With a Russian sign, Turkey and Syria step up contacts

With a Russian sign, Turkey and Syria step up contacts
September 16, 2022, 8:00 am

A Syrian man shows his ink-stained thumb after he voted in the Syrian presidential elections at a polling station in the city of Homs. (File photo: AFP)

Turkey's intelligence chief has held multiple meetings with his Syrian counterpart in Damascus over the last few weeks, a sign of Russian efforts to encourage a thaw between states on opposite sides of Syria's war, four sources said.

A regional source aligned with Damascus told Reuters that Hakan Fidan, head of Turkey's National Intelligence Organization (MIT), and Syrian intelligence chief Ali Mamlouk met as recently as this week in the Syrian capital.

The most recent meetings - including a two-day visit by Fidan to Damascus at the end of August - had sought to lay the ground for sessions at a higher level, the source said.

The contacts reflect a Russian policy shift as Moscow steels itself for a protracted conflict in Ukraine and seeks to secure its position in Syria, where its forces have supported President Bashar al-Assad since 2015, according to two Turkish officials and the regional source.

Any normalization between Ankara and Damascus would reshape the decade-long Syrian war.

Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan - Photo. official Facebook account

Turkish backing has been vital to sustaining Syrian rebels in their last major territorial foothold in the northwest, after Assad defeated the insurgency across the rest of the country, aided by Russia and Iran.

But rapprochement faces big complications, including the fate of rebel fighters and millions of civilians, many of whom fled to the northwest to escape Assad's rule.

US to send $765 million in additional humanitarian aid to Syria

Turkey, a NATO member country, has troops on the ground across the area, deemed occupying forces by Assad.

During the meetings, Fidan - one of President Tayyip Erdogan's closest confidants - and Mamlouk evaluated how the two countries' foreign ministers could eventually meet, according to a senior Turkish official and a Turkish security source.

“Russia wants Syria and Turkey to overcome their problems and achieve certain agreements...which are in the interest of everyone, both Turkey and Syria,” said the Turkish official.

One big challenge is Turkey's desire to include Syrian rebels in any talks with Damascus, the official added.

Syria's bloody conflict at risk of further escalation, UN warns in new report

The senior Turkish official said Ankara does not want to see Iranian or Iran-backed forces - already widely deployed in government-controlled parts of Syria - plugging gaps left by Russian withdrawals.

The Turkish security official said neither did Russia want to see Iranian influence expand as it reduces its presence.

The regional source allied to Damascus and a second senior pro-Assad source in the Middle East said the Turkish-Syrian contacts had made a lot of progress, without giving details.

A third regional source aligned with Damascus said Turkish-Syrian relations had begun to thaw and were advancing to a stage of “creating a climate for understanding”.

Source: alarabiyaenglish

Arrests in UK anti-monarchy protests spark controversy over free speech U.N. warns up to 345 million people marching toward starvation