BY OKTAY EKSI
HURRIYET- We won't be expecting much from a football match. You know that the process of establishing political relations between the US and the People's Republic of China back in the early '70s started with a match between the two countries' ping-pong teams. Turkey and Syria don't have such teams, so I won't talk about this week's football friendly between Turkish team Fenerbahce and Syria's Al Ittihat. We want Turkish-Syrian relations, which changed after Bahar Assad was elected president, to turn into a relationship of reliable friendship. I've had many bad things to say about the foreign policy of the ruling party in this space, but I never once criticized its policies meant to improve Turkey's relations with its neighbors. Actually, the problems in Turkish-Syrian relations stemmed from the enmity of the late Hafez Assad towards Turkey, just like Greek Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou's similar attitude held back Turkish-Greek ties for 15 years. Just like his son George Papandreou shifted Athens' policy to a positive direction, Bahar Assad also corrected his father's policy. In addition, Turkey's friendly is helping rescue Syria from its isolation under US President George W. Bush's serious accusations and veiled threats that it might attack Syria at any time. Unfortunately, it's difficult to find good things in the past of Turkish-Syrian relations. For example, the terrorist PKK once took shelter in the Bekaa valley, which is under Syrian control, and protected the PKK in its territory for many years, as well as spouted rhetoric demanding territory from Turkey and supported everybody and every policy which would put Turkey in a difficult position. We find all this difficult to forget. Our late President Turgut Ozal also tried hard to end this negative situation. He even thought that he had convinced Hafez Assad to stop supporting the PKK in return for a commitment to divert water from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers to Syria, but this didn't pan out. Now we've reached a point where we can carry out a joint operation against the PKK alongside Syria. This week Syrian President Bahsar Assad made visiting US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi wait before meeting with him, on her controversial trip to Damascus, saying that he had very important guests from Turkey and first had to bid his Turkish guests farewell. Pelosi didn't accept Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul's request to meet during his recent visit to Washington. In light of this, Assad's gesture becomes more meaningful. I wanted to mention my optimism about the relations between our countries today.