At sidelines of ECO summit: Fate of Syria

Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad discussed the events in Syria along with a number of political and economic issues at the summit of the Economic Cooperation Organisation (ECO) in the capital of Azerbaijan.

During the discussions, Erdogan said there are three options to resolve the crisis in Syria.

Turkey, Egypt and Iran have to start working together in accordance with the first option, Turkey, Russia and Iran according to the second and Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia according to the third to solve the Syrian crisis.

As you can see, all three options supposed the mandatory participation of Turkey meaning the final word automatically belongs to Ankara.

On the other hand, the proposed three-way scheme shows that the resolution of the Syrian crisis depends not only on Turkey, but also on countries that were listed by Erdogan.

Regarding the effectiveness of the proposed options, it is more than likely that none of them will create the ground for the settlement of the Syrian conflict.

Russia's interests in Syria will be at least partially under the threat in first option - 'Turkey, Egypt and Iran' which will not satisfy Moscow.

An option, Turkey, Russia and Iran can be considered as optimal, but the decision of the Arab state's fate by non-Arab countries will not be accepted by the regional Arab states. Not accidentally the most active with a political point of view, Qatar has repeatedly called on the Arab States to intervene militarily in Syria.

As for the third option - Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, it can lead not to a settlement of the conflict, but on the contrary, even to a worsening of it. Iran will not turn a blind ear to the fate of Syria because to lose that because the loss of Syria will mean the end of Iran's relations with Lebanon.

Taking into account all of that, it can be assumed that the proposed Erdogan scheme would not be effective and only lead to a further delay in the Syrian crisis.


Rufiz Hafizoglu /Trend/