Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says he wants to meet his longtime nemesis Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Many see Ankara's recent efforts to fix relations with Damascus as part of Erdogan's election strategy, amid promises to send back millions of unwanted Syrian refugees. Others say it's part of an effort to crush the Syrian Kurds' autonomous entity. Either way, normalizing Assad without holding him to account for his crimes will hurt the Syrian people and those countries which engage with him, warns the UK's Syria envoy Jonathan Hargreaves.

For more on Turkey's courtship of the Assad regime tune in to last week's episode of On The Middle East:

https://www.al-monitor.com/podcasts/syrian-commentator-ibrahim-hamidi-says-kurds-have-surpassed-jihadis-assad-regimes-greatest

and read the United States' Peace Institute's Middle East expert Mona Yacoubian's latest for War on the Rocks: https://warontherocks.com/2023/01/ukraines-consequences-are-finally-spreading-to-syria/

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