Saudi Arabia and Syria want to send diplomats to their respective countries again. First, the Saudi Arabian Foreign Ministry announced the resumption of work of its diplomatic delegation in Damascus in a statement distributed by the state news agency SPA on Tuesday. Shortly thereafter, the Syrian state news agency Sana reported the same intention of the government of ruler Bashar al-Assad.
On Sunday, the Arab League resumed Syria, which had been largely isolated internationally for years because of the civil war in the country. When relations were resumed, the government in Riyadh stated that it would from now on work in Damascus to develop a “common Arab approach”.
Saudi Arabia severed ties with Assad’s government in 2012
The Syrian opposition reacted with outrage to the Saudi Arabian announcement. “Crimes cannot be rewarded with a return to the table of Arab countries,” said Bilal Turkia, representative of the Syrian opposition in the Gulf Emirate of Qatar, on Tuesday. Saudi Arabia severed ties with Assad’s government in 2012. After that, Riyadh openly campaigned for the overthrow of the ruler and supported rebel groups in the Syrian civil war.
Syria was expelled from the Arab League, which currently has around 20 members, in November 2011 following the Assad government’s violent crackdown on democracy protests. To date, the conflict that broke out after the protests were crushed has killed more than 500,000 people, displaced millions and severely damaged the country’s infrastructure and industry.
Talks between Syria and Türkiye
A few hours before the announcement from Riyadh, the Turkish Foreign Ministry also announced a meeting between the chief diplomats from Ankara and Damascus on Wednesday in Moscow. The aim is an “exchange of views on the normalization of relations between Turkey and Syria”, and the “voluntary return” of 3.7 million Syrian refugees living in Turkey will also be on the agenda.
The United Arab Emirates was the first Gulf state to resume relations with Syria and reopened its embassy in 2018. The severe earthquake in Turkey and Syria at the beginning of February with a total of more than 55,000 fatalities and devastating damage then led to a rapprochement between Syria and other countries.
