Author: M Barbu

Turkish intelligence chief Ibrahim Kalin was in Damascus on Thursday, two sources with knowledge of the visit told Reuters, for what the Syrian information ministry said would be talks involving its new opposition leadership.

The ministry said that Kalin and Qatar’s head of state security, Khalfan al-Kaabi, arrived in the capital to meet with Syrian opposition leader Ahmed al-Sharaa and caretaker prime minister Mohammad al-Bashir.

In most capitals across the Middle East, the news of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s fall sparked immense anxiety. Ankara is not one of them. Rather than worrying about Syria’s prospects after more than a decade of conflict, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan sees opportunity in a post-Assad future. His optimism is well founded: out of all the region’s major players, Ankara has the strongest channels of communication and history of working with the Islamist group now in charge in Damascus, positioning it to reap the benefits of the Assad regime’s demise.

A day after the fall of the SDF-controlled town of Manbij, Turkish proxies advanced today toward the town of Kobani.

The collapse of the Bashar al-Assad regime following a lightning offensive led by al-Qaeda offshoot Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and an array of Sunni factions supported by Turkey has created new realities on the ground for the country’s Kurds, who have since 2012 administered the northeast and eastern parts of the country. The overall picture is negative as the US-backed Syrian Kurdish Democratic Forces loses control of growing swaths of territory east of Afrin, including the towns of Tell Rifaat and Manbij lying to the West of the Euphrates River, to Turkish-backed Sunni opposition forces.

On Wednesday, Abbas, 89-years-old, announced that the Palestinian National Council chairman, Rawhi Fattouh, would be his temporary replacement.

Suddenly, Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas issued a controversial presidential decree announcing who would replace him in an interim period when the post became vacant.

The Syrian Arab Army is no more, an institution built to fight Israel that eventually ate itself due to rampant corruption and ineptitude.

Few analysts could have predicted the events that unfolded last week in Syria when a limited rebel offensive in Aleppo province led to the downfall of Bashar Al-Assad’s regime, 13 years after a revolution against his corrupt and authoritarian rule began.

Opposition forces have taken control of the capital after a significant offensive. Here is how it unravelled.

In the early hours of Sunday morning, opposition forces declared Syria liberated from the rule of President Bashar al-Assad as opposition forces surged into the capital.

Israel has struck more than 250 military targets in Syria, according to an Israeli radio military correspondent.

Following the rebels’ overthrow of the Assad regime in Syria, the Israel Defense Forces entered the buffer zone for the first time in 50 years and are conducting strikes to eliminate weapons that could be used against Israel.