This article is part of the August 2026 edition of the Syria Monthly Economic Digest. Click here to explore the full edition.
Key Developments: Syria’s economic relationship with Türkiye deepened across almost every sector in August, driven by a sequence of high-level visits. The Turkish energy and trade ministers each traveled to Syria, a deputy industry minister toured northern industrial zones, and a Turkish delegation of some 40 companies attended a bilateral business forum in Damascus timed to the opening of the 63rd Damascus International Fair. The engagement produced instruments covering hydrocarbons, mining, industrial-zone expansion and border infrastructure. Turkish customs data published during the month showed bilateral trade at a record USD 3.73 billion in 2025, but also that Syrian exports to Türkiye had fallen by nearly half over the same period.
These developments followed a presidential decree issued in the first week of the month that appointed a Türkiye-based businessman and founding officer of the Syrian–Turkish Business Council to head the state body responsible for licensing foreign investment. Indeed, on August 5, President al-Sharaa issued Decree No. 162 of 2026 naming Rawad Ramadan Director-General of the Syrian Investment Agency (SIA), replacing Talal al-Hilali, who had held the post since June 2025. Ramadan was described as a rising figure in Syrian business who has headed the Syrian Council for the Coordination of Joint Business Councils at the Ministry of Economy and Industry since January 2026 and previously served as deputy chairman of the Syrian–Turkish Business Council since its formal establishment in August 2025. Ramadan serves as executive board chairman of Isra Holding in Türkiye, a group active in real estate development, construction, energy, and investment funds. Notably, Syria’s Ministry of Economy and Industry has met with Isra Holding since June over the rehabilitation and expansion of Bab al-Hawa Industrial City, and the two signed the expansion agreement at the Damascus International Fair on August 26.
Before the Fair, Turkish Energy and Natural Resources Minister Alparslan Bayraktar traveled to Damascus on August 19, where President al-Sharaa received him at the People’s Palace, before signing several energy agreements with Syrian Energy Minister Mohammed al-Bashir. Bayraktar said state oil company TPAO and private Turkish firms were ready to conduct seismic surveys and exploration drilling on Syrian onshore and offshore blocks, with TPAO able to begin “immediately.” The visit also led to the signing of a phosphate-related memorandum of understanding (MoU), which the Turkish Ministry of Energy described as concluded between Turkish state mining company MTA International Company (MTAIC) and Syria’s general directorate for mineral resources. The Syrian Ministry of Energy characterized the instrument as a tripartite MoU in earth sciences and mining, and named MTA director-general Vedat Yanık and International Mining Company chief executive Nail Yıldırım as part of the delegation. Bayraktar said the MoU would extend to sulphuric and phosphoric acid production, rehabilitating the phosphate transport fleet, and building a railway linking the fields to a port.
In the electricity sector, Minister Bayraktar said commissioning the Birecik–Aleppo line announced in May would nearly triple Turkish electricity exports to between 800 and 900 MW, with the new infrastructure entering service “in the coming weeks”, while al-Bashir put the line’s entry into service at the end of September, delivering around 500 MW of additional electricity to Aleppo and its surroundings. Türkiye currently exports 281 MW and pipes 3.4 million cubic meters of gas per day through the Kilis line opened in August 2025, according to Bayraktar.
On the commercial side, Turkish Trade Minister Ömer Bolat inaugurated on August 14 a truck waiting terminal at Cilvegözü on the border with Bab al-Hawa alongside the head of the General Authority for Borders and Customs (GABC) Qutaiba Badawi, stating that bilateral trade grew 16 percent in the first seven months of 2026 after a 45 percent rise across 2025 to roughly USD 3.75 billion. Badawi said transit truck movements rose from about 3,500 in 2025 to more than 30,000 in the first seven months of 2026, and that six crossings are operational with Qamishli–Nusaybin under technical preparation. Speaking in Aleppo on August 27—his first visit to the city since 2004—Bolat put 2025 trade growth at 42 percent, said he had met Syrian ministers three times in a month, and reported a Syrian commitment to complete reopening of the Qamishli crossing by year-end. Türkiye’s trade ministry separately reported continuing expansion works at Cilvegözü (Bab al-Hawa on the Syrian side), Akçakale (Tal Abyad), Öncüpınar (Bab al-Salameh), Çobanbey (al-Rai), Karkamış (Jarablus) and Nusaybin (Qamishli).
In industry, a delegation from Türkiye’s Ministry of Industry and Technology, headed by deputy minister Oruç Baba İnan, entered Syria at the al-Rai crossing on August 19, where Deputy Minister of Economy and Industry Basel Abdul Hannan received it, and over the following day toured the al-Rai, al-Bab, Sheikh Najjar and Bab al-Hawa industrial cities before İnan met Economy and Industry Minister Nidal al-Shaar. At the Syrian–Turkish Businessmen Forum on August 26, attended by the 40-company Turkish delegation led by Bolat and Turkish Exporters Assembly chairman Mustafa Gültepe, Federation of Syrian Chambers of Commerce head Omar al-Ali announced work to raise trade to USD 10 billion. Newly-appointed SIA Director-General Rawad Ramadan addressed the same forum, telling participants that Syria needed broad investment across energy, infrastructure, real estate, tourism, agriculture and services. On the same day, the management of the Bab al-Hawa Industrial City and Isra Holding (Mr Ramadan’s company) signed an agreement for the expansion of Bab al-Hawa Industrial City with the aim of creating some 2,000 industrial investment opportunities.
In finance, Minister Bolat said further steps are expected on Turkish banks operating in Syria, following the Central Bank of Syria’s July 29 agreement to open an official account at the Central Bank of the Republic of Türkiye.
Why It Matters: In the reading circulating in Damascus, Talal al-Hilali had come to be seen as too closely aligned with the UAE, and both Ankara and Riyadh had grown uncomfortable with him; Rawad Ramadan’s elevation reads as a correction, placing at the head of the investment agency a figure whose commercial base is in Türkiye and whose institutional role since January has been coordinating Syria’s joint business councils. Notably, Ankara’s push arrived alongside the Saudi commitments covered in another entry of this month’s edition, and Ramadan’s appointment is one both capitals could welcome.
Yet, this appointment appears to carry an obvious conflict of interest, as hinted at in the Key Developments section. The SIA licenses foreign investment, and its new director-general chairs a Turkish holding company active in construction, real estate and energy; three weeks after his appointment, that company signed an industrial-zone expansion agreement with a state-managed entity at the Damascus International Fair, on a day when Ramadan himself addressed the accompanying business forum in his official capacity. As of publication, none of this has been publicly addressed, and no Syrian institution has published a conflict-of-interest framework that would govern the situation. For a state courting investors on the promise of predictable rules, leaving the question unanswered is a needless cost.
On the agreements and promises made in August, interconnection capacity, gas, phosphate processing, industrial-zone rehabilitation, and expanded crossings are all positive inputs that could raise what Syria can produce and move, rather than substituting for it. The Birecik–Aleppo line, if it enters service on the timetable al-Bashir gave, is the single largest addition to Syrian electricity supply in prospect. Yet the composition of trade is where the enthusiasm should stop.
Turkish Statistical Institute data show bilateral trade at a record USD 3.73 billion in 2025 and Syrian exports to Türkiye falling 46 percent over the same year, from USD 438 million to USD 235 million, reversing four consecutive years of gains. The export-to-import ratio widened from 5:1 to 15:1, and the partial 2026 figures point the same way. Syria is quickly losing ground as a supplier to its largest trading partner, and a USD 10 billion target reached on the present composition would mean roughly USD 9.4 billion of Turkish goods entering a market whose own producers are already struggling to compete against them.
Whether that is integration or displacement depends entirely on what crosses the border, and nothing announced in August distinguishes between the two, as Syrian industrialists have long been complaining of the current status quo. But the authorities in Damascus can still make that distinction through tariff structure, standards enforcement, and the sequencing of industrial-zone rehabilitation against import liberalization. Using such tools can be seen as protectionist and might run counter to the free-market philosophy adopted by the transitional government, yet it would ensure that the border crossings whose capacity is being expanded carry Syrian goods northward as well as Turkish goods south.
Overall, however, the expansion of Turkish economic weight in Syria is, on balance, good for the country: foreign direct investment, capital, inputs, and market access, from a neighbor with the industrial capacity to supply them. Still, as Turkish interest in Syria, both politically and commercially, grows, so does the Israeli–Turkish dispute being conducted on Syrian territory. On August 18, Israeli aircraft struck the Abu al-Duhur airbase in eastern Idlib, as Netanyahu’s office stated that Israel and Syria had agreed to a security status quo which Damascus was on the verge of breaching by allowing Turkish troops to deploy at the base, and that repeated Israeli warnings had been ignored. A Turkish official rejected the premise, saying no Turkish troops had been at the airbase.
Regardless of who wins the blame game, however, the costs of that exchange ultimately fall on Syria. The airbase is Syrian, the sovereignty violated is Syrian, and the reputational damage accrues to Syria rather than to either party to the dispute. The Syria Dispatch heard consistently from Turkish businesspeople in Ankara and Istanbul during August that the Israeli threat now features in their investment calculations, and that they consider themselves specifically exposed precisely because they are Turkish. That is the practical damage, and it lands on the same commercial relationship this entry has otherwise described as expanding.
Ankara and Tel Aviv have channels through which to manage their differences, and Syria’s reconstruction should not be the venue.
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