US needs Turkey on Syria: ex-US official

NEW YORK - Anatolia News Agency

Madeleine Albright (2nd L) and Stephen Hadley (2nd R) present the report. AA photo

Turkey can handle the situation in Syria without the United States, but the U.S. cannot handle it without Turkey, said Stephen Hadley co-chair of a recent report titled “U.S.-Turkey Relations: A New Partnership.”

Turkey and the U.S. are in consensus that Bashar al-Assad must step down, that strict sanctions must be applied to the Syrian regime and that the opposition must be strengthened, said Hadley, a former U.S. national security advisor, when speaking to journalist after the release of the report. The report, published by the independent think tank Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), advised the development of U.S.-Turkey ties in order to not miss a historic opportunity to move toward a cooperative trajectory in Europe, the Eastern Mediterranean, Middle East, and Africa for a new generation. The relationship should reflect “not only common American-Turkish interests, but also Turkey’s new stature as an economically and politically successful country,” the report stated. Madeleine K. Albright, co-chair of the report and former U.S. secretary of state, attended the meeting with Steven A. Cook, director of the project. Albright said, “I think, Europeans made a wrong decision” for not accepting Turkey to the union.