Unlock Editor’s Digest for free

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.

Syria’s interim government is ready to take control of Isis detention camps run by US-backed Kurdish militants, Turkey’s foreign minister said during a visit to Damascus.

Ankara’s top diplomat Hakan Fidan became the first foreign minister to travel to Syria to meet Hayat Tahrir al-Sham leader Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, who is also called by his birth name Ahmed al- Sharaa. HTS led the offensive that toppled former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

“The Syrian administration told us that it is ready to take the necessary initiative to get these prisoners,” Fidan said on Sunday.

The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which has helped defeat Isis with US air support, is holding around 10,000 captive fighters as well as thousands of their family members in camps in eastern Syria . Washington has warned that Isis may try to take advantage of instability in Syria and will keep about 2,000 US special forces in place.

The Turkish government has called for the People’s Defense Units (YPG), a Kurdish militia that dominates the SDF, to be disbanded because it considers its self-rule along Turkey’s southern border a national security threat. .

Turkey also accuses the YPG of being an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK), which used weapons against the Turkish state in 1984, resulting in the deaths of 40,000 people.

Fidan said on Sunday that western countries had allowed the YPG to “illegally” occupy nearly a third of Syria’s territory in exchange for keeping Isis detainees locked up in Syria, but said He said he believes that US president-elect Donald Trump will soon change.

“If you look at it from the perspective of US interests, if you do the math, is Turkey important or a terrorist group like the PKK important? Mr Trump immediately saw the math,” said he.

Turkey is ready to “provide the strongest support” in the fight against Isis, Fidan added.

Jolani said that bringing down armed groups in Syria is a priority and that his administration will announce the structure of the defense and military ministries within days. “We will not allow any weapons to be outside the state, either from the revolutionary factions or from the factions that are in the SDF region,” he said.

Turkey, the most vocal supporter of Syrian rebels in their 13-year war against Assad, has pledged to help rebuild its neighbor and called on the international community to engage the new leaders of the Syria. Fidan said he hoped his visit would encourage other governments to send high-level officials.

“We believe that the new administration in Damascus will take appropriate steps to ensure Syria’s territorial integrity and political sovereignty. When I met with (Jolani), I heard the framework for that vision,” said Fidan.

Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt also met Jolani on Sunday, with both men calling for a reset in relations between the two countries, which have been marked by decades of tension.

Jumblatt, who held the first Assad regime responsible for the assassination of his politician father in 1977, previously declared that he would only return to Damascus after the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s government.

Jolani called for an end to the troubled past, saying the former Syrian government was “a source of anxiety and trouble”.

“The future Syria of this new era will stand at an equal distance from everything in Lebanon and there will not be any case of negative interference,” he added.