Turkey may set up constitutional committee in Syria soon

The foreign minister of Turkey, Mevlut Cavusoglu has announced that Turkey may announce in the coming days to set up a constitutional committee in Syria, according to media reports.

A few days ago, Iran and Syria held talks on the constitutional committee and Idlib where they discussed the voting mechanisms for the constitutional committee and a political solution to Idlib.

United Nations Special Envoy to Syria, Geir Pedersen announced on July 10 that United Nations is close to an agreement with Syria on setting up a constitutional committee, a long-awaited step in a stalled peace process. The United Nations wants to convene the committee as the next step in efforts to find a political solution to end the war in Syria, but there has been no agreement so far on who should be on it.

A Syrian Foreign Ministry statement said significant progress had been made in the talks, but also reiterated its previous stance that the constitutional committee should be a purely Syrian affair. Pedersen also called for a return to stability in Idlib province, where a government offensive has targeted the last major rebel stronghold and said a truce there agreed last year between Russia and Turkey should come back into force.

Russia is along with Iran the main supporter of President Bashar al-Assad, who now controls most of the country, while Turkey backs some of the rebel groups in Idlib and adjacent areas.