ISTANBUL  - Turkey is ready to provide military support to Syria’s new Islamist-led government set up by rebels who overthrew Bashar al-Assad if it requests it, Defence Minister Yasar Guler said on Sunday.  He said the new leadership should be given “a chance” and that Turkey was “ready to provide the necessary support if the new administration requests it”, in remarks to journalists reported by state news agency Anadolu and other Turkish media outlets. “It is necessary to see what the new administration will do. We think it is necessary to give them a chance,” Guler said of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham rebel alliance, which is rooted in Al-Qaeda’s Syria branch and designated a “terrorist” organisation by many Western governments.

But HTS has sought to moderate its rhetoric and its transitional government has insisted the rights of all Syrians would be protected along with the rule of law.  The new administration, Guler said, had pledged to “respect all government institutions, the UN and other international organisations” and promised to report any evidence of chemical weapons to the OPCW watchdog. A week after Assad’s fall, Syria faced with brutal legacy

A week after a lightning offensive toppled longtime leader Bashar al-Assad, Syrians are only beginning to scratch the surface of the atrocities committed under his rule, as the country’s new rulers seek to reassure the international community.

UN special envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen arrived in Damascus on Sunday, his spokesperson said, declining to give details of his agenda. Calm is slowly returning to the streets of the capital, with dozens of children streaming back to school on Sunday for the first time since Assad fled. “The school has asked us to send middle and upper pupils back to class,” said mother of three Raghida Ghosn, 56.

“The younger ones will go back in two days,” she told AFP. An official at one Damascus school said “no more than 30 percent” were back on Sunday, but that “these numbers will rise gradually”. Assad fled Syria last weekend following an 11-day rebel offensive led by the Islamist militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), bringing to a dramatic end more than 50 years of brutal Assad clan rule. His fall comes over 13 years into the civil war sparked by Assad’s violent crackdown on pro-democracy protests in 2011. The war has killed upwards of 500,000 people and displaced more than half the country’s population.

In the week since the rebels took Damascus, each day has seen more light shed on the depths of the despair visited upon Syria’s people over the past five decades.

Journalist Mohammed Darwish was one of those held in the so-called Palestine Branch, or Branch 235, a jail that was run by Syria’s feared intelligence services.

“I was one of those they interrogated the most,” Darwish told AFP as he returned to the prison years after his ordeal in 2018. He said he was questioned “every day, morning and night” for 120 days.