Turkey disagrees with US, Russia, Iran on Syria, Erdoğan says

Turkey disagrees with the United States, Russia and Iran separately over their stances on Syria, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan told media representatives onboard his presidential jet returning to Turkey from Estonia on October 25.

“Unfortunately, we disagree with Russia over the Syria issue. We have talked about this many times, but we have wasted time despite our meetings. Russia continues to support [the Syrian regime]. Apart from this issue, our economic relations [with Russia] are very good,” Erdoğan is quoted by Hurriyet Daily News as saying.

The Turkish president also acknowledged that Turkey and Iran have considerably different stances on the Syria crisis.

He expressed his dissatisfaction that the actions of the U.S. in Syria have “had no positive effects” on Turkey’s expectations.

“The U.S. has not taken any stance on the declaration of a no-fly zone in the area. It just says the safe zone is discussable. It has taken action on training and arming, but I do not consider dropping arms from the air to be part of the training and arming process; it is arming without any training. So, what’s being done here does not have any positive effects on our expectations for the actions against the Syrian regime,” the president said.