Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan revealed, in a televised interview on a Turkish channel, previously undisclosed details about the night Bashar al Assad fled Damascus. He outlined the circumstances leading up to that moment and explained how Assad was persuaded to escape without engaging in any military confrontation.
Fidan stated that the decisive turning point came with the launch of operations aimed at deterring aggression against the ousted Bashar al Assad regime. He stressed that the most critical action required at that stage was engaging with Russian and Iranian officials and convincing them not to intervene militarily in the unfolding events.
He explained that Turkish diplomats held a series of intensive meetings with Russian and Iranian officials during the week in which the operation began. These meetings addressed issues he preferred not to disclose, indicating their sensitive nature.
Fidan added: “After a certain point, they made their call, and Assad left that evening”, clearly referring to the night of 8 December 2024.
When the interviewer asked whether the regime’s rapid collapse was due to behind the scenes discussions, and whether Assad’s inability to secure last minute Russian and Iranian support contributed to the swift outcome, Fidan responded: “Certainly. If he had received support, the revolutionaries, with their determination, would have prevailed anyway. But it would have taken longer and would have been far more bloody”.
He continued by explaining that the Russians and Iranians “looked at the situation and realised there was no point in continuing. We told them plainly: this no longer makes sense. The man they invested in was no longer someone who could be invested in, and the region’s conditions had changed”. He also praised the opposition, which he described as having acted with unparalleled courage and determination.
Fidan concluded that the Turkish side worked to “bring the operation to an end with the lowest possible loss of life” by intensifying engagement with “the two most influential powers in this file”, affirming: “We opened the way for a bloodless victory”.
