Erdoğan holds unscheduled meeting with Turkey’s top soldier

ISTANBUL

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan held an unscheduled meeting with Turkish Chief of General Staff Gen. Hulusi Akar in Istanbul on Nov. 12.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu and Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım also attended the meeting in Mabeyn Palace in Istanbul’s Beşiktaş district.

There was no official meeting with Akar and Yıldırım on Erdoğan’s agenda.

The meeting came after an official statement announcing a meeting between Erdoğan and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on Nov. 13 in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi in Russia for a fifth time this year, with the Syrian crisis high on the agenda of the talks.

A similar unscheduled meeting was held between Erdoğan and Akar before an operation into Syria’s Jarablus, which began on Aug. 24, 2016.

The Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) began its cross-border “Euphrates Shield” operation against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) with aerial strikes and ground forces backed by strikes from rocket launchers, howitzers and tanks.