President Tayyip Erdogan insisted there could be no solution to Syria's conflict while President Bashar al-Assad remains in power, and said Russian President Vladimir Putin told him he was not personally committed to the Syrian leader.
"Assad is not the address for a prospective solution in Syria," Erdogan told Reuters in an interview the presidential palace in Ankara. "Syria should be liberated from Assad so that a solution could emerge".
"So long as Assad remains in power, a solution can never be created in Syria," Erdogan said. "He has attacked his people with tanks, with cannons, with barrel bombs, with chemical weapons, with fighter jets. Do you think he could be the vehicle for a solution?"
Erdogan also hinted at a softening of Russia's support for the Syrian president. Russian President Vladimir Putin, he said, told him: "'Erdogan, don’t get me wrong. I'm not an advocate for Assad, I'm not his lawyer'. That's what he said. Putin told me this".
There are developments on Syria Putin "cannot share with us", the Turkish president said, "but right now Putin, (U.S. President Donald) Trump, us, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, we have all assumed an active role in the effort to create a solution in Syria. We can get together and we can help the people of Syria to make up their own minds".
The Turkish president hotly denied that the only alternative to Assad would be Sunni jihadis such as Islamic State taking power in Syria, and that Syrians would find a way forward if freed from his rule.
"Daesh is not going to replace Assad," he said using the Arabic acronym for Islamic State. "Daesh is not a representative of Islam, they are a blasphemy, they have no connection with Islam and this is something we all have to agree".
He said he had discussed this with Trump and Putin, having failed to make any headway with former U.S. President Barack Obama.
Now, he said, with "the new administration we are going to talk about these aspects and we are going to invite them to take the next step forward with us so that the fate of Syria can be identified by the people of Syria".
"Assad killed hundreds of thousands of people and I have 3 million refugees in my country, 1.5 million refugees are currently in Lebanon, and there are about 1 million refugees in Jordan and these people have fled their motherlands.
"Why? Assad is the sole reason. We can no longer speak about a solution with Assad, or our efforts will be in vain, so we have to let the people of Syria choose their own leader".
Erdogan said he was confident there are plenty of alternatives to Assad. "I have no hesitations, I have no reservations. There are many ideal names who can be the next leader."
Syria's war began in 2011 after a popular uprising against the Assad family's more than four-decade rule, inspired by the Arab Spring revolts across the Arab world.
The war, pitting rebels mostly from Syria's Sunni majority against a minority rule rooted in Assad's Alawite community, has killed 400,000, created the world's worst refugee crisis since World War Two, drawn in most regional and global powers and allowed Islamic State to seize swathes of territory.
Assad, backed militarily by Iran and Russia, shows no willingness to compromise, much less step aside to allow a transition Western powers claim is the solution to the conflict.
Instead, Russia's dramatic military intervention in 2015 -- after four years of inconclusive fighting -- tilted the balance of power in Assad's favor and gave him the upper hand against the rebels
