The two-day Istanbul meeting includes almost all opposition factions, while representatives from several Arab and Western countries were present as observers, along with a representative of international Syria envoy Kofi Annan, according to Al Jazeera.

The SNC has been widely criticized for not representing the full diversity of minority groups in Syria.

Last Sunday, the SNC appointed Kurdish activist Abdel Basset Sayda as its new leader after said Burhan Ghalioun, who stepped down last month as head of the main opposition group the Syrian National Council, amid mounting criticism having his presidency constantly renewed. Ghalioun had also been accused of ignoring the Local Coordination Committees, which spearhead anti-government protests on the ground in Syria, and of giving the Muslim Brotherhood too big a role.

Kurdish leader Sayda has pledged to embrace all groups to win a broader appeal.

“Our first aim is to create reform inside the [council] and reconstruct our structure [while] continuing our relations with the other groups in the opposition,” the council’s new leader, Kurdish activist Abdel Basset Sayda, told the Hurriyet Daily News in an interview on June 15, adding that all groups that wished to join the council would be welcomed.

Friday’s only major absentee was the National Coordination Committee for Democratic Change, a large group of Arabs, Kurds and socialists, who said “technical problems” prevented them from attending, other participants said, according to Hurriyet news. 

The meeting comes ahead of a planned major conference organized by opposition groups in Cairo under the auspices of the Arab League, although no date for that meeting has yet been announced.

In Turkey where the group is meeting, the number of registered Syrian refugees has topped 30,000, a Turkish foreign ministry official said on Friday, according to Al Arabiya.

UN officials have said Syria has now entered in a full-scale civil war, with activists saying more than 14,400 people have been killed since the uprising erupted in Mid-March 2011.

“Abdel Basset Sayda has been elected president of the Syrian National Council as successor to Dr. Burhan Ghalioun,” a brief statement on SNC’s official facebook page said.

He takes over from Paris-based academic Ghalioun, an exile living in Paris, who stepped down last month over mounting criticism for having had his presidency constantly renewed when the council was supposed to represent a democratic alternative to the rule of President Bashar al-Assad, Al Jazeera reported. Burhan Ghalioun,  had been president of the council since it was formed in August of last year.

SNC’s new president Sayda is another of those exiled academics, a philosophy professor who lived outside the country for some 18 years, more than a decade in Sweden.  Born in 1956 in Amuda, a mostly Kurdish city in northeastern Syria, Sayda is an expert in ancient civilizations and author of a number of books on Syria’s Kurdish minority but is Arabic educated, according to Reuters. 

The SNC has been repeatedly condemned for not representing the full diversity of Arabs, Kurds, Christians, Alawites, Sunni Muslims and other ethnic and religious groups in Syria.

A dozen Kurdish political groups are banned by Syrian authorities.

Opposition sources said the election of Sayda could help attract more Kurds, who number one million out of Syria’s 21 million population.

Demonstrations against Assad’s rule might have taken place in Kurdish regions of Syria but not as intense as protests in the rest of the country.

Violence erupted hours after reports emerged that army troops had shot dead an anti Syrian regime Sunni cleric when his convoy failed to stop at a checkpoint in north Lebanon on Sunday, AFP reported.

The incident which raised fears of a repeat of sectarian conflict in 2008,  took place following a week of clashes in the northern port city of Tripoli between Sunnis hostile to the Syrian regime and Alawites who support President Bashar al-Assad.

The uprising in Syria has resulted in a deep split between Lebanon’s political parties where the opposition backs those leading the revolt against Assad and accuse the Lebanese government of following orders of the Syrian regime while a ruling coalition led by the Shia Hezbollah supports the regime, Al Jazeera reported.

Last week, clashes sparked by the Syrian crisis killed at least eight people in the northern city of Tripoli.

The Syrian National Council in a statement issued two days ago has called on Lebanese authorities to abide by the Arab League and International sanctions imposed on the Syrian regime and to prevent the wire fraud and money laundering conducted by Syrian regime in collaboration with some of its allies in Lebanon.

Prime Minister Najib Mikati tried calm tensions by stating, “The government is determined to continue to shoulder its national responsibilities amid this critical period in Lebanon and the region, and it will take all measures necessary to preserve civil peace,” he said in a statement.

More than 12,000 people, the majority of them civilians, have died in Syria since an anti-regime revolt broke out in March last year, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

“I declare my resignation as soon as a replacement is found through elections or consensus,” Ghalioun announced in a statement released by the Syrian National Council’s official facebook page.

“The results of the presidential election of the Syrian National Council has created reactions and criticism . As I have repeadetly stressed, I have not chosen this post for personal gain, but I have been accepting it to preserve unity and I will not accept to be a cause for division,” he added.

Ghalioun, who has led the Syrian National Council by consensus rather than through election since it was founded in October 2011, was re-elected as the main opposition group’s chairperson in a vote held in Rome on Tuesday despite SNC rules that require the chairperson’s rotation every three months, Reuters reported.

Some  activists have criticised him for being out of touch with the opposition inside Syria and for failing to unify the SNC.

“For my part I will remain to serve the revolution, I work from my side as a member of the Council, hand to hand combat with young people, youth, freedom, dignity, revolution until victory.

Ghalioun’s announcement came shortly after the Local Coordination Committees, a network of activists on the ground in Syria, threatened to pull out of the SNC over its “monopolization” of power, Al Arabiya reported.

On the other hand, Syrian authorities have stated that they have withdrawn tanks from all cities.

The spokesman said Annan has reports that Syrian security forces might have killed people who had met with U.N. monitors, and that the international envoy will tell the Security Council that there is a need for “stronger presence” of monitors in Syria, Reuters reported.

“We have credible reports that when they leave, the gunfire starts again, that these people who approach the observers may be approached by the Syrian security forces or the Syrian army or even worse, perhaps killed and this is totally unacceptable,” Fawzi added.

Head of the Syrian National Council, Burhan Ghalyoun, has warned that “If violence persists, we might need to use force to protect civilians.”

At the same time, State TV reported that three people were wounded when the car bomb that went off in the Marjeh district in Damascus, blaming an “armed terrorist group”.

“An armed terrorist group detonated the car bomb near the Yelbugha complex in Marjeh, wounding three people and causing damage to nearby buildings,” it reported.

It also said the bomb was placed under the car of an unsuspecting man, who was among those injured.

The blast came as the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said violence across the country killed approximately on Monday, despite the ceasefire.

The announcement came after international mediator Kofi Annan said he would be expecting a response from the Syrian regime on proposals he presented in an effort to end the ongoing crisis in the country. 

“I am expecting to hear from Syrian authorities today since I left some concrete proposals for them to consider,” the United Nations-Arab League envoy had told reporters in Ankara after meeting with the Syrian opposition.

The talks held between Kofi Annan and Bashar al-Assad in Syria did not reach a conclusion. “The crisis in Syria has reached a turning point,” said opposition leader Burhan Galioun told Kofi Annan with whom he dicscussed in Turkey.

On Monday, Annan held talks with Turkish Prime Minister. After they admitted that the diplomatic process will take time, saying that the situation in Syria is “complex.”

At the same time, the Chinese envoy to Syria Zhang Ming said that there is “great concentration” between his country and Arab countries for a “political solution” to the crisis.

At the same time, a report that has caused international community’s reaction is Syrian Human Rights Watch report that the regime places landmines near its borders with Lebanon and Turkey, along routes used by refugees to flee the country.

The organization based in New York announced that it has received many reports about the existence of minefields by eyewitnesses and people who neutralize mines.

The official UN figures indicate that more than 8,000 people have lost their lives in the country since the beginning of anti-government demonstrations before about a year.

Meanwhile, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported that some 30,000 Syrians have fled to Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, while another 200,000 had been displaced inside the country, quoting Syrian Red Crescent data.