Egypt’s president told on Wednesday that a foursome of states — Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey and Egypt — would assemble to talk about the Syrian crisis, accenting that the time had come to change the Syrian government.
Making his first presidential address to the Arab League in Cairo, Mohamed Mursi told that “the quartet which Egypt has demanded will meet now,” without supplying any details.
Although the date and exact format of the assembling are still under discussion, Mursi’s call is probably to be welcomed by Turkey, who has a long borderline with Syria and is hosting some 80,000 refugees. Turkish foreign ministry officials weren’t immediately available to comment on the Egyptian president’s proposition.
All the same the initiative, first revealed by Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu on a visit to Bishkek late last month, is probably to generate Turkish support. “We’re in close contact with the new administration in Egypt. The Egyptian president and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation [OIC] suggested a meeting, and we’re looking positively at it. We’re doing our best”, Davutoğlu told a group of reporters travelling with him.
Analysts, however, are not so affirmative on the grouping of actors in Middle East which is improbable to accord on how to handle the crisis. Iran backs the Syrian regime while all the other 3 states would like to see Bashar al-Assad gone sooner rather than later.
The initiative was largely interpreted as a sign of an effort by Mursi to put Egypt back at the center of regional politics.
