Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan can imagine inviting Syria's dictator Bashar al-Assad to Turkey "at any time", he announces.
We might send an invitation at any time, said Erdogan to journalists, on his way home from Berlin where he followed the European Championship.
When the war in Syria broke out in 2011, Turkey initially stood on the side of the rebels, but later shifted focus to preventing what Erdogan called a "terror corridor" from emerging in northern Syria.
According to Erdogan, among others, Russia's President Vladimir Putin has offered to mediate so that a meeting can take place in Turkey, and the frosty relations can thaw.
Now we have come so far that as soon as Bashar al-Assad takes a step towards improving relations with Turkey, we can show the same ambition, said Erdogan.
This week, hundreds of people have been arrested in Turkey after anti-Syrian riots in several cities. The violence broke out after a Syrian man was accused of having harassed a child. Erdogan has called the violence "unacceptable" and accuses the Turkish opposition of fueling the tensions.
Turkey is hosting around 3.2 million Syrian refugees, according to statistics from the UN. Several times in recent years, xenophobic violence has broken out.
The violence has also spread to areas in northern Syria controlled by Turkish forces.
