Embassy staff “are on their way as a team. The embassy will start operations tomorrow,” said Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, Turkey’s state-owned Anadolu Agency reported.
Turkey closed its embassy in March 2012 amid calls by Ankara for Assad to step down a year after the Syrian civil war erupted.
Burhan Koroglu, Turkey’s ambassador to Mauritania, has been assigned to temporarily lead the embassy as charge d’affaires.
Syria’s civil war dramatically reignited late last month when a coalition of rebels led by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) launched a blistering offensive against the Syrian army, seizing the northern cities of Aleppo, Hama, and Homs. Their victory culminated with capturing the capital Damascus as rebels said Assad fled the country, ending over five decades of Baathist rule.
While speaking at the Doha Forum last week, Fidan criticized Assad and said he failed to capitalize on the window provided by the Astana peace process since 2016 to reconcile with the Syrian people and end the war.
Throughout the conflict in Syria, Turkey has supported rebel forces, including those with links to al-Qaeda and other extremist groups. Turkey has also launched repeated incursions into Syrian territory, most notably against the Kurds in Afrin in 2018, and continues to occupy large swathes of the country’s north.
