Turkey Embeds Intelligence Arm Inside Syria’s Security Services
In a story that reads like a spy novel, reporters Ahmad Qwaider and Jacob Wirtschafter reveal how Ankara and Damascus are quietly redrawing the security map of southern Syria. At a secretive August meeting in Quneitra, Syrian and Turkish officials signed off on a plan to create a new Interior Ministry “information branch” — staffed by Syrians but tailored to Turkish intelligence priorities. A former Free Syrian Army officer told The Media Line it is “Turkey planting a permanent flag inside Syria’s security services.”
The deal goes far beyond training exercises and logistics support. Turkey is embedding itself in the intelligence structures of Quneitra and As-Suwayda — provinces already battered by Israeli airstrikes, Druze protests, and humanitarian collapse. Residents describe rationed water, scarce medicine, and aid deliveries filtered through checkpoints that double as political loyalty tests. Into this mix comes a new layer of surveillance, with reports that recruits from southern villages are already being shipped to Turkey for training.
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For President Ahmed al-Sharaa, the pact offers fresh military capacity against Israeli strikes and Kurdish separatism. For Turkey, it’s a long game: shaping Syria’s institutions to ensure a strong centralized state aligned with Ankara and Moscow. Israel and the US see the move differently — a direct threat to their own regional strategies, particularly Washington’s $130 million bet on the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.
As Wirtschafter notes in his Istanbul reporting, the partnership could tip the balance of Syria’s future. But for southern Syrians trapped between checkpoints, air raids, and foreign powers, the calculus is cruelly simple: survival. Readers will want to follow the full report to grasp how these covert maneuvers may define the next phase of the conflict.
