A high-level Turkish delegation traveled to Syria on Monday to meet with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa in Damascus, Turkey’s foreign ministry announced.
The two countries have developed close ties since the toppling of longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad late last year. The visit by Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan and Defense Minister Yaşar Güler allows for a “general assessment” of relations, a ministry source told Agence France-Presse.
The talks will also address “progress in implementing the March 10 agreement” between Damascus and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) on integrating the Kurds’ semi-autonomous civil and military institutions into the state by year-end, the source said.
Minister of Foreign Affairs @HakanFidan, together with Yaşar Güler, Minister of National Defence, and İbrahim Kalın, Director of the National Intelligence Organization met with Ahmed al-Sharaa, President of Syria, Asaad Hassan Al-Shaibani, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Syria,… pic.twitter.com/PnKPPR7rHE
— Turkish MFA (@MFATurkiye) December 22, 2025
Differences between the two sides have so far held up the deal’s implementation.
Last week Fidan warned the SDF — which controls vast swaths of Syria’s oil-rich northeast — that patience among key actors was “running out” and advised against further delays to integrate its forces.
Ankara also plans to broach “emerging security risks in southern Syria due to Israeli aggression,” the source said, as well as Syria’s official entry into a US-led coalition against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
US forces struck more than 70 ISIL targets in Syria last week in what President Donald Trump described as “a very serious retaliation” for a deadly December 13 attack on American troops in Palmyra.
“Cooperation [between Damascus and Ankara] aims to prevent the resurgence of Daesh [ISIL], which seeks to exploit fragility in Syria,” the Turkish ministry source said.
Turkey shares a 900-kilometer border with Syria. Between 2016 and 2019 Turkey launched three offensives in northern Syria against Syrian Kurdish fighters and ISIL.
ISIL seized swaths of Syria and neighboring Iraq in 2014, before being territorially defeated in Syria in 2019, but has since maintained a presence there, particularly in the country’s vast desert.