The head of Turkish intelligence in Damascus!

Reuters reported that four sources said that the head of Turkish intelligence held several meetings with his Syrian counterpart in Damascus during the past few weeks, in an indication of the progress of Russian efforts to thaw the ice between the two countries on opposite sides of the Syrian war.

A pro-Damascus regional source told Reuters that the head of Türkiye’s National Intelligence Service, Hakan Fidan, and the head of Syrian intelligence, Ali Mamlouk, met this week in the Syrian capital.

Turkish officials and the regional source said these contacts reflect a shift in Russian policy at a time when Moscow is preparing itself for a long-running conflict in Ukraine, while seeking to secure its position in Syria, where its forces have supported President Bashar al Assad since 2015.

According to a senior Turkish official and a Turkish security source, Mamlouk and Fidan, who is considered one of the most prominent close associates of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, discussed during recent meetings the possibility of a meeting between the foreign ministers of the two countries at the end.

“Russia wants Syria and Türkiye to transcend their differences and reach specific agreements… That are in everyone’s interest, including Türkiye and Syria,” the Turkish official said.

He added that one of the big challenges lies in Türkiye’s desire to involve the armed Syrian opposition in any talks with Damascus.

The Turkish security official said that Russia has gradually withdrawn some of its military resources from Syria to focus on Ukraine, and asked Türkiye to normalize relations with Assad to “accelerate the political solution” in Syria.

The source allied with Damascus said that Russia had urged Syria to enter into talks with Ankara, while Moscow was seeking to secure its position and that of Assad if it was forced to transfer troops to Ukraine.

Russia has suffered heavy losses on the ground in Ukraine over the past week.

The source said that recent meetings, including a two-day visit by Fidan to Damascus at the end of August, sought to pave the way for higher-level sessions.

The senior Turkish official stated that Ankara does not want Iranian or Iranian-backed forces, which are already widely deployed in government-controlled areas of Syria, to fill the void left by Russian withdrawals.

The Turkish security official pointed out that Russia also does not want Iran’s influence to expand, because this would detract from its presence.

A diplomat based in the region said Russia withdrew a limited number of troops from southern Syria earlier this summer, particularly in areas along the border with Israel that were later occupied by Iranian-allied forces.

While Fidan and Mamluk have already spoken on and off over the past two years, the pace and timing of recent meetings suggest that there is now an urgent need for communication.

The regional source allied with Damascus and another high-ranking source loyal to Assad in the Middle East said that Turkish-Syrian contacts had made a lot of progress, without going into details.

A third regional source allied with Damascus said that Turkish-Syrian relations had begun to improve and progressed to the stage of “creating the atmosphere for understanding.”

The sources spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the meetings, which have not been publicly disclosed.

The Russian Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Türkiye’s National Intelligence Service declined to comment and the Foreign Ministry didn’t immediately comment.

The Syrian Ministry of Information also didn’t immediately respond to emailed questions from Reuters.

Turkish-Syrian rapprochement seemed impossible in the early stages of the Syrian conflict.

Erdogan described Assad as a terrorist and said that peace couldn’t be achieved in Syria while he was in the presidency, while Assad described Erdogan as a thief for stealing Syrian lands.

But in an apparent change of tone last month, Erdogan said he could never rule out dialogue and diplomacy with Syria.

Erdogan faces heated elections next year, whose hot files will be the way to return some of the Syrian refugees in Türkiye, whose number has now reached 3.7 million.

The Turkish-Syrian contacts also come against the backdrop of a series of meetings between Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin, including a meeting scheduled for Friday in Uzbekistan.

In July, Türkiye helped broker a U.N.-backed deal to lift a blockade on grain exports from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports that had been in place since Russia invaded its neighbor on Feb 24.

After a recent visit to Moscow, Erdogan said Putin had suggested Türkiye cooperate with Damascus along their common border, where Ankara has launched several attacks on areas where Syrian Kurdish groups have established autonomy since 2011.

Türkiye is threatening another attack on US-backed Kurdish forces, which Ankara sees as a threat to national security, Russia on the other hand, expressed its opposition to such an incursion.