Turkey, whose relations with Syria had been friendly over the previous decade, condemned its President Bashar Assad over the violent crackdown on protests in 2011 and requested his departure from office. Previously, after 1999 when Bashar Assad's father Hafez al-Assad expelled Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan, the relationship between Syria and Turkey warmed. In the beginning of the Syrian Civil War, Turkey trained defectors of the Syrian Army on its territory, and in July 2011, a group of them announced the birth of the Free Syrian Army, under the supervision of Turkish intelligence. In October 2011, Turkey began sheltering the Free Syrian Army, offering the group a safe zone and a base of operations. Together with Saudi Arabia and Qatar, Turkey has also provided the rebels with arms and ot