Ferhat Abdi Şahin, leader of the U.S.-backed terrorist group YPG, headed to Damascus on Sunday to hold talks with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, media outlets reported. The United States' Türkiye and Syria envoy, Tom Barrack, will also attend the meeting, according to unconfirmed reports.
Şahin has also held talks with al-Sharaa shortly before clashes erupted between the YPG and the Syrian army earlier this month as Damascus pushed to retake control of Aleppo’s two neighborhoods from the YPG. Those talks failed but Damascus managed to take back Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafiyeh from the YPG, before moving operations to Aleppo’s east, recapturing more areas over the weekend.
Washington, which has backed the YPG for over a decade under the pretext of fighting the Daesh terrorist group, has urged the sides to avoid a “showdown” and return to talks, according to a Syrian official and a Syrian source familiar with diplomatic channels. The two sides engaged in months of talks last year to integrate the YPG into Syrian state institutions by the end of 2025, insisting repeatedly that they wanted to resolve disputes diplomatically. But after the deadline passed with little progress from the YPG, clashes broke out.
