Turkey, Iran, Russia to meet in Ankara for tripartite summit

ANKARA

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani will meet on April 4 in Ankara for their second three-way summit to discuss achievements and goals to reach a ceasefire across Syria and support a political resolution of the crisis in the war-torn country.

Russia, Turkey and Iran are all deeply involved in the Syria crisis and have sponsored a series of peace talks in the Kazakh capital, Astana. The three leaders held the first tripartite summit in Sochi last November as the guarantor countries of the Astana process, for which they have worked together to create “de-escalation zones” to reduce the fighting in Syria and bring the sides of the conflict together to negotiate Syria’s future.

The foreign ministers of Turkey, Russia and Iran met in Astana on March 26 to lay the ground for the summit. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the common efforts of Russia, Turkey and Iran had been considerable, considering the tense situation in areas such as Syria’s Eastern Ghouta, Yarmouk, al-Foua, Kefraya, Raqqa, Idlib and Hama.

The evacuation of civilians, along with some opposition groups from a rebel stronghold near Damascus, have gained momentum after the last Astana meeting. Turkey has been a key actor for evacuations from Ghouta, as the country has long been providing humanitarian support to the district.