Syria denies meeting with Turkey was on coordination against Kurds

DAMASCUS – Syria denied reports that its intelligence chief Ali Mamlouk held talks with his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan in Moscow on a possible coordination against the Kurdish presence in northern Syria, the Syrian news agency SANA said.

Reuters quoted an anonymous Turkish official as saying that the discussions included "the possibility of working together against YPG, the terrorist organization PKK's Syrian component, in the East of the Euphrates river."

But an informed source told SANA on Tuesday that the talks between the two spy chiefs concentrated on the Turkish withdrawal from the whole Syrian territories.

“The Syrian side to ‘a Syrian-Russian-Turkish tripartite meeting’ which was held in Moscow on Monday, called on the Turkish side to fully adhere to the sovereignty of the Syrian Arab republic, its independence and territorial integrity as well as the immediate and full withdrawal from the whole Syrian territory,” said SANA.

Damascus and Ankara have said there have been intelligence contacts, but this is the first explicit acknowledgement of such a senior meeting.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan backs rebels who fought to topple Assad during Syria's eight-year civil war. Erdogan described Assad as a terrorist and called for him to be driven from power, which earlier in the war had appeared possible.

But Assad's allies Russia and Iran helped turn the conflict round, and with US forces now withdrawing from northeast Syria, Assad's Russian-backed troops are sweeping back into the region just as Turkish troops move in from the north.