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Turkish Airlines to resume flights to Damascus after 13 years of war

Bilal Eksi, CEO of the national carrier, confirmed the news on X

Robert Badendieck
Friday 17 January 2025 09:19 GMT
There will be three Turkish Airlines flights a week to the Syrian capital, starting on 23 January
There will be three Turkish Airlines flights a week to the Syrian capital, starting on 23 January

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Turkish Airlines will resume its flights to Damascus, Syria, next week after a halt of more than a decade, officials have confirmed following a visit by a delegation of Syriaā€™s new, Turkey-backed rulers.

The CEO of Turkeyā€™s national carrier, Bilal Eksi, said there would be three flights a week, beginning on 23 January.

ā€œWe are returning to Damascus,ā€ Eksi said in a post on the social media platform X.

His announcement followed a visit earlier in the day by Syriaā€™s new foreign minister, Asaad al-Shibani, who held talks with Turkeyā€™s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and other senior officials In the Turkish capital, Ankara.

Al-Shibani is part of Syriaā€™s new, de facto authorities under Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, an Islamist group behind the lightning insurgency that ousted President Bashar Assad in December and ended his familyā€™s decades-long rule.

From 2011 until Assadā€™s downfall, Syriaā€™s uprising and civil war killed an estimated 500,000 people.

The new rulers in Syria are eager to establish diplomatic ties with regional and global governments.

Speaking alongside al-Shibani at a news conference, Turkeyā€™s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan alluded to plans to reopen Turkeyā€™s Consulate in the Syrian city of Aleppo. Turkey already announced last month it would reopen its embassy in Damascus after a 12-year closure.

Fidan urged for the lifting international sanctions on Syria to support basic public services and facilitate reconstruction of the war-shattered country.

ā€œIf sanctions are lifted, the countryā€™s normalisation process will accelerate, and conditions will be created that will enable millions of Syrians to return to their country,ā€ Fidan said.

ā€œWe came to establish a new country, to rebuild it," al-Shibani said. "We will work with all our might to ensure that it will be a country that has the rights of all its people and is integrated with the region and the world.ā€

He also pledged that Syria's new rulers would safeguard the ā€œterritorial unity of Syriaā€ and prevent any threat to Turkey from Kurdish groups in Syria, including the YPG or the Peopleā€™s Protection Units, and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, which have US backing.

Ankara claims the Syrian Kurdish groups are allied against Turkey with Kurdistan Workerā€™s Party, or PKK, which has waged an armed insurgency against Turkey since 1984.

The conflict has spread beyond Turkeyā€™s borders into Iraq and Syria, and has killed tens of thousands of people.

The PKK is considered a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.

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