Erdogan, Syria’s Sharaa hold talks in Istanbul

ISTANBUL: Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan was holding talks with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa in Istanbul on Saturday, news channel CNN Turk and state media said, broadcasting video of the two leaders greeting each other.

The visit comes the day after US President Donald Trump’s administration issued orders that it said would effectively lift sanctions on Syria. Trump had pledged to unwind the measures to help the country rebuild after its devastating civil war.

Video footage on Turkish television showed Erdogan shaking hands with Sharaa as he emerged from his car at the Dolmabahce Palace on the shores of the Bosphorus Strait in Turkey’s largest city.

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The two countries’ foreign ministers also attended the talks, as well as Turkey’s defence minister and the head of the Turkish MIT intelligence agency, according to Turkey’s state-owned Anadolu news agency.

The Syrian delegation also included Defence Minister Murhaf Abu Qasra, according to Syrian state news agency SANA.

MIT chief Ibrahim Kalin and Sharaa this week held talks in Syria on the Syrian Kurdish YPG militant group laying down its weapons and integrating into Syrian security forces, a Turkish security source said previously.

Separately,  in a bid to tackle Turkey’s falling birthrate, President Erdogan Friday announced the “decade of the family”, and again lashed out at the LGBT community as “deviant”.

“The period between 2026 and 2035 has been identified as the decade of family and population,” said Erdogan in opening the International Family Forum in Istanbul.

“Our country is facing a great danger: Turkey’s birthrate for the first time in our history dropped to 1.48” children per woman, he said, citing figures from the Turkish statistical institute (TUIK).