Türkiye welcomes Syria ceasefire, says President Erdoğan

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Wednesday spoke at the AK Party Parliamentary Group Meeting.

HIGHLIGHTS FROM PRESIDENT ERDOĞAN'S SPEECH:

"Our neighbor Syria has been intensively striving to achieve unity in the country following the December 8 Revolution. As you know, last year on March 10, an agreement was signed with an entity called the SDG, which occupies territories in northern and eastern Syria.

According to this agreement, the SDG was to lay down their arms and hand over the occupied territories to the Syrian Government, thus ensuring the country's unity and integrity. However, the SDG did not take any positive steps within the timeline set for this integration.

The SDG continued to oppress civilians in the occupied territories and attack civilian and military targets outside these territories, disregarding the agreement of March 10. Unfortunately, negotiations between SDG leaders and the Syrian Government in December aimed at implementing the agreement concluded negatively. Speaking frankly, this was due to the uncompromising, stalling, consistently obstructive, and time-playing attitude of the so-called SDG. During this process, through our relevant institutions, we provided necessary advice to all parties. We exerted every effort to untie the knot and prevent the crisis from turning into an open conflict.

I would like to remind once again; from the beginning, Tükiye has strongly advocated for the existence of a single Syrian State with preserved territorial integrity and political unity.

We have repeatedly declared that we will not accept any separatist structure that poses a threat to our country's security along our southern borders. We wholeheartedly support the struggle of the Syrian State and the Syrian Army, as neighbors and brothers, in building a united, single, independent Syria where all ethnicities, faiths, and sects coexist side by side."