On March 8, four deputies from Turkey's main opposition People's Republican Party (CHP) visited with Syria's ruler, Bashar al-Assad, in his headquarters in Damascus. After an apparently warm meeting with the dictator, they smiled together to cameras, in a pose that starkly contrasted with the tension between the Syrian regime and the Turkish government led by the Justice and Development Party (AKP).
A few days later, Aslı Aydıntaşbaş, a Turkish journalist who is often more sympathetic to the CHP than the AKP, wrote a bold critique of this visit in the daily Milliyet, a traditionally pro-CHP paper.
