Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, a heavy critic of the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria, told on Wednesday that Assad’s government had made a “terrorist state” in Syria when sounding frustration with an ongoing bloody campaign on civilians by the Syrian government.
“The regime in Syria has now become a terrorist state,” the prime minister told at an expanded assembling of his Justice and Development Party’s (AK Party) in Ankara that included deputies and founding members. “The slaughters in Syria that gain strength from the international community’s indifference keep to increase,” Erdoğan declared, adding that the number of refugees in Turkey who have fled violence in Syria is approaching 80,000.
“A great human tragedy is coming about in Syria. Turkey isn’t just another country for the Syrian people. No one can anticipate Turkey to remain indifferent to the sufferings of the Syrian people,” the prime minister went on to tell on the meeting.
Turkey started to welcome refugees fleeing the ferocity in Syria shortly after the Assad government began its bloody campaign against confrontation forces roughly 17 months ago. Ankara initially cultivated good relations with the Assad regime, but Erdoğan has become one of Assad’s harshest critics in the face of the Syrian government’s continued bloody campaign on civilians and confrontation forces.
Turkey, struggling to cope with an influx of tens of thousands of Syrian refugees, has repeatedly pushed for a foreign-protected safe zone inside Syria, but the proposition has acquired little international support.
The prime minister also told Turkey will carry on to arouse its voice against the Syrian regime and stand up for the people of Syria. “We’ll carry on to host our Syrian brothers within the bounds of our capabilities,” he told.
Turkey’s ties with the Syrian government degenerated further recently after Turkish state officials charged Assad and his government of providing arms to the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). In an earlier affirmation, Erdoğan aroused the possibility of military intervention in Syria if the PKK becomes a threat there. Assad has refused the claim that Syria lets PKK terrorists operate in Syrian territory.
Listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the European Union and the United States, the PKK has been executing a bloody war in Turkey’s Southeast since 1984. More than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict between the terrorist PKK and Turkish forces since the PKK established its fight with the aim of building a separate Kurdish state in the predominantly Kurdish region of the country.
Erdoğan also lashed out at the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) over its allegements that the Turkish government is covertly arming and training members of the Syrian opposition at a refugee camp placed in Turkey’s Hatay province, near the borderline with Syria. He told members of a parliamentary commission visited the camp, placed in the Apaydın village, on Tuesday, but that the CHP deputies in the commission didn’t go. “If you were sincere in this [criticism], why did your deputies in the parliamentary Human Rights Investigation Commission not go there? Why? Because they knew they could not show off there. … Sorry, Mr. [Kemal] Kılıçdaroğlu, you will not be allowed to show off there. Because these camps are not the place to show off. They are where [the state] provides service,” he added.
