Turkey's Fm Meets With Syrian National Coalition Chief

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu met Friday with the new president of the Syrian National Coalition, Hadi al-Bahra, in Ankara.



The meeting was closed to the press after a photo and video opportunity.



The Syrian National Coalition – the Syrian opposition's umbrella group – elected Saudi Arabia-based opposition figure Hadi al-Bahra as its new president in July.



Bahra succeeds Ahmad Jarba, who was criticized for failing to unite the opposition and get significant Western military support for the effort to topple the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Jarba had led the coalition since July 2013.



Born in Damascus in 1959, Bahra is a businessman backed by Saudi Arabia, where he spent much of his adult life.



The Syrian National Coalition is a group of opposition factions fighting in the Syrian civil war. The group was founded in Doha, Qatar, in November, 2012, to set up an inclusive leadership for the opposition.



More than 200,000 people have died in Syria's civil war and half the population has been displaced.



ISIL has captured large swathes of land in Iraq and Syria, declaring what it calls a cross-border Islamic "caliphate," killing thousands of people and displacing millions in the two countries.



www.aa.com.tr/en - Ankara