Obama stays cautious on Syria after talks as Turkey presses for urgency
President and Turkish prime minister skate over differences on Syria as two put focus on agreement that Assad must go
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US president Barack Obama and Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the White House. Photograph: Mark Wilson/Getty Images
Barack Obama and Turkish prime minister Recep Erdogan skated over major differences on how to deal with the Syrian crisis after a lengthy meeting at the White House on Thursday.
Obama, at a joint press conference in the Rose Garden, said there was "no magic formula" for resolving the conflict. He pinned hopes on an international conference proposed for Geneva next month that would bring together the Assad government and the rebels, in spite of widespread scepticism about the chances of it bringing about an end to the conflict.
Erdogan is pressing for more urgency and more positive action to bring the Syrian catastrophe to an end and is seeking the US and others in the international community to implement at the very least a no-fly zone to prevent Syrian jets and helicopters operating with impunity in rebel-held areas.
Erdogan said: "Our aim is to accelerate this process and I will be visiting other countries and my foreign minister will do the same just to see how we can speed things up to prevent the deaths of more people."
Turkey, which along with Syria's other neighbours, is bearing the brunt of the spillover from the crisis, including a huge influx of refugees. As well as saying it has evidence that Assad has used chemical weapons against its own people, it accused Syrian intelligence last weekend of being behind deadly car-bomb blasts inside the Turkish border.
Erdogan, not wanting to embarrass Obama on his home soil, replied to press questions about the two different approaches by saying he preferred to look at the glass as "half-full rather than half-empty", focusing on what the two agreed on: that Assad needed to go.
Obama, asked by a Turkish journalist if he would still be talking about the Syrian tragedy next year, said: "We would have preferred Assad to go two years ago, last year, six months ago, two months ago. There has been consistency on the part of my administration that Assad lost legitimacy when he started firing on his own people and killing his own people who were initially protesting peacefully for a greater voice in their country's affairs. Obviously that has escalated over time. So the answer is the sooner the better.
"As for the question how, we have already discussed that. There is no magic formula for dealing with an extraordinarily violent and difficult situation such as Syria's. If there was the prime minister and I would have already acted on it and it would already be finished."
Obama, reluctant to involve the US in another war after Iraq and Afghanistan, said all that could be done is to apply steady international pressure on the Assad government, support the Syrian opposition, and push ahead with the Geneva talks.
He was keeping open both diplomatic and military options but "it is not going to be something the US does by itself".
Asked about Turkey's evidence of chemical weapons, Obama, who had said that would be a red-line issue, said there was a need to get more specific information about what happened. the guardian
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