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Donald Trump said on Monday that he believed Turkey was behind the rebel group that toppled Syria’s dictator Bashar al-Assad, claiming Ankara had mounted an “unfriendly takeover” of its neighbour.

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was “a smart guy and he’s very tough”, the US president-elect said at a news conference in Florida, and had made Ankara the most important foreign actor in Syria since Assad’s fall.

“They wanted it for thousands of years, and he got it. Those people who went in are controlled by Turkey,” Trump said. “Turkey did an unfriendly takeover without a lot of lives being lost.”

The president-elect’s comments came as the US carried out air strikes against Isis fighters in Syria, and just days after secretary of state Antony Blinken said Washington was in contact with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the Islamist group that led a lightning blitz on Damascus earlier this month, forcing Assad to flee the country.

Foreign policy analysts said Trump — who will replace Joe Biden as US president next month — was sending a message to Erdoğan, with whom he has enjoyed a turbulent relationship.

“Trump has issued a warning of sorts to the new rulers of Syria and their patrons, which is ‘rule carefully, because we are watching’,” said Jonathan Schanzer, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think-tank.

Turkey’s relations with HTS have been complex. It has not directly backed the group but has supported others that co-ordinated with HTS in its lightning offensive.

“I think Turkey is going to hold the key to Syria,” Trump said.

Trump’s comments about Erdoğan reflected the US president-elect’s tendency to keep world leaders on their toes, a foreign policy expert said.

Erdoğan might have thought Trump would be an “ace in the hole”, said Jon Alterman, at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think-tank. But the Turkish leader would be “not sure exactly where he sits” following Trump’s comments, giving the US’s incoming leader leverage.

Trump and Erdoğan fused personal camaraderie and geopolitical friction during the US leader’s first term as president. Tensions escalated over Turkey’s purchase from Russia of the S-400 missile defence system, which ended in Turkey’s ejection from the US’s F-35 fighter jet programme. Ankara’s detention of American pastor Andrew Brunson in 2016 prompted Trump to blacklist Erdoğan advisers and threaten punitive economic sanctions.

Brunson’s release thawed relations between the leaders. Turkey later capitalised on Trump’s 2019 decision to withdraw US forces from northern Syria, leaving Kurdish forces exposed to Turkish military action.

Ties between Washington and Ankara have improved more recently, according to Turkish officials and western diplomats, despite some tension triggered by Erdoğan’s criticism of Israel over its Gaza offensive.

Turkey also eventually backed Sweden’s accession to Nato earlier this year, after which Washington approved Ankara’s purchase off American F-16 fighter jets. American officials have also hailed Turkey’s role in a prisoner exchange between the US and Russia this year and Ankara’s fight against terrorist groups, including Isis.

Turkey has, however, pushed back strongly against Washington’s support for the Syrian Democratic Forces, a Kurdish-led group that Ankara considers indistinguishable from separatists that have battled the Turkish state.

Washington sees the SDF as a crucial partner in keeping Isis from significantly reconstituting in Syria in the political vacuum following Assad’s fall.

The US has been carrying out air strikes in Syria against Isis, including on Monday when US Central Command said strikes killed 12 fighters operating in former regime- and Russian-controlled areas.

Additional reporting by Andrew England in London and Adam Samson in New York

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The alleged Chinese spy linked to Prince Andrew has been publicly named as Yang Tengbo after a judge lifted an anonymity order protecting his identity on Monday.

The 50-year-old Chinese national, who is also known by the Anglicised alias Chris Yang, has been banned from entering Britain on national security grounds since March 2023.

Yang had challenged that decision by the Home Office, an appeal that was rejected last week by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission.

He had developed business links to Prince Andrew and access to a network of other senior British political and business figures, primarily through his company Hampton Group International, which said it focused on “investing in, consulting on and enabling opportunities between China, the UK and the rest of the world”.

The commission’s ruling found that Yang “had been in a position to generate relationships with prominent UK figures and senior Chinese officials that could be leveraged for political interference purposes by the CCP [Chinese Communist party] . . . or the Chinese State”.

Tengbo previously worked with UK drugmaker GSK to manage the fallout of a bribery scandal in China, according to people familiar with the matter. 

GSK did not comment.  

GSK was introduced to Tengbo by Ron Dennis, the former chief executive of McLaren, one of the people said. Neither Ron Dennis nor McLaren responded to a request for comment.

The anonymity order was reviewed during a hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice on Monday, ahead of MPs threatening to use parliamentary privilege to name the individual in the House of Commons.

Yang, previously known only as H6 in the court documents, has already been named on social media and some overseas news sites.

This is a developing story

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Today’s top stories

There is renewed hope for a ceasefire deal with Israel and Hamas, which have been engulfed in war for 14 months. Senior Biden administration officials have been in the region pushing for the negotiations. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is back from his latest trip to the Middle East and says this is a moment to bring the conflict to an end.

• 🎧 There is optimism around a potential deal because Hamas has been degraded to the point it can’t carry out another attack like Oct. 7, NPR’s Michele Kelemen tells Up First. Hamas is now being more flexible. A source informed NPR that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to focus more on Iran, so he is more interested in a deal in Gaza. It would be a lengthy ceasefire deal: up to two months. Hamas would release some hostages in exchange for Palestinian detainees released from Israeli jails. This deal would just be a start, Kelemen says.

ABC News has agreed to pay $15 million toward President-elect Donald Trump’s future presidential library to settle a lawsuit over remarks by anchor George Stephanopoulos during an interview with Rep. Nancy Mace on This Week. The TV network is also posting a statement of regret. Trump sued for defamation after Stephanopoulos said that Trump was “found liable for rape,” which misstated verdicts in two of E. Jean Carroll’s lawsuits against him.

• 🎧 Trump was found liable for sexually assaulting Carroll, NPR’s David Folkenflik clarifies. After talking to six First Amendment media lawyers, Folkenflik says they agreed with his gut instinct that Stephanopoulos had a screw-up. The lawyers said they expected the network and Stephanopoulos to clarify the distinction promptly. They also said this should have been a pretty easy call to defend in court because what Stephanopoulos said was close to what the judge said, but the TV network is happy to be past this lawsuit. The settlement comes at a time when the incoming administration has suggested a strong intent to use the powers of government against the press.

Trump has signaled he wants to try to pull back a consumer tax credit for electric vehicles, which his incoming administration has declared wasteful spending. Drivers can currently get a tax credit worth up to $7,500 for buying or leasing an EV. This year alone, buyers claimed more than $2 billion in EV credits. Some shoppers are looking into whether they should act fast. NPR’s Camila Domonoske speaks with experts to look into what shoppers need to know about the EV tax credit’s uncertain future.

Behind the story

Sarah Abdel Hamid al-Aami is searching for her four brothers who were snatched on their way to work by government forces years ago on what she says were bogus accusations of terrorism.

Clare Harbage/NPR

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This essay was written by Morning Edition senior editor and reporter Arezou Rezvani. Rezvani and a team from
Morning Edition are on the ground in Syria, covering the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

For decades, Syrians have lived in a constant state of fear and paranoia. For 54 years, under the rule of dictator Bashar al-Assad and his father before him, there was no tolerance for criticizing the government. Those who did speak out often disappeared into Syria’s notorious prison system, known for soul-crushing torture and killings. The oppression took an even darker turn in 2011 after Assad’s regime crushed pro-democracy protests and clamped down on any association with emerging opposition groups. During the ensuing 13-year civil war, friends, neighbors and colleagues would avoid political discussions. Even in the privacy of their own homes, Syrians remained tight-lipped. Parents withheld their true feelings from their own children for fear they’d say something at school, where they were closely monitored by teachers and staff who would report on families if they sensed any hints of disloyalty at home. It was commonly said that in Syria, “the walls have ears.”

With Bashar al-Assad now gone, Syrians are slowly starting to come out and share their secrets. Long-time friends are revealing details about their lives they had long kept under wraps, like their imprisonments, the rebel-held cities their families are originally from, their religions, political leanings, dreams, aspirations, unfiltered thoughts and ideas. After so many decades of repression, many Syrians say this newfound freedom to speak doesn’t come naturally, that it’s almost like they need to be deprogrammed.

Lurking underneath the thrill of the moment is a great deal of anxiety. There are still a lot of questions about the rebel groups that toppled Assad. Will they accept criticism? Will they hold free and fair elections? Will all religious and minority groups be protected? Have they really abandoned all links with al-Qaeda and the Islamic State? Syrians are celebrating the end of Assad rule, but they’re holding their breath for what’s to come.

Life advice

A father teaches his child to swim in a pond in Sylhet, Bangladesh. Drowning is a leading causes of death globally for children, according to the first ever report on drowning as a public health issue issued by the World Health Organization.

Md Rafayat Haque Khan/Eyepix Group/Future Publishing via Getty Images

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More than 300,000 people die from drowning each year. A new World Health Organization report found that nearly all cases are preventable. WHO gathered data from 139 countries for its first-ever report on how to prevent drowning. Children are the highest-risk group, with nearly a quarter of all drowning deaths happening among kids under age 4. The threat is evolving as climate change makes floods more frequent and severe. Caroline Lukaszyk, a technical officer for injury prevention at the WHO, share some findings with NPR.

• 🌊 A lot of the drowning burden is in Southeast Asia and Africa. There are bodies of water everywhere throughout the communities, and people need them for drinking, cooking, washing and bathing. But they pose a risk for unsupervised youth.
• 🌊 It’s good to have life jackets on board boats. There’s work being done to use local materials, such as empty two-liter plastic bottles, as flotation devices.
• 🌊 Swimming lessons that teach water safety and survival skills can be low-cost solutions.
• 🌊 Bystander training and safe rescue and resuscitation are also recommended. It can be key to teach CPR to older children and adults who could be around children playing in bodies of water.

3 things to know before you go

Caroline Davis said a stranger’s generosity reminder her of her dad.

Caroline David

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Caroline David

1. This past summer, Caroline Davis was working on a DIY project that required 1,500 pounds of gravel. As she loaded her car with 50-pound bags, a stranger stepped in and warned her of the damage it could cause to the vehicle. The unsung hero then helped her with the load. The interaction reminded her of her dad, who died in 2017.
2. Indian tabla player Zakir Hussain, whose career spanned over five decades, died yesterday at age 73. Hussain is revered as a national treasure.
3. Two men were arrested Saturday for allegedly flying a drone “dangerously close” to Logan International Airport, the Boston Police Department said. The arrests come as drones have been sighted across the East Coast.

This newsletter was edited by Suzanne Nuyen.