ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq - Syria’s transitional president Ahmed al-Sharaa will arrive in Ankara on Tuesday, at the invitation of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Erdogan will host Sharaa at the presidential palace, and the pair will discuss the "joint steps to be taken for economic recovery, sustainable stability and security,” Turkish president’s communications chief Fahrettin Altun wrote on X.
The interim president of Syria will arrive mid-afternoon, flying in from Saudi Arabia, where he made his first trip abroad since toppling Bashar al-Assad in December.
The new Damascus administration, led by Sharaa, maintains a strategic relationship with Ankara that it has built over the years.
After Syria’s civil war broke out in 2011, Turkey began supporting armed groups fighting the Assad regime, including Sharaa’s Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, which spearheaded a lightning offensive that led to the collapse of the Assad regime in less than two weeks in early December.
Turkish intelligence chief Ibrahim Kalın and Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan were the first to visit Sharaa in Damascus, a few days after Assad's ouster.
Turkey is home to nearly three million Syrians who fled their country after the start of the conflict. Thousands have returned since Assad's overthrow.
Turkey has already offered to help with Syria’s recovery after 13 years of civil war. In return, Ankara seeks Damascus’s support against Kurdish forces who currently battle Turkey and its allied rebel groups in the northern regions of the war-ravaged country.
Since 2016, Turkey has had boots on the ground in the northern regions of Syria, carrying out multiple operations against the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which Ankara accuses of being an extension of its domestic foe, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
The SDF currently manages the majority of northeastern and eastern Syria, covering about a quarter of the country. Established in 2015, the SDF is deemed the Kurdish de facto army in Syria.
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