US unlikely to support 'killer' Assad, says Erdogan

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Friday that he finds it unlikely that the U.S. administration and institutions would support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The Turkish president's comments came at a joint press conference with his Ukrainian counterpart, Petro Poroshenko, in Kiev.

"Syria can never be peaceful or prosperous with Assad in power. I find it unlikely that the U.S. administration and institutions would support such a killer," Erdogan said when asked if he thought there was a shift in U.S. policy on Syria following recent remarks by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and the head of the CIA. 

The U.S. does not want to see Assad’s government collapse and open the way for Daesh and other militants to take over, Central Intelligence Agency Director John Brennan said last Friday.

Brennan's remarks were followed Sunday by Kerry, who told CBS News that talks with Damascus were necessary in order to find a solution to the Syria crisis.

"The CIA director's and Kerry's remarks are inconsistent. But actually, they come to the same thing in the end," Erdogan said, adding that Kerry's remarks were later denied by the U.S. State Department. 

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said later on Sunday on her Twitter account that Kerry had made no mention of Assad in his remarks.  

"(John Kerry) repeated long-standing policy that we need negotiated process (with) regime at table -- did not say we (would) negotiate directly (with) Assad," she tweeted. 

Erdogan said that "whichever of these statements is true" would be understood at a high-level meeting between Turkey and the U.S.

Syria's civil conflict, which has entered its fifth year, has left tens of thousands of people dead and millions of others displaced both internally and externally.

- $10 million grant for displaced people in Ukraine

Erdogan also announced that Turkey decided to grant Ukraine $10 million to be used for displaced people in the country, in addition to $50 million worth of credit, "as a sign of strategic partnership and neighborly relations."

The Turkish president said he also wanted to increase the mutual trade volume.

"Twelve years ago, it was $1.3 billion. It went up to around $6 billion at the end of 2014. Let's increase it up to $20 billion by the end of 2023," he said, adding that he and Poroshenko decided to "finalize the free trade agreement between the two countries at the earliest," in order to reach these goals.

It is estimated that there are at least 1,150,700 internally displaced people in Ukraine as of March 2015, according to the Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre.