Tag Archives: Turkey

Turkey says Obama shares Syria concerns with Erdogan, affirms support

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkey’s presidency said U.S. President Barack Obama had shared his concerns over the Syrian conflict and promised his support on Friday, hours after a tense exchange between the two NATO allies over the role of Kurdish militants.

In a phone conversation that lasted one hour and twenty minutes, Ankara said Obama had told his counterpart President Tayyip Erdogan that Turkey had a right to self defense, and expressed worries over advances by Syrian Kurdish militias near Turkey’s border.

Washington did not immediately comment on the call, beyond saying Obama has given his condolences over Wednesday’s bombing in the Turkish capital..

Earlier on Friday, Erdogan had said U.S.-supplied weapons had been used against civilians by a Syrian Kurdish militia group that Ankara blames for the deadly suicide bombing this week.

The State Department, which sees the Syrian Kurdish YPG fighters as useful allies against Islamic State, said the United States had “not provided any weapons of any kind” to the group.

The issue risks driving a wedge between the NATO allies at a critical point in Syria’s civil war, as the United States pursues intensive talks with Syria’s ally Russia to bring about a ‘cessation of hostilities’.

Turkey has blamed the YPG for the suicide car bomb attack two days ago that killed 28 people, most of them soldiers. But a Turkey-based Kurdish splinter group has claimed responsibility for the bombing and threatened more attacks.

Before the call with Obama, Erdogan said he was saddened by the West’s refusal to call the Syrian Kurdish militia terrorists, and would explain to the U.S. president how weapons provided by the United States had aided them.

“I will tell him, ‘Look at how and where those weapons you provided were fired’,” Erdogan told reporters in Istanbul.

“Months ago in my meeting with him I told him the U.S. was supplying weapons. Three plane loads arrived, half of them ended up in the hands of Daesh (Islamic State), and half of them in the hands of the PYD,” he said.

“Against whom were these weapons used? They were used against civilians there and caused their deaths.”

He appeared to be referring to a U.S. air drop of 28 bundles of military supplies in late 2014 meant for Iraqi Kurdish fighters near the Syrian city of Kobani. Pentagon officials said at the time one had fallen into the hands of Islamic State. The Pentagon later said it had targeted the missing bundle in an air strike and destroyed it.

The United States has said it does not consider the YPG a terrorist group. A spokesman for the State Department said on Thursday that Washington was not in a position to confirm or deny Turkey’s charge that the YPG was behind the Ankara bombing.

The spokesman also called on Turkey to stop its recent shelling of the YPG. The YPG’s political arm has denied the group was behind the Ankara attack and said Turkey was using it to justify an escalation in fighting in northern Syria.

“CONFLICTING AND CONFUSED”

The Turkish government has said the Ankara attack, in which a car laden with explosives was detonated next to military buses as they waited at traffic lights, was carried out by a YPG member from northern Syria working with Kurdish militants inside Turkey.

But the Kurdistan Freedom Hawks (TAK), a group that once had links to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), claimed responsibility for the bombing in a statement on its website. It said the bomber was a 26-year old Turkish national.

The claim of responsibility by TAK is unlikely to make a difference to Turkey’s demand that Washington stop its support of the Syrian Kurdish fighters.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu earlier accused the United States of making conflicting statements about the Syrian Kurdish militia.

He said U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry had told him the Kurdish insurgents could not be trusted, in what Cavusoglu said was a departure from Washington’s official position.

“My friend Kerry said the YPG cannot be trusted,” Cavusoglu said at a news conference during a visit to Tbilisi.

“When you look at some statements coming from America, conflicting and confused statements are still coming…. We were glad to hear from John Kerry yesterday that his views on the YPG have partly changed.”

Within hours of the Ankara attack, Turkish warplanes bombed bases in northern Iraq of the PKK, which has waged a three-decade insurgency against Turkey and which Davutoglu accused of collaborating in the car bombing.

Violence between Turkish security forces and the PKK has been at its worst since the 1990s after a 2-1/2-year ceasefire collapsed last July.

Two soldiers and a police officer were killed on Friday in a PKK attack in the Sur district of the southeastern city of Diyarbakir, parts of which have been under round-the-clock curfew since December, the armed forces said.

Three other soldiers were killed as a building collapsed in the same district.

(Additional reporting by Daren Butler, Asli Kandemir, Lesley Wroughton, Roberta Rampton and Doina Chiacu in Washington; Writing by Nick Tattersall, David Dolan and Dasha Afanasieva; Editing by Mark Trevelyan and Andrew Heavens)

Turkey blames Kurdish militants for Ankara bomb, vows reprisals

ANKARA/ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu blamed a Syrian Kurdish militia fighter working with Kurdish militants inside Turkey for a suicide car bombing that killed 28 people in the capital Ankara, and he vowed retaliation in both Syria and Iraq.

A car laden with explosives detonated next to military buses as they waited at traffic lights near Turkey’s armed forces’ headquarters, parliament and government buildings in the administrative heart of Ankara late on Wednesday.

Davutoglu said the attack was clear evidence that the YPG, a Syrian Kurdish militia that has been supported by the United States in the fight against Islamic State in northern Syria, was a terrorist organization and that Turkey, a NATO member, expected cooperation from its allies in combating the group.

Within hours, Turkish warplanes bombed bases in northern Iraq of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged a three-decade insurgency against the Turkish state and which Davutoglu accused of collaborating in the car bombing.

Turkey’s armed forces also shelled YPG positions in northern Syria on Thursday, a security source said. Davutoglu said the artillery fire would continue and promised that those responsible for the Ankara attack would “pay the price”.

“Yesterday’s attack was directly targeting Turkey and the perpetrator is the YPG and the divisive terrorist organization PKK. All necessary measures will be taken against them,” Davutoglu said in a televised speech.

President Tayyip Erdogan also said initial findings suggested the Syrian Kurdish militia and the PKK were behind the bombing and said that 14 people had been detained.

The political arm of the YPG, denied involvement in the bombing, while a senior member of the PKK said he did not know who was responsible.

The attack was the latest in a series of bombings in the past year mostly blamed on Islamic State militants.

Turkey is getting dragged ever deeper into the war in neighboring Syria and is trying to contain some of the fiercest violence in decades in its predominantly Kurdish southeast.

The YPG militia, regarded by Ankara as a hostile insurgent force deeply linked to the PKK, has taken advantage in recent weeks of a major Syrian army offensive around the northern city of Aleppo, backed by Russian air strikes, to seize ground from Syrian rebels near the Turkish border.

That has alarmed Turkey, which fears the advances will stoke Kurdish separatist ambitions at home. It has been bombarding YPG positions in an effort to stop them taking the town of Azaz, the last stronghold of Turkish-backed Syrian rebels north of Aleppo before the Turkish frontier.

Hundreds of Syrian rebels with weapons and vehicles have re-entered Syria from Turkey over the last week to reinforce insurgents fending off the Kurdish-led assault on Azaz, rebel sources said on Thursday.

TENSIONS WITH WASHINGTON

The co-leader of the YPG’s political wing denied that the affiliated YPG perpetrated the Ankara bombing and said Turkey was using the attack to justify an escalation in fighting in northern Syria.

“We are completely refuting that. …Davutoglu is preparing for something else because they are shelling us as you know for the past week,” Saleh Muslim told Reuters by telephone.

Washington’s support of the YPG – it views the group as a useful ally in the fight against Islamic State – has strained relations with Turkey. Both Erdogan and Davutoglu have called on the United States to cut ties with the insurgents.

State Department spokesman John Kirby said Washington was not in a position to either confirm or deny Turkey’s charge the YPG was behind the attack. He also called on Turkey to stop shelling the YPG.

Turkey has said its shelling of YPG positions is a response, within its rules of engagement, to hostile fire coming across the border into Turkey, something Saleh Muslim also denied.

“I can assure you not even one bullet is fired by the YPG into Turkey … They don’t consider Turkey an enemy,” he said.

The co-leader of the PKK umbrella group, Cemil Bayik, was quoted by the Firat news agency as saying he did not know who was responsible for the Ankara bombing. But the attack, he said, could be an answer to “massacres in Kurdistan”, referring to the Kurdish region spanning parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran.

Turkey has been battling PKK militants in its own southeast, where a 2-1/2 year ceasefire collapsed last July and pitched the region into its worst bloodshed since the 1990s. Six soldiers were killed and one wounded on Thursday when a remote-controlled handmade bomb hit their vehicle, the military said.

WARNING TO RUSSIA

Davutoglu named the suicide bomber as Salih Necar, born in 1992 and from the Hasakah region of northern Syria, and said he was a member of the YPG.

A senior security official said the alleged bomber had entered Turkey from Syria in July 2014, although he may have crossed the border illegally multiple times before that, and said he had had contact with the PKK and Syrian intelligence.

Davutoglu also accused the Syrian government of a hand in the Ankara bombing and warned Russia, whose air strikes in northern Syria have helped the YPG to advance, against using the Kurdish militant group against Turkey.

“I’d like to warn Russia, which is giving air support to the YPG in its advance on Azaz, not to use this terrorist group against the innocent people of Syria and Turkey,” he said.

“Russia condemned yesterday’s attack, but it is not enough. All those who intend to use terrorist organizations as proxies should know that this game of terror will turn around like a boomerang and hit them first.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told a teleconference with reporters that the Kremlin condemned the bombing “in the strongest possible terms”.

(Additional reporting by Seyhmus Cakan in Diyarbakir, Daren Butler and Ece Toksabay in Istanbul, Orhan Coskun in Ankara, Dmitry Solovyov in Moscow and Lesley Wroughton in Washington; Writing by Nick Tattersall; Editing by Mark Heinrich, Andrew Heavens and Andrew Hay)

Car bomb attack on military in Turkish capital kills 28

ANKARA (Reuters) – Twenty-eight people were killed and dozens wounded in Turkey’s capital Ankara on Wednesday when a car laden with explosives detonated next to military buses near the armed forces’ headquarters, parliament and other government buildings.

The Turkish military condemned what it described as a terrorist attack on the buses as they waited at traffic lights in the administrative heart of the NATO member’s capital.

The attack, the latest in a series of bombings in the past year mostly blamed on Islamic State, comes as Turkey gets dragged ever deeper into the war in neighboring Syria and tries to contain some of the fiercest violence in decades in its predominantly Kurdish southeast.

President Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey’s determination to fight those behind such acts would only get stronger and that it would not hesitate to exercise its right to self defense.

“We will continue our fight against the pawns that carry out such attacks, which know no moral or humanitarian bounds, and the forces behind them with more determination every day,” he said in a written statement.

Deputy Prime Minister and government spokesman Numan Kurtulmus said 28 people including soldiers and civilians were killed and 61 wounded in the blast, which occurred near a busy intersection less than 500 meters from parliament during the evening rush hour.

Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag described the attack as an act of terrorism and told parliament, which was in session at the time, that the car had exploded on a part of the street lined on both sides by military vehicles.

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who had been due to attend meetings in Brussels on the migration crisis on Thursday, canceled the trip, an official in his office said. Erdogan postponed a planned visit to Azerbaijan.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bombing.

A senior security source said initial signs indicated that Kurdish militants from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) were responsible. Separate security sources in the southeast, however, said they believed Islamic State militants may have been behind it.

“I heard a huge explosion. There was smoke and a really strong smell even though we were blocks away,” a Reuters witness said. “We could immediately hear ambulance and police car sirens rushing to the scene.”

RUSH HOUR

A health ministry official said the authorities were still trying to determine the number of dead and wounded, who had been taken to several hospitals in the area. Ankara police said they were examining CCTV footage of the car used in the attack.

Images on social media showed the charred wreckage of at least two buses and a car. The explosion, which came shortly after 6:30 pm, sent a large plume of smoke above central Ankara.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg condemned the attack. “NATO allies stand shoulder to shoulder in the fight against terrorism,” he said in a statement.

Turkey faces multiple security threats. It is part of a U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State in neighboring Syria and Iraq, and has been shelling Kurdish militia fighters in northern Syria in recent days.

It has also been battling PKK militants in its own southeast where a 2-1/2 year ceasefire collapsed last July, plunging the region into its worst violence since the 1990s.

The PKK, which has fought a three-decade insurgency for Kurdish autonomy, has frequently attacked military targets in the past, although it has largely focused its campaign on the mainly Kurdish southeast.

More than 100 people died in Ankara last October in an attack blamed on Islamic State, when two suicide bombers struck a rally of pro-Kurdish and labor activists outside the capital’s main train station.

A suicide bombing in the historic heart of Istanbul in January, also blamed on Islamic State, killed 10 German tourists, while a bomber killed more than 30 people in the town of Suruc near the Syrian border last July.

(Reporting by Turkey newsrooms in ANKARA and ISTANBUL; Writing by Nick Tattersall and David Dolan; Editing by Giles Elgood and John Stonestreet)

Kurds’ advance in Syria divides U.S. and Turkey as Russia bombs

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – The rapid advance of U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters in northern Syria, taking advantage of Russian air strikes to seize territory near the Turkish border, has infuriated Ankara and threatened to drive a wedge between NATO allies.

Washington has long seen the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its YPG military wing as its best chance in the battle against Islamic State in Syria – to the chagrin of fellow NATO member Turkey, which sees the group as terrorists and fears it will stir up greater unrest among its own Kurdish minority.

Russian bombing has transformed the five-year-old Syrian civil war in recent weeks, turning the momentum decisively in favor of Moscow’s ally President Bashar al-Assad.

The Syrian army has come within 15 miles of the Turkish border and says it aims to seal it off altogether, closing the main lifeline into rebel territory for years and recapturing Aleppo, Syria’s largest city before the war.

Meanwhile, the YPG has exploited the situation, seizing ground from other Syrian opposition groups in the area.

Washington says it does not believe the Kurds are coordinating directly with Moscow. But the YPG’s advance may represent a masterstroke by Russia, which could benefit from any discord between NATO allies Turkey and the United States.

“Now this is the YPG’s dilemma: Will it continue with America or Russia? The consequences of this strategic choice will influence Syria’s future, as well as the ongoing clashes in Turkey,” said Metin Gurcan, an independent security analyst and retired Turkish military officer.

Turkey has shelled YPG positions inside Syria for four straight days. Ankara sees the militia as an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has fought a three-decade insurgency for autonomy in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish southeast.

Turkey also portrays the Kurds as a pawn of Russia. Relations between the former Cold War rivals hit a low last year after Turkey shot down a Russian warplane over Syria.

Turkey now accuses Russia of deliberately targeting civilians in Syria, including hospitals struck this week, in what it calls a “war crime” to depopulate territory ahead of a government advance. Moscow denies this and accuses Turkey of covertly supporting Syrian jihadist militant groups.

The United States, which has supported the Kurdish fighters elsewhere in battle against Islamic State, has called for the YPG to stop actions that would heighten friction in northern Syria. It has also urged Ankara to stop shelling YPG positions.

Washington has seen no evidence that the YPG are cooperating with the Russians, U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner said at a briefing this week.

DECADES OF REPRESSION

Some 30 million Kurds are estimated to live in Iran, Turkey, Iraq and in Syria. Syria’s Kurds are the largest ethnic minority and suffered decades of repression under President Bashar al-Assad and his father before him.

Under the Damascus regime, Kurds were forbidden from learning their own language, frequently evicted from their land and even denied full citizenship. Their region is home to a chunk of Syria’s estimated 2.5 billion barrels of crude oil reserves, but Kurds enjoyed little benefit.

Now, Kurds have started to carve out a fiefdom in the north of fragmenting Syria, similar to the autonomy enjoyed by their kin in northern Iraq.

“Russia is using this instrument to put Turkey in a difficult position,” Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said this week, vowing to prevent the YPG from expanding its territory.

In the early stages of Syria’s civil war, there were signs Turkey was willing to work with the PYD and other Kurdish groups if they met three demands: remain resolutely opposed to Assad, vow not to seek autonomy through violence or before the wider conflict was resolved, and pose no threat to Turkey.

“We have no problem with their aspirations … What we do not want from any group is that they use this situation opportunistically to impose their will by force,” a senior Turkish government official told Reuters in August 2013, days after PYD co-chair Saleh Muslim was invited to Istanbul for talks.

RELATIONS SOUR

But relations soon deteriorated, reaching a nadir in late 2014, when Islamic State fighters besieged the predominantly Kurdish town of Kobani on the Turkish border for four months as Turkish tanks looked on from surrounding hills.

Turkey allowed Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga forces through its territory to help defend the town, but its failure to intervene directly in support of the YPG, even as a U.S.-led coalition carried out air strikes against Islamic State, infuriated Kurds in both Syria and Turkey.

That added to pressure on the Turkish government’s relationship with its own Kurds. PKK attacks on Turkish security forces last year helped put an end to a more than two-year ceasefire between the government and the insurgents, and the once-dormant conflict within Turkey has since stayed hot.

Wary of an escalation, Washington has urged all parties to focus on the “common threat” of Islamic State, calling on Turkey to cease cross-border artillery fire and on the YPG not to seize new territory from groups that Turkey supports.

Turkey has repeatedly criticized the United States for its position, saying that Washington should deem the Syrian Kurds terrorists, as it does with the PKK, and halt support.

The Syrian Kurdish militia has not explained the aim of its latest advance but a source told Reuters on Jan. 28 it planned to seize the stretch of border held by Islamic State east of Azaz – the only part of the frontier still in the hands of the jihadist group.

But the YPG’s advance into territory held by other rebel groups looks likely to continue for now, causing headaches for Washington as it tries to manage its strategic relationship with Turkey and check Russia’s influence in the region.

“The YPG is pushing as far as it can.… (Its) focus right now is making the most of its momentum,” said Gurcan, the analyst. “This has put the U.S. in a very bad position.”

(Additional reporting by Ayla Jean Yackley and Humeyra Pamuk in Istanbul; Warren Strobel in Washington; Tom Perry in Beirut and Suleiman Al-Khalidi in Amman; writing by Daren Butler; editing by David Dolan, Nick Tattersall and Peter Graff)

EU ‘silent’ on migrant rights abuses in Turkey, rapporteur says

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Anxiety about refugees streaming to its shores has led the European Union to turn an apparent blind eye to rights abuses in Turkey, whose help the EU needs to reduce the migrant influx, the European Parliament’s rapporteur on Turkey said on Tuesday.

The number of Syrian war refugees in neighboring Turkey has swelled to 2.6 million and the EU has promised Ankara 3 billion euros to help it cope with them in the hope this will dissuade many from making onward journeys to Europe.

EU officials have also voiced renewed support for Turkey’s long-held aspiration of joining the 28-nation bloc if it does more to stem the outflow of migrants to Europe.

The European Parliament’s rapporteur on Turkey said the delay of a European Commission progress report on Ankara’s EU qualifications until after the November 2015 election, won by the party that backs President Tayyip Erdogan, suggested the bloc was staying “silent” in the face of a deteriorating rights record in Turkey.

Turkish security-force operations against Kurdish militants in southeast Turkey since July have killed at least 160 civilians, according to rights groups. Journalists and academics critical of the government’s policies have been detained.

“The (EU) accession process … should be connected to democratic reforms or rule of law or what’s happening with the Kurdish question,” rapporteur Kati Piri told Reuters. “The European Union gave a pretty bad signal by connecting it so directly to migration.”

Ankara’s peace talks with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) collapsed in July, ending a ceasefire. Some 400,000 people have been displaced since the conflict reignited, Piri said in the telephone interview.

“If the EU does not engage actively in calling for an immediate ceasefire and the peace process to be resumed, we could face another refugee inflow, and this time it will be coming from Turkey,” she told reporters in Brussels, presenting the draft report that will be voted on by European lawmakers.

STEPS TO CURB FLOW

More than 1 million migrants reached Europe via illegal routes in 2015, and another million will seek to do so in 2016, according to the International Organization for Migration and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

Turkey has yet to receive any of the 3 billion euros of EU aid, but Piri said the government had boosted efforts to stop refugees, including blocking Syrians coming from Jordan and Lebanon and breaking up people-smuggling rings.

But it will have to lift its geographical limitation on accepting refugees in order to meet EU criteria, she said.

Turkey only considers those fleeing Europe to be refugees, although there has been no such migration for decades, and gives those from other regions only limited rights to live and work.

“This will be a very important point in the coming months. It is one of the conditions Turkey needs to fulfill for visa liberalization with the EU. This could be a huge step forward for improving the lives of asylum seekers in Turkey,” said Piri.

Turkey opened membership talks with the EU in 2005 but the slow pace of reforms there, a dispute over the divided island of Cyprus and worries in Europe about taking in a country with a large Muslim population has stalled its accession bid.

(Additional reporting by Francesco Guarascio in Brussels; Editing by Nick Tattersall and Mark Heinrich)

Turkey seeks allies’ support for ground operation as Syria war nears border

ANKARA/ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkey, Saudi Arabia and some European allies want ground troops deployed in Syria as a Russian-backed government advance nears NATO’s southeastern border, Turkey’s foreign minister said, but Washington has so far ruled out a major offensive.

Syrian government forces made fresh advances on Tuesday, as did Kurdish militia, both at the expense of rebels whose positions have been collapsing in recent weeks under the Russian-backed onslaught.

The offensive, supported by Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias as well as Russian air strikes, has brought the Syrian army to within 25 km (15 miles) of Turkey’s frontier, while Kurdish fighters, regarded by Ankara as hostile insurgents, have extended their presence along the border.

The advances have increased the risk of a military confrontation between Russia and Turkey. Turkish artillery returned fire into Syria for a fourth straight day on Tuesday, targeting the Kurdish YPG militia which Ankara says is being backed by Moscow.

“Some countries like us, Saudi Arabia and some other Western European countries have said that a ground operation is necessary,” Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told Reuters in an interview.

However, this kind of action could not be left to regional powers alone. “To expect this only from Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar is neither right nor realistic. If such an operation is to take place, it has to be carried out jointly, like the (coalition) air strikes,” he said.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said the “brutal operation” by Russian and Syrian forces was aimed at forging a YPG corridor along Turkey’s border, something Ankara has long feared would fuel Kurdish separatist ambition on its own soil.

Turkey accused Russia on Monday of an “obvious war crime” after missile attacks in northern Syria killed scores of people, and warned the YPG it would face the “harshest reaction” if it tried to capture a town near the Turkish border.

Russian air support for the Syrian government offensive has transformed the balance of power in the five-year-old war in the past three weeks.

World powers meeting in Munich last week agreed to a pause in the fighting, but that is not set to begin until the end of this week and was not signed by the warring Syrian parties.

The U.N. Syria envoy, Staffan de Mistura, held talks with Syria’s foreign minister on Tuesday aimed at securing a cessation of hostilities and said Damascus had a duty to let the world body bring in humanitarian aid.

Damascus says its objectives are to recapture Aleppo, Syria’s biggest city before the war, and seal off the border with Turkey that has served as the main supply route into rebel-held territory for years.

Those would be the government’s biggest victories of the war so far and probably end rebel hopes of overthrowing President Bashar al-Assad by force, their objective since 2011 with the encouragement of the West, Arab states and Turkey.

SYRIAN MILITARY GAINS

Kurdish forces continued their push eastwards toward Islamic State-held territory northeast of Aleppo.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based group which monitors the war, said the Kurdish-backed Syria Democratic Forces (SDF) – of which the YPG is a part – took a village near the town of Marea. That is the last major settlement before territory held by the radical militants stretching into Iraq.

The Syrian army also made advances, with state media saying it had taken two villages north of Aleppo near the town of Tal Rifaat, which fell to the SDF on Monday. With the help of Russian air strikes it also advanced from the coastal city of Latakia, fighting to take the town of Kansaba.

With hundreds of thousands trapped in areas the government aims to seize, Turkey and others accuse Moscow of deliberately firing on civilian targets such as hospitals to force residents to flee and depopulate territory.

Almost 50 civilians were killed when missiles hit at least five medical facilities and two schools in rebel-held areas on Monday, according to the United Nations, which called the attacks a blatant violation of international law.

At least 14 were killed in the northern town of Azaz, the last rebel stronghold before the border with Turkey north of Aleppo. Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said a Russian missile was responsible and vowed that Turkey would not let Azaz fall into YPG hands.

Russia’s foreign ministry said Turkey was using Azaz as a supply route for Islamic State and “other terrorist groups”, while the Kremlin strongly rejected Turkish accusations it had committed a war crime after the missile strikes.

“We categorically do not accept such statements, the more so as every time those making these statements are unable to prove their unfounded accusations in any way,” President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

“Our relations (with Turkey) are in a deep crisis. Russia regrets this. We are not the initiators of this.”

DOUBTS OVER GROUND TROOPS

The advances by the YPG risk creating friction between Turkey and its allies, including the United States.

Ankara sees the Syrian Kurdish militia as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) which has fought a three-decade insurgency for Kurdish autonomy in Turkey’s southeast. But the United States sees the YPG as one of the few effective ground forces fighting Islamic State militants in Syria, and has lent the group military support.

Washington has so far ruled out sending its own ground troops into Syria, apart from small numbers of special forces.

Sunni Arab Gulf states including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) said this month they were ready to send ground forces as part of an international coalition against Islamic State, providing Washington takes the lead.

But Turkey’s focus on the YPG means it cannot necessarily count on support from NATO, which, while reluctant to pressure Ankara in public, is working behind closed doors to discourage it from targeting the Kurds and escalating with Russia.

(Additional reporting by Lisa Barrington in Beirut, Darya Korsunskaya and Dmitry Solovyov in Moscow, Robin Emmott in Brussels, Noah Barkin in Berlin, Daren Butler in Istanbul, Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; writing by David Dolan and Nick Tattersall; editing by Peter Graff and David Stamp)

Turkey vows ‘harsh reaction’ as missiles hit Syria town

KIEV/BEIRUT (Reuters) – Turkey warned Kurdish militia fighters in northern Syria on Monday they would face the “harshest reaction” if they tried to capture a town near the Turkish border, and accused Russia of a missile attack there that killed at least 14 civilians.

An offensive supported by Russian bombing and Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias has brought the Syrian army to within 15 miles of Turkey’s border. The Kurdish YPG militia has exploited the situation, seizing ground from Syrian rebels to extend its presence along the frontier.

Almost 50 civilians were killed when missiles hit at least five medical facilities and two schools in rebel-held areas of Syria on Monday, according to the United Nations, which called the attacks a blatant violation of international laws.

At least 14 were killed in the town of Azaz, the last rebel stronghold before the border with Turkey, when missiles hit a children’s hospital and a school sheltering refugees, a medic and two residents said.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said a Russian missile had hit the buildings and that many civilians including children had been killed.

Turkey shelled YPG positions for a third day to try to stop its fighters seizing Azaz, just 5 miles from the border. Ankara fears the Kurdish militia, backed by Russia, are trying to secure the last stretch of around 60 miles along the Syrian border not already under its control.

“We will not allow Azaz to fall,” Davutoglu told reporters on his plane on the way to Ukraine.

YPG fighters would already have taken Azaz and Tal Rifaat further south had it not been for Turkish artillery firing at them over the weekend, he said.

“If they approach again they will see the harshest reaction,” he said.

The standoff has increased the risk of direct confrontation between Russia and NATO member Turkey.

The Syrian civil war, reshaped by Russia’s intervention last September, has gone into an even higher gear since the United Nations sought to revive peace talks. These were suspended earlier this month in Geneva before they got off the ground.

World powers agreed in Munich on Friday to a cessation of hostilities in Syria to allow humanitarian aid to be delivered, but the deal does not take effect until the end of this week and was not signed by any warring parties.

U.N ENVOY IN DAMASCUS

U.N. Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura made a surprise visit to Damascus on Monday and will hold talks with Syria’s foreign minister on Tuesday, a Syrian government official told Reuters. The talks will include discussion of the resumption of the Geneva peace talks later this month, the official said.

In a further clouding of the Munich deal, Assad said on Monday that any ceasefire did not mean each side had to stop using weapons, and that nobody was capable of securing the conditions for one within a week.

At a news conference in Kiev, Davutoglu doubted Russia’s commitment to any such deal to cease hostilities, pointing to comments from Moscow that it would continue its air strikes regardless.

Russia, Davutoglu said, had a clear objective: “They want to have just two options in front of the international community: Daesh or Assad,” he said, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State.

Turkey is enraged by the expansion of Kurdish influence in northern Syria, fearing it will encourage separatist ambitions among its own Kurds. It considers the YPG a terrorist group.

Davutoglu said Turkey would make the Menagh air base north of the city of Aleppo “unusable” if the YPG, which seized it over the weekend from Syrian insurgents, did not withdraw.

He warned the YPG not to move east of the Afrin region or west of the Euphrates River, long a “red line” for Ankara.

Turkish Defense Minister Ismet Yilmaz said Ankara was not considering sending troops to Syria, according to the state-run Anadolu Agency.

Syria’s rebels, some backed by the United States, Turkey and their allies, say the YPG is fighting with the Syrian military and its backers, including Russia, against them in the five-year-old civil war. The YPG denies this.

South of Azaz, the Kurdish-backed Syria Democratic Forces (SDF) alliance, of which the YPG is a member, took around 70 percent of the town of Tal Rifaat, according to the Syrian Observatory, which monitors the war.

HOSPITALS HIT

Tens of thousands have fled to Azaz from towns and villages where there is heavy fighting between the Syrian army and militias.

“We have been moving scores of screaming children from the hospital,” said medic Juma Rahal, following the missile strikes. At least two children were killed and ambulances ferried scores of injured people to Turkey for treatment, he said.

French charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) meanwhile said seven people were killed and at least eight staff were missing after missiles hit a hospital in the province of Idlib, west of Aleppo, in a separate incident.

“The author of the strike is clearly…either the government or Russia,” MSF president Mego Terzian said.

Russian Health Minister Veronika Skvortsova said Russian air strikes were targeting Islamic State infrastructure and she had no reason to believe that Russian planes had bombed civilian sites in Idlib.

“We are confident that (there is) no way could it be done by our defense forces. This contradicts our ideology,” she said in Geneva.

Syria’s ambassador to Russia meanwhile said U.S. war planes were responsible.

“Concerning the hospital which was destroyed, in actual fact it was destroyed by the American Air Force. The Russian Air Force has nothing to do it with,” Ambassador Riad Haddad told Rossiya 24 television.

Ankara views the YPG as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has fought a 31-year-old insurgency for autonomy in southeast Turkey. But Washington, which does not see the YPG as terrorists, supports the group in the fight against Islamic State in Syria.

That has left Turkey dangerously exposed, unable to count on the support of its NATO allies as it campaigns against the YPG, but also threatened by Islamic State fighters, as well as Syrian government forces and their backers including Russia.

Turkish financial markets were weaker on Monday on fears about the situation on the border, with the lira underperforming emerging markets currencies, its dollar bonds selling off heavily, and its default insurance costs rising.

(Additional reporting by Lisa Barrington in Beirut, Humeyra Pamuk in Istanbul, Tulay Karadeniz, Orhan Coskun and Ece Toksabay in Ankara, Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva, Jack Stubbs in Moscow; Writing by Nick Tattersall; Editing by David Dolan, Giles Elgood and Pravin Char)

Turkey president chastises U.S. over support for Syrian Kurds

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan upbraided the United States for its support of Syrian Kurdish rebels on Wednesday, saying Washington’s inability to grasp their true nature had turned the region into a “sea of blood”.

Turkey should respond by implementing its own solution, he said, alluding to the creation of a safe zone in northern Syria – something Ankara has long wanted but a proposal that has failed to resonate with the United States and other NATO allies.

His comments, a day after Turkey summoned the U.S. ambassador over its support for Syrian Kurds, displayed Ankara’s growing frustration with Washington, which backs Syrian Kurdish rebels against Islamic State militants in Syria’s civil war.

Compounding tensions, the army said that one Turkish soldier had been killed and another wounded when security forces clashed with Kurdish militants crossing over from Syria.

Ankara regards the Syrian Kurdish PYD group as terrorists, citing their links to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged a three-decade-old insurgency for autonomy in the mainly Kurdish southeast of Turkey.

“Are you on our side or the side of the terrorist PYD and PKK organization?” Erdogan said in a speech in Ankara to provincial officials, addressing the United States.

He added that a U.S. failure to understand the essence of the PYD and PKK had caused a “sea of blood” and created a domestic security issue for Turkey.

“On the Syrian problem, which has become a part of our own domestic security, the time has come to implement our proposals for a solution, which everyone finds to be rational and right,” Erdogan said.

Turkey has repeatedly called for a “safe zone” or “no-fly zone” inside Syria. While some Western allies have voiced support in principle, the idea has gained no traction abroad because of concerns that it could bring the West into direct confrontation with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces.

Ankara summoned the U.S. ambassador to drive home its displeasure after State Department spokesman John Kirby said on Monday the United States did not regard the PYD as a terrorist organization.

Another attempt at Syria peace talks last month quickly succumbed to mounting advances against rebels by Assad’s forces backed by Russian air strikes, amid international disunity over how to end the war with global and regional powers supporting opposing sides.

REFUGEE INFLUX

As well as battling both a Kurdish insurgency and Islamic State, which has carried out several deadly bombings in Turkey, Ankara has been grappling with an influx of more than 2.5 million refugees since the 2011 start of Syria’s conflict.

Erdogan said that Turkish spending on food, accommodation and medical care for 280,000 Syrian refugees living in camps had reached $10 billion, while the United Nations had provided just $455 million.

On Tuesday evening, Turkish soldiers spotted seven PKK militants entering Sirnak province’s Cizre district from Syria and, during an ensuing clash, one soldier was killed and one wounded, the armed forces said in a statement.

The area of Syria near where the battle occurred is controlled by the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD).

In a separate incident, a police officer was killed and another wounded when PKK rebels fired rockets at an armored vehicle in the town of Sirnak, state-run Anadolu Agency reported. It was not clear when that attack occurred.

Military sources said the army also seized up to 33 pounds of explosives and four suicide-bomber vests when it detained 34 people trying to cross into Turkey from a swathe of Syria under Islamic State control.

Turkey fears that advances by Syrian Kurds against Islamic State close to its 560-mile border with Syria will fuel separatist ambitions among its own Kurds.

A ceasefire between the PKK and the government collapsed in July following what the government said were attacks on security forces, plunging southeast Turkey into its worst violence since the 1990s and scuppering peace talks.

The PYD and PKK share not only ideology but fighters, with the PKK drawing Syrian Kurdish fighters to its camps in northern Iraq and Turkish Kurds serving in PYD ranks.

(Additional reporting by Tulay Karadeniz in Ankara, Ayla Jean Yackley and Asli Kandemir in Istanbul; Writing by David Dolan and Daren Butler; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Faced with new influx, Turkey’s open door for migrants may be closing

ONCUPINAR, Turkey (Reuters) – As the number of Syrian refugees now amassing on the Turkish border swells into the tens of thousands, Ankara’s long-standing open door to migrants may be closing.

An assault by Russian-backed Syrian government forces around the city of Aleppo has sent more than 30,000 people fleeing to the Turkish border gate of Oncupinar in the past few days, and officials say tens of thousands more could be on the move.

The surge has created a bitter irony for Turkey.

Praised on the one hand for taking in more than 2.5 million refugees from Syria’s five-year war, it is also under pressure to stop their perilous onward journeys to Europe, and to prevent radical militants from sneaking over what was long a porous border to carry out attacks in Turkey or abroad.

Yet as it tries to keep the gates shut at Oncupinar and provide aid across the border instead, it now finds itself facing calls to let people in.

“We have much wider considerations now … There are terrorist organizations that weren’t there when the Syrian conflict first began,” a senior government official who deals with immigration issues said, explaining how the situation on the border had changed in recent years.

A growing number of refugees just wanted to use Turkey as a staging post to Europe despite the dangers, he said, leaving Ankara with a responsibility to stop incidents like the drowning of a Syrian toddler last September as his family tried to reach the Greek islands, an image which stirred worldwide sympathy.

“Let everyone in and you may see another Aylan Kurdi.”

Turkish aid groups are delivering food and supplies to tent villages on the Syrian side of the border at Oncupinar and the local authorities say there is no need, for now, to open the gates. President Tayyip Erdogan has said that, if necessary, the refugees will ultimately be allowed in.

Ankara has long argued that the only sustainable way to manage the migrant flow is to establish a “safe zone” inside Syria, an internationally protected area where displaced civilians can be given refuge without crossing into Turkey.

The idea has gained little traction with Western leaders, who see battling Islamic State in Syria as the main priority and fear protecting such a zone would put them in direct military confrontation with President Bashar al-Assad’s forces.

But on a small scale, Turkey is putting it into practice at Oncupinar.

A wounded teenager and his father were let through by foot early on Monday, while a trickle of ambulances ferried the badly injured to hospitals in nearby Turkish towns. But for the majority, the border is firmly closed.

“Unless their lives are in danger, unless there’s an imminent risk, the arrangements on the Syrian side have the capacity to accommodate them,” the government official said.

WAITING TO ENTER TURKEY

In the camps at Bab al-Salama on the Syrian side, where children play in muddy lanes between rows of tents lashed by rain, some are starting to wonder whether they are still welcome in a country they once saw as a guaranteed safe haven.

“I have been here for the past month. I am waiting for Turkey to open the door,” said Dilel Cumali, a woman who fled from Dera’a in Syria’s southwest near the Jordanian border.

“There are no beds, no food, nothing to wear. We had to sleep where it’s wet and there’s nothing to cover ourselves with. There is nothing to feed the kids. We don’t want anything. All we want is to get inside Turkey.”

Under a November deal with the European Union, Turkey agreed to do more to integrate its refugee population – now the world’s largest – and try to lower the number of asylum seekers arriving in Europe after over a million streamed onto the continent in 2015, many by sea from Turkey.

At least 22 migrants drowned after their boat capsized in the Aegean sea off the Turkish coast on Monday, suggesting the exodus shows no sign of abating.

Asked on Saturday about the migrants at Oncupinar, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said Turkey had a moral and legal duty to protect refugees, adding EU support to Ankara was aimed at guaranteeing it could cope with them.

FRUSTRATION

Turkey, a NATO member with a 560-mile border with Syria, is increasingly frustrated at the international failure to do more to stop the bombing by President Bashar al-Assad’s forces and his allies including Russia, which it sees as the root cause of the migrant flows.

“Those who can’t say stop the bombardment are saying stop the immigration wave. If you’re serious, stop the authors of that cruelty,” said Deputy Prime Minister Yalcin Akdogan, a long-standing Erdogan advisor.

A suicide bombing in Istanbul last month which killed 10 German tourists, carried out by a Saudi-born Syrian who entered Turkey as a refugee, served only to highlight the risks.

Around Oncupinar, eight camps were set up on the Syrian side for some 60,000 people even before the latest influx, according to Oncupinar governor Suleyman Tapsiz. A ninth is being built.

“There is a perception that Turkey has shut its doors and is not doing anything. On the contrary, there are major efforts to accommodate these people on the Syrian side,” a second Turkish government official said.

“It’s not like we’re shutting our doors in their face.”

A flag of the opposition Free Syrian Army fluttered over the road that leads out from a camp at Bab al-Salama to the Syrian city of Azaz, one of the last towns between the Syrian army’s advance and the Turkish border. Opposition fighters holding Kalashnikovs milled around nearby.

“I fled Assad’s and Russia’s bombardment. Please tell them to open the doors so we can move to safety. We have no safety here,” said Sabah al-Muhammed, an elderly woman who said she had walked for 10 hours to reach the border.

Even amid the chaos of Syria’s war, the message that Europe’s borders were closed had reached her.

“I swear to god, we don’t want to go to Europe, we don’t want Europe. We are Muslim people and we want to live in a Muslim country,” she said.

(Writing by Nick Tattersall; Editing by David Dolan and Philippa Fletcher)

Russia and Turkey trade accusations over Syria

BEIRUT/MOSCOW/LONDON (Reuters) – Russia said on Thursday it suspected Turkey was preparing a military incursion into Syria, as a Syrian army source said Aleppo would soon be encircled by government forces with Russian air support.

Turkey in turn accused Moscow of trying to divert attention from its own “crimes” in Syria, and said Aleppo was threatened with a “siege of starvation”. It said Turkey had the right to take any measures to protect its security.

In another sign of the spreading international ramifications of the five-year-old Syrian war, Saudi Arabia said it was ready to participate in ground operations against Islamic State in Syria if the U.S.-led alliance decided to launch them.

The United Nations on Wednesday suspended the first peace talks in two years, halting an effort that seemed doomed from the start as the war raged unabated. Washington said on Thursday however it was hopeful they would resume by the end of the month, and Russia said it expected that no later than Feb. 25.

Donors convened in London to tackle the refugee crisis created by the conflict. British Prime Minister David Cameron said they raised $11 billion for Syrian humanitarian needs over the next four years.

Turkey said at the conference up to 70,000 refugees from Aleppo were moving toward the border to escape air strikes.

BORDER MARCH

Footage online showed hundreds of people, mostly women, children and the elderly, marching toward Turkey’s Onucpinar border gate, carrying carpets, blankets and food on their backs.

Four months of Russian air strikes have tipped the momentum of the war Assad’s way. With Moscow’s help and allies including Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Iranian fighters, the Syrian army is regaining areas on key fronts in the west.

Russia’s defense ministry said it had registered “a growing number of signs of hidden preparation of the Turkish Armed Forces for active actions on the territory of Syria”.

Any Turkish incursion would risk direct confrontation between Russia and a NATO member.

“The Russians are trying to hide their crimes in Syria,” said a senior official in Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu’s office.

“They are simply diverting attention from their attacks on civilians as a country already invading Syria. Turkey has all the rights to take any measures to protect its own security.”

In London, Davutoglu said the “humanitarian logistic corridor” between Turkey and Aleppo was “under the invasion of these foreign fighters and regime forces (with) the support of Russian warplanes”.

“What they want to do in Aleppo today is exactly what they did in Madaya before, a siege of starvation,” he added.

Davutoglu pledged that whatever the cost Turkey’s door would remain open to all Syrians. It has already taken in more than 2.5 million.

Relations between Russia and Turkey have deteriorated badly since Turkey shot down a Russian warplane near the Syrian border in November.

ALEPPO, STRATEGIC PRIZE

Aleppo, just 50 km (30 miles) south of the Turkish border, is a major strategic prize in the war and is currently divided into areas of government and opposition control. Many of the rebels fighting in and around the city have close ties to Turkey.

This week, three days of intensive Russian bombing helped the army and allied fighters to sever a major supply line to the northwest of the city, in the process reaching two Shi’ite towns loyal to the government for the first time in 3-1/2 years.

The army source said operations to fully encircle Aleppo from the west would be launched soon.

A senior, non-Syrian security source close to Damascus said Iranian fighters had played a crucial role.

“Qassem Soleimani is there in the same area,” said the source, referring to the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ elite Quds force responsible for overseas operations.

Residents thanked Assad, Iran and Hezbollah in celebratory scenes from the Shi’ite towns of Nubul and al-Zahraa broadcast by Hezbollah’s al-Manar TV.

The powerful Kurdish YPG militia, which controls wide areas of northern Syria, meanwhile added to the pressure on insurgents, capturing two villages near Nubul and al-Zahraa, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.

The Syrian Kurds have consistently denied opposition claims that they cooperate with Damascus.

All diplomatic efforts toward ending the conflict have failed. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said the latest steps in peace talks were undermined by increased aerial bombing. U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura announced a three-week pause.

“I think the special envoy decided to suspend the talks because the organization did not want to be associated with the Russian escalation in Syria, which risks undermining the talks completely,” a U.N. official told Reuters.

Mohammad Javad Zarif, foreign minister of Iran, called in London for the talks to resume and for an immediate ceasefire. But he said later that should not mean stopping military operations against “recognized terrorist organizations”, naming the Nusra Front and Islamic State.

REBELS HOPE FOR MORE WEAPONS

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov had agreed on the need to discuss how to implement a ceasefire in Syria during a call on Thursday.

Rebel commanders said they hoped the peace talks’ collapse would convince their foreign backers, including Saudi Arabia, that it was time to send them more powerful and advanced weapons, including anti-aircraft missiles.

Assad’s foreign opponents have been funneling weapons to vetted rebel groups via both Turkey and Jordan.

One rebel leader said he expected “something new, God willing” after the failure of the Geneva talks.

Another rebel commander said: “They are promising to continue the support. In what form, I don’t yet know … How it will crystallize, nobody knows … We need to wait.”

Both spoke on condition of anonymity.

While vetted “Free Syrian Army” rebels have received weapons including U.S.-made guided anti-tank missiles, their calls for anti-aircraft missiles have gone unanswered mostly because of fears they could end up in the hands of powerful jihadist groups such as the Nusra Front, which are also fighting Assad.

A Russian defense ministry spokesman said a Russian military trainer was killed in a mortar attack on Feb. 1.

“They (Russian military servicemen) are not taking part in ground operations,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. “We are talking about advisers. This is linked to teaching Syrian colleagues to operate equipment which is being delivered to Syria under existing contracts.”

A Saudi general said the kingdom was “ready to participate in any ground operations that the (U.S.-led) coalition (against Islamic State) may agree to carry out in Syria”.

Brigadier General Ahmed Asseri, who is also the spokesman for the Saudi-led Arab coalition fighting Iranian-backed forces in Yemen, was speaking to Saudi-owned al-Arabiya TV.

(Additional reporting by Istanbul, Washington and Dubai bureaux; editing by Andrew Roche)