Turkey Rejects Plan to Partition Syria

In an interview with Saudi-funded Arabic-language daily Asharq al-Awsat on Sunday, Kurtulmus said that the Syrian people should have the final say on the fate of the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad government, The Anadolu News Agency reported.

"What is happening [in Syria] is a new Sykes-Picot agreement," Kurtulmus said, referring to the secret agreement following World War I between Britain and France that defined their post-war spheres of influence in the Middle East.

He said certain powers sought to impose a "new phase" of the agreement aimed at partitioning some countries in the region.

"The main focus of some [powers] is to divide Islamic countries along sectarian and ethnic lines in an attempt to create more problems between ethnic groups," he said.

He said certain parties were now speaking about dividing Syria into three distinct entities. "The fact is that Syria could be divided into 30 or 40 different parts," he said.

Kurtulmus called for bringing Syria’s various ethnic and religious groups together. "Our main focus is to protect Syria as a unified state," he asserted.

He said the Syrians could establish -- through a peace process -- a new government in Syria. "But we have to maintain Syria's territorial integrity," he said.

He went on to urge different groups in Syria "to find the best way to participate in the search for a political solution" to the five-year-old conflict.