Turkey, US share common vision for Syria: US Syria envoy

Turkey and the United States share a common vision for Syria and have identical interests in ending the decade-old conflict, the U.S. special envoy on Syria has said, underlining the fact that the two allies always had close cooperation despite disagreements and even in the worst times.

"For those of us inside the process, it's always felt to us like we had close coordination and cooperation with our Turkish counterparts. I think we just need to build on that. There are so many areas we have identical interests. I think we can build on those," Joel D. Rayburn, who has recently been appointed as the new American special envoy for Syria, told the Hürriyet Daily News in an interview in Ankara on Dec. 2.

Rayburn paid a visit to Ankara and held meetings with senior Turkish officials, including President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's chief foreign policy adviser İbrahim Kalın. Turkey and the U.S. have long been in cooperation throughout the Syrian conflict, but the latter's support to the SDF had caused a rift between the two allies.

"I have to tell you: We had our disagreements, we had our ups and downs but broadly speaking, even in the worst times, it's felt to us inside the U.S. system that we had close cooperation with our Turkish counterparts. Because at the end of the days, we are allies and we share the common vision for what the rest of the world needs out of Syria in order for our interest to be secured," he said.

Cooperation with Turkey is an essential part of the efforts to bring an end to the ISIL phenomenon in Syria, to make sure that al-Qaeda cannot have a safe haven in Syria, to counter the destabilizing role of Iran and its ally, Hezbollah, and to achieve a political solution so that the Syrian people can return to a normal life and...