Turkey furious over US stance on Assad, Syria

Recent remarks by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry regarding possible negotiations with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have prompted strong reactions from Ankara.

"What is there to negotiate [with al-Assad]?" Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavu?o?lu told reporters in Phnom Penh on March 16 during a visit to Cambodia.

"How will you negotiate with a regime that has killed more than 200,000 people and used chemical weapons? What result have you been able to get from negotiations so far?" Çavu?o?lu said.

Speaking in an interview on March 15, Kerry did not repeat the long-held U.S. line that al-Assad had lost all legitimacy and must go. 

"We have to negotiate in the end," Kerry said. "We've always been willing to negotiate in the context of the Geneva I process," he added, referring to a 2012 conference that called for a negotiated transition to end the conflict. 

Kerry's spokeswoman, however, later stressed that the comments indicated no change in U.S. policy, saying, "There is no future for a brutal dictator like al-Assad in Syria."

Syria's civil war is now into its fifth year, with hundreds of thousands killed and millions of Syrians displaced. 
Kerry said Washington and other countries, which he did not name, were exploring ways to "reignite the diplomatic process" to end the conflict.

Çavu?oglu said the al-Assad government lay at the root of the violence in Syria.

"Syria's transformation needs the current regime out and a new inclusive regime to take charge," the foreign minister said. 

Turkey has been critical of any attempts to co-opt the Syrian regime in the fight against Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), which has seized large parts of Syria and Iraq over the past...