Members of the ultranationalist Homeland Party (Vatan Partisi), a Turkish political faction that does not have any representatives in parliament, met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on 28 February.
According to SANA, the Syrian official news agency, Assad met with VP’s leader Dogu Perincek and an accompanying delegation of Turkish members of various parties at the presidential palace in Damascus.
Vatan Partisi had its roots in the Workers Party (IP), before changing its name recently. Perincek, an outspoken critic of President Recep Tayyep Erdogan’s Justice and Development (AKP) party’s policy on Syria, was accompanied by former deputy prime minister Abdullatif Sener, who was a founder and former member of the AKP.
Birgul Ayman Guler, who had recently resigned from the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), was also present on the delegation.
The delegation also met with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem on 1 March.
Perincek was mired in controversy in 2007 when, during a series of talks in Switzerland, he was charged by a Swiss court for calling the Armenian genocide an international lie. The European Court of Human Rights ruled in favour of Perincek, but the Swiss court has filed for an appeal case in late January.
Perincek views the civil war in Syria as a struggle between Assad and imperialist forces. The meeting in Damascus lasted for two hours, with Perincek and the Syrian president both agreeing on the importance of dialogue and of cooperating closely with each other, in order to ensure the territorial integrity of both countries.