Turkey's top diplomat meets Syrian HTS leader in Damascus

AFP , Sunday 22 Dec 2024

Turkey's foreign minister Hakan Fidan met with Syrian Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, aka Al-Jolani in Damascus on Sunday, according to Ankara's foreign ministry.

Fidan Sharaa
Turkey's top diplomat Hakan Fidan met with Syria's new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa in Damascus.

 

A video released by the Anadolu state news agency showed the two men greeting each other.

No details of where the meeting took place in the Syrian capital were released by the ministry.

Fidan had announced on Friday that he planned to travel to Damascus to meet Syria's new leaders, who ousted Syria's former president Bashar al-Assad after a lightning offensive.
 


Turkey's spy chief Ibrahim Kalin had earlier visited the city on December 12, just a few days after Assad's fall.

Kalin was filmed leaving the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, surrounded by bodyguards, as broadcast by the private Turkish channel NTV.

Turkey has been a key backer of the opposition to Assad since the uprising against his rule began in 2011.

Besides supporting various militant groups, it has welcomed Syrian dissenters and millions of refugees.

However, Fidan has rejected claims by US president-elect Donald Trump that the militants' victory in Syria constituted an "unfriendly takeover" of the country by Turkey.

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