Top rebel leader Abu Mohammed Al Golani addresses a crowd at Ummayad Mosque in Damascus, following the Syrian rebels' announcement of President Bashar Al Assad's ousting on Sunday. — Reuters

After 13 years of civil war, Syria's opposition militias saw a chance to weaken President Bashar Al Assad's hold on power when, about six months ago, they shared their plans for a major offensive with Turkey and sensed its tacit approval, according to two sources familiar with the planning.

The operation, launched just two weeks prior, swiftly achieved its initial objective—capturing Syria's second city, Aleppo—surprising nearly everyone. Within a week, the rebel alliance advanced to Damascus, ending the Assad family's five-decade rule on Sunday.

The rapid advance was made possible by a fortuitous alignment of circumstances against Assad: his army was demoralized and exhausted; his main allies, Iran and Lebanon's Hezbollah, were weakened by conflict with Israel; and his other key military supporter, Russia, was distracted and losing interest.

The rebels could not proceed without first informing Turkey, a major supporter of the Syrian opposition since the war's inception, said the sources, a diplomat in the region and a member of the Syrian opposition. Turkey has troops in northwest Syria and supports some rebels, including the Syrian National Army (SNA), though it considers the main faction in the alliance, Hayat Tahrir Al Sham (HTS), a terror group.

The bold plan was conceived by HTS and its leader Ahmed Al Sharaa, better known as Abu Mohammed Al Golani, according to the diplomat. Golani, due to his former ties to Al Qaeda, is designated a terrorist by Washington, Europe, and Turkey. However, over the past decade, HTS, formerly known as the Nusra Front, has attempted to moderate its image while operating a quasi-state centered on Idlib, where it levied taxes on commercial activities and the population, experts say.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government, which struck a deal with Russia in 2020 to de-escalate fighting in northwestern Syria, has long opposed such a major rebel offensive, fearing it would result in a new wave of refugees crossing its border. However, the rebels sensed a hardening of Ankara's stance towards Assad earlier this year, the sources said, after he rejected Erdogan's repeated attempts to advance a political solution to the military stalemate, which has left Syria divided between the regime and a patchwork of rebel groups with various foreign backers.

The Syrian opposition source said the rebels had shown Turkey details of the planning after Ankara's attempts to engage Assad failed. The message was: "That other path hasn't worked for years—so try ours. You don't have to do anything, just don't intervene." Reuters was unable to determine the exact nature of the communications.

Hadi Al Bahra, head of the internationally-recognized Syrian opposition abroad, told Reuters last week that HTS and SNA had conducted "limited" planning together ahead of the operation and agreed to "achieve cooperation and not clash with each other." He added that Turkey's military observed what the armed groups were doing and discussing.

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, speaking in Doha on Sunday, said Erdogan’s recent efforts to reach out to Assad failed, and Turkey "knew something was coming." However, Turkey's deputy minister for foreign affairs, Nuh Yilmaz, told a conference on Middle Eastern affairs in Bahrain on Saturday that Ankara was not behind the offensive and did not provide its consent, expressing concern about instability.

Turkey's foreign and defense ministries did not directly respond to Reuters questions about an HTS-Ankara understanding regarding the Aleppo operation. In response to questions about Turkey's awareness of battlefield preparations, a Turkish official told Reuters that the HTS "does not receive orders or direction from us (and) does not coordinate its operations with us either." The official said that "in that sense" it would not be correct to say that the operation in Aleppo was carried out with Turkey's approval or green light. Turkish intelligence agency MIT did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Reuters was unable to reach a representative for HTS.

The rebels struck when Assad was at his most vulnerable. Distracted by wars elsewhere, his military allies Russia, Iran, and Lebanon's Hezbollah failed to mobilize the decisive firepower that had supported him for years. Syria's weak armed forces were unable to resist. A regime source told Reuters that tanks and planes were left without fuel due to corruption and looting—illustrating how hollowed out the Syrian state had become.

Over the past two years, morale had severely eroded in the army, said the source, who requested anonymity due to fear of retribution. Aron Lund, a fellow at Century International, a Middle-East focused think-tank, said the HTS-led coalition was stronger and more coherent than any previous rebel force during the war, "and a lot of that is Abu Mohammed Al Golani’s doing." But, he said, the regime's weakness was the deciding factor.

"After they lost Aleppo like that, regime forces never recovered and the more the rebels advanced, the weaker Assad’s army got," he said. The pace of the rebel advances, with Hama captured on December 5 and Homs falling around Sunday as government forces lost Damascus, exceeded expectations.

"There was a window of opportunity but no one expected the regime to crumble this fast. Everyone expected some fight," said Bassam Al Kuwatli, president of the Syrian Liberal Party, a small opposition group, who is based outside Syria. A US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that while Washington had been aware of Turkey’s overall support for the rebels, it was not informed of any tacit Turkish approval for the Aleppo offensive. The White House National Security Council did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Turkey's role.

US President-elect Donald Trump on Sunday said that Russia's abandonment of Assad led to his downfall, adding that Moscow never should have protected him in the first place and then lost interest due to a war in Ukraine that never should have started. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday noted his country's role in weakening Hezbollah, which sources told Reuters withdrew its remaining troops from Syria on Saturday.

Sources familiar with Hezbollah deployments said the Iran-backed group, which supported Assad early in the war, had already withdrawn many of its elite fighters from Syria over the last year to support the group as it waged hostilities with Israel—a conflict that spilled over from the Gaza war. Israel dealt Hezbollah heavy blows, particularly after launching an offensive in September, killing the group's leader Hassan Nasrallah and many of its commanders and fighters. The rebel offensive in Syria began the same day as a ceasefire came into effect in the Lebanon conflict on November 27. The sources familiar with Hezbollah said it did not want to engage in big battles in Syria as the group focused on starting a long road to recovery from the heavy blows.

For the rebel alliance, the withdrawal of Hezbollah presented a valuable opportunity. "We just wanted a fair fight between us and the regime," the Syrian opposition source said. Assad's fall marks a major blow to Iranian influence in the Middle East, coming so swiftly after the killing of Nasrallah and the damage done by Israel to Hezbollah.

Turkey, on the other hand, now appears to be Syria's most powerful external player, with troops on the ground and access to the rebel leaders. In addition to securing the return of Syrian refugees, Turkey's objectives include curbing the power of Syrian Kurdish groups that control wide areas of northeast Syria and are backed by the United States. Ankara deems them to be terrorists.

As part of the initial offensive, the Turkey-backed SNA seized swathes of territory, including the city of Tel Refaat, from US-backed Kurdish forces. On Sunday, a Turkish security source said the rebels entered the northern city of Manbij after pushing the Kurds back again. "Turkey is the biggest outside winner here. Erdogan turned out to be on the right—or at least winning—side of history here because his proxies in Syria won the day," said Birol Baskan, Turkey-based political scientist and former non-resident scholar at Middle East Institute.

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