ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkey’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan met with Syria’s de facto leader Ahmed al-Sharaa – also known as Abu Mohammed al-Golani – in Damascus on Sunday, Turkey’s foreign ministry said, without providing further details.
Photographs and footage shared by the ministry showed Fidan and Sharaa, leader of Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham which led the operation to topple Bashar al-Assad two weeks ago, walk ahead of a crowded delegation before posing for photographs.
The two are also seen shaking hands, hugging, and smiling.
On Friday, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said that Turkey would help Syria’s new administration form a state structure and draft a new constitution, adding Fidan would head to Damascus to discuss this new structure, without providing a date.
Ibrahim Kalin, the head of Turkey’s MIT intelligence agency, also visited Damascus on Dec. 12, four days after Assad’s fall.
Ankara had for years backed rebels looking to oust Assad and welcomed the end of his family’s brutal five-decade rule after a 13-year civil war. Turkey also hosts millions of Syrian migrants it hopes will start returning home after Assad’s fall, and has vowed to help rebuild Syria.
Fidan’s visit comes amid fighting in northeast Syria between Turkey-backed Syrian fighters and the Kurdish YPG militia, which spearheads the U.S.-allied Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the northeast and Ankara regards as a terrorist organisation.
Earlier, Turkey’s defence minister said Ankara believed that Syria’s new leadership, including the Syrian National Army (SNA) armed group which Ankara backs, will drive YPG fighters from all territory they occupy in the northeast.
Ankara, alongside Syrian allies, has mounted several cross-border offensives against the Kurdish faction in northern Syria and controls swathes of Syrian territory along the border, while repeatedly demanding that its NATO ally Washington halts support for the Kurdish fighters.
The SDF has been on the back foot since Assad’s fall, with the threat of advances from Ankara and Turkey-backed groups as it looks to preserve political gains made in the last 13 years, and with Syria’s new rulers being friendly to Ankara.
(Reporting by Tuvan Gumrukcu; Editing by Susan Fenton and Ros Russell)
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