In the coming week, Syria's regime comes in from the cold.

Erziril's parliament starts a closely watched summer session,

and the Pope makes a three-day visit to Hungary.

It's April 27, 2023, in time for the world next week. I'm Bob McMahon.

And I'm Carl Ann Robbins.

So, Bob, let's start at the negotiating table.

Earlier this week, Russia hosted four-way talks with Syria, Turkey, and Iran.

The goal is to normalize ties between Ankara and

Damascus, and there are a host of issues, including Turkish military operation against the Kurds in

northwest Syria, and the massive inflow of Syrian refugees fleeing the Syrian Civil War and Assad's

brutal crackdown on its own people. And I'm usually a fan of diplomacy, but is this an effort to try to

rehabilitate Assad? Russia, you know, whose warplanes shattered Aleppo is certainly not a neutral

arbiter. It's really a co-conspirator. Can anything good come out of these talks?

Well, Carla, a lot is going on in and around Syria, and I'm not sure how much of it might have to do with Assad himself as much as sort of cold calculations about the state of affairs and the way certain Arab states are viewing things as well as Turkey and Russia.

First of all, even though we call this the World Next Week podcast, we don't know of any set piece events next week per se, although there is a lot of

diplomacy going on, as you indicated from this past week, and as we're going to see in the run-up

to the Arab League summit around the middle of May. Because Syria is being bandied about as

a country that could be invited back into the Arab League, for example. It has already had a number

of high-level diplomatic

meetings involving. In addition to the countries, you mentioned, UAE, Jordan, Saudi Arabia,

Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia. It is, the Turkish angle is particularly intriguing. There is a great

deal of expectation that things will pick up again on that front after the Turkish election

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