European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Tuesday began talks with Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan during a key visit following the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad, Agence France-Presse reported.
The talks in the capital of Ankara come after the EU Commission announced the launch of an “air bridge” operation to deliver an initial 50 tons of health supplies to Syria via Turkey.
The items from EU stockpiles in Dubai will be flown to Adana in southern Turkey for distribution in Syria, a commission statement said on Friday, indicating it would start “in the coming days.”
The UN’s OCHA humanitarian agency says more than a million people, mostly women and children, have been newly displaced since Assad was toppled by forces backed by Ankara.
Turkey reopened its embassy in Damascus on Saturday and pledged to work with the new transitional government.
The country, which shares a long border with Syria, has become home to about 3 million Syrian refugees since the start of the civil war in 2011.
Their presence has sparked growing dissent in Turkey, becoming a political headache which hurt Erdoğan in last year’s presidential elections.
Under a 2016 deal with the EU, Turkey agreed to take back Syrian refugees in exchange for financial aid and other incentives.
But Erdoğan has often threatened Brussels with reopening the gates unless it provided additional support.
During a visit in 2021, Von der Leyen found herself left without a chair during talks with Erdoğan in Ankara in what came to be known as the ‘sofagate scandal.”
As the first woman president of the EU Commission, she blamed sexism, saying at the time, “It happened because I am a woman.”