Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has accused Syria of giving Kurdish rebels a free hand in its north and warned that Ankara would not hesitate to strike
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has accused Syria of giving Kurdish rebels a free hand in its north and warned that Ankara would not hesitate to strike.
"In the north, it (President Bashar al-Assad's regime) has allotte
d five provinces to the Kurds, to the terrorist organization," Erdogan said on Turkish television Wednesday, referring to the Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK).
He said the move was explicitly directed against Turkey and warned that "there will undoubtedly be a response on our part to this attitude", adding that rebels had put up posters of jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan in the area. Ocalan, one of the founders of the PKK, was jailed for life in 1999.
Asked if Ankara would strike fleeing rebels after an attack on Turkish soil, Erdogan said: "That's not even a matter of discussion, it is a given. That is the objective, that is what must be done." "That is what we have been doing and will continue to do in Iraq," he said. "If we occasionally launch air strikes against terrorist areas it's because of defense needs."
Erdogan told a news conference Thursday that creating a buffer zone on the border was one of the options. "This could one of the alternatives. A security zone, a buffer zone all these could be part of the alternatives," he said, without explaining how this would be implemented.
He said Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu would visit Arbil in northern Iraq next Wednesday to share Ankara's "sensitivity and determination" on the issue with the autonomous Kurdish administration.
