Emmanuel Macron flew into Damascus on Tuesday, the first French president to visit Syria in 18 years, and left with a stack of agreements and a reopened embassy. Explosions struck the capital while he was there and did not stop the visit, which marked France's fullest return to a country it had shunned for more than a decade.
Standing beside Syria's new president, Ahmad al-Sharaa, at the Presidential Palace, Macron heard his host call the trip "a historic milestone." The two governments agreed to exchange ambassadors after a 12-year gap. France had closed its Damascus embassy in March 2012, under Nicolas Sarkozy, over the Assad regime's crackdown on protesters.
The paperwork was broad. Syria and France signed a framework declaration on cooperation, put to paper by their foreign ministers, Asaad al-Shaibani and Jean-Noel Barrot, spanning transport, aviation, health, trade, banking and infrastructure. The French shipping group CMA CGM took a strategic partnership with Syria's ports and customs authority. There were agreements with the French Development Agency, a capacity-building memorandum for the Central Bank of Syria, plans to develop university hospitals, and a deal to return assets looted by Rifaat al-Assad, an uncle of the ousted president Bashar al-Assad.
The day was not calm. Explosions hit Damascus while Macron was in the city, and he said the visit would go on. The cause, and any claim of responsibility, were not established by evening.
The larger question the visit raises sits in Ankara. Since Bashar al-Assad's fall, Türkiye has been the outside power most invested in Syria's transition, backing al-Sharaa's government and lining up Turkish firms for the rebuild. France's arrival, with CMA CGM at the ports and Paris institutions financing the recovery, brings a heavyweight into the same reconstruction that Ankara has treated as its own near abroad. Whether the two capitals end up dividing that work or contesting it is the thread to watch.
For now the optics suited both men: a Western president lending legitimacy to Syria's new leadership, and a Syrian president collecting recognition and investment in a single afternoon. Türkiye had not publicly weighed in on France's return by Tuesday evening.