(Bloomberg) -- Turkey’s spy chief Ibrahim Kalin visited the Syrian capital Damascus on Thursday, TV channel TVNet reported, a rare public appearance by the country’s top intelligence official as world powers jostle for influence in the wake of the fall of Bashar Al-Assad’s regime.
Footage showed the head of the National Intelligence Organization at the city’s Umayyad Mosque, four days after Syrian rebels led by HTS, or the Organization for the Liberation of the Levant, toppled the longtime Syrian ruler in a lightning advance.
Turkey backs another rebel group called the Syrian National Army, which was also part of the latest campaign against Assad’s forces.
Ankara stands to become one of the main power players in post-Assad Syria, having supported the opposition against the dictator’s backers Russia and Iran.
In 2012, a year into the start of the uprising against Assad, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that he hoped to one day pray in the Umayyad Mosque that Kalin was pictured in.
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