Turkey and Syria deny report of secret talks with Hezbollah

Turkey and Syria have denied a Reuters report that Syrian government officials and representatives of the Hezbollah militant group held secret talks in Turkey to try to ease tensions between them.

The Turkish presidency on Thursday rejected the report as baseless, while Syria also denied that such a meeting took place. The Reuters report, citing six sources briefed on what it described as the first known meeting between the longtime foes, said the Syrian officials and Hezbollah representatives had met secretly at least once last month.

"The claims circulating in some international media outlets and social media platforms to the effect that "Syrian government officials and Hezbollah executives met in Turkey under the auspices of the MİT" are entirely baseless," Turkey’s Presidential Communications Directorate’s Center for Combating Disinformation said in a post on X.

It added that "the allegations regarding the date, location, content, and topics of discussion featured in these posts do not reflect any reality whatsoever and are completely fictional and speculative in nature".

In a post on its official English-language account for its Foreign Media Department on X, Syria Response, the Syrian Information Ministry also wrote: "These claims are false. No such meeting took place".

Hezbollah for years dispatched fighters to Syria to support former dictator Bashar al-Assad’s regime during the country’s civil war.

After Assad was ousted in late 2024 in a lightning rebel offensive, tensions rose between Syria’s new government and Hezbollah, with Damascus accusing the group of transferring arms through Syria, and the United States encouraging Syria’s military to send forces into Lebanon to fight Hezbollah.

According to the Reuters report, last month’s meeting involved Hezbollah representatives and Syrian intelligence and foreign ministry officials and took place at the invitation of Turkish security and intelligence agencies in an effort to de-escalate, the six sources said.

All the sources spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive meeting, which has not been previously reported.

Syria’s Foreign Ministry, Turkey’s foreign and defence ministries and the US State Department did not immediately respond to Reuters' questions about the meeting. Hezbollah’s media office declined to comment.

Mutual security concerns

The meeting focused on resolving points of tension between the two parties and went well, according to the US official, the Syrian officials and the Lebanese source.

One of the Syrian officials said both sides agreed they held no hostility towards one another, and that Syria assured Hezbollah that it would not intervene militarily in Lebanon to disarm the group.

In turn, Syrian officials asked Hezbollah to help stop cross-border smuggling attempts and dismantle its remaining sleeper cells, particularly in southern Syria, the official said.

Syria said on Tuesday it had captured a Hezbollah cell preparing to launch rockets in southern Syria. Hezbollah denied on Wednesday that it was involved and said it "has no presence whatsoever on Syrian territory and has no involvement in any security or military activity there".

The Syrian official said Hezbollah’s representatives had not given a direct answer on the request to halt arms smuggling and dismantle its Syria-based cells, but did pledge not to interfere in Syria’s affairs.

The Lebanese source, who has direct knowledge of the reported meeting and its outcomes, said the two sides "made a lot of progress on security issues".

"Hezbollah wants to protect its flank," the source said, referring to concerns about a Syrian attack on the group within Lebanon.

Both the Syrian official and the Lebanese source said no final agreement had been reached and that no announcement had been planned.

The Lebanese source told Reuters that contact between the two parties via Turkey had begun about two months ago. Reuters could not confirm where in Turkey the September meeting was held, how long it lasted or whether other meetings had been held before or since.

Turkey pushed for meeting, Iran absent

Both Hezbollah and Syria’s government had previously signalled they would be open to speaking to one another.

In July, Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani said Damascus was open to meeting the group. A month later, Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem said in a televised address that the group had no objection to meeting Syria’s leadership.

Both Lebanon and Syria have territories occupied by Israel, and face near-daily strikes by the Israeli army.

Ankara portrays itself as a key regional stakeholder in rebuilding and stabilising Syria. Under President Tayyip Erdogan, it has also sought to position itself as a facilitator of regional dialogue and is keen to boost stability in the region.

Three of the sources said it was Turkey, a key ally of Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, that pushed for the meeting as it was keen to be directly involved in those efforts.

Absent from the reported meeting, however, was Hezbollah’s main sponsor, Iran.

The Lebanese security source claimed that Hezbollah attended the meeting with Iran’s knowledge, but said Tehran was disappointed that it was not a direct participant and that Sharaa had rebuffed any notion of direct ties to Iran for now.

That disappointment was the main reason that no final agreement was reached and no announcement about the reported meeting was made, the source said.

(Reuters, The New Arab)