which were held for the first
time on January 23-24, 2017, gathered the three guarantor states of the ceasefire regime,
Türkiye, Russia and Iran, which became a guarantor state later on, and with the UN, US,
and Jordan as the observers. The Astana meetings were held to strengthen the ceasefire
regime and to accept confidence-building measures between conflicting parties. This
improvement gained by the Astana meetings also opened a path for the stalled Geneva
process, and as a result, new meeting tours could be organized starting from February
2017. 21

(Source: Anadolu News Agency)

Finally, a three-party summit meeting on Syria was held on November 22, 2017 in
the Sochi province of the Russian Federation, with the participation of our President,
21
The official website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs: “Political Relations of Türkiye and Syria” annotation
(see. http://www.mfa.gov.tr/suriye-suriye-siyasi-iliskileri.tr.mfa); date accessed: 25 / 08 / 2017.

42 SYRIANS IN TÜRKİYE SPECIAL REPORT