Ahmed al-Sharaa is expected in Ankara by midday on Tuesday to meet with his Turkish counterpart Erdogan [Getty]
Syria’s interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan are expected to discuss a joint defence pact in Ankara on Tuesday, including establishing Turkish airbases in central Syria and training for Syria’s new army, sources familiar with the matter said.
NATO member Turkey has long backed Syria’s armed and political opposition to ousted leader Bashar al-Assad, who was toppled in late December in a lightning offensive spearheaded by al-Sharaa’s forces.
The pact could see Turkey establish new air bases in Syria, use Syrian airspace for military purposes, and take a lead role in training troops in Syria’s new army, the sources said.
An official in Syria’s presidency told Reuters that Sharaa would discuss Turkey’s “training of the new Syrian army, as well as new areas of deployment and cooperation” with Erdogan, without specifying the deployment locations.
The official said Ankara was keen to set up bases there as a message to Kurdish fighters in northeast Syria, known as the People’s Protection Units (YPG), which is the main component of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
Ankara and many others view the SDF as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has been waging an insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984 and is deemed a terrorist group by both Turkey and the US.
The conflict raging in Syria’s north centres on the autonomy of Kurdish-majority regions held by the SDF, with the interim government looking to unite all the country according to its pre-war borders, as well as Turkey’s fears of the YPG being so close to its borders.
Turkey has used Syrian rebel groups, known as the Syrian National Army (SNA), to fight the SDF on the ground, leading to an increasingly deadly tit-for-tat conflict.
On Monday, in the Syrian government-held city of Manbij, which was evacuated by the SDF after US mediation last year, a car bomb killed 20 people, most of whom were female farm workers. This came after violence in the same area on Saturday killed an untold number of SNA rebels and another car bomb killed 10 people.
This comes after al-Sharaa said in an interview with Syria TV that the SDF had shown some willingness to give up its weapons to the new Syrian state but cautioned that “there are differences on some details.”
Though Sharaa did not elaborate on the manner of such details, it is believed by some that the mutual distrust between Turkey and the SDF is the major stumbling block in a potential peace deal.Â
Al-Sharaa, speaking about Kurdish separatism and fears of sectarianism in the new Syria, also told Syria TV that the new state will be built for all Syrians and will be “unified” and “non-sectarian”. He also added that all groups in the country must surrender their weapons to the state.Â
The former rebel leader also clarified that it would take four to five years to hold presidential elections, the first time he has laid out a timeline for the vote since he was named transitional president last week.
“I estimate that the period will be between four to five years until elections because there is a need for a vast infrastructure, and this infrastructure needs to be re-established and establishing it needs time,” al-Sharaa told Syria TV.
(Agencies contributed to this report)
