Defected Assad confidant visiting Turkey
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Turkey says the brigadier general who defected from the Syrian regime is on a visit to Ankara.
A Foreign Ministry statement did not specify if Manaf Tlass had yet landed in Turkey but said Turkish officials were hosting him Thursday night for a special dinner during Ramadan, the Muslim holy fasting month.
Tlass was a commander in the powerful Republican Guard and a close friend of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}He is the most prominent person to defect from the Syrian regime as it has cracked down over the past 16 months on an increasingly armed opposition movement — a conflict that has left thousands dead and spiraled into civil war.
Tlass defected in early July and flew to Paris. He has also recently been in Saudi Arabia.