Turkish PM says ready to take measures inside Syria to protect Turkmen

Turkey will not hesitate to take required measures on Syrian soil to protect the Turkmen people, Prime Minister Ahmet Davuto?lu said, while noting that the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) is not active in the region.

Davuto?lu, speaking to reporters late on Nov. 22, recalled that he was engaged in constant contact with both Chief of General Staff Gen. Hulusi Akar and National Intelligence Organization (M?T) Undersecretary Hakan Fidan along the weekend concerning alleged Russian air raids on Turkmen villages near the Syrian-Turkish border.

"Our security forces have been instructed to retaliate to any development that would threaten Turkey's border security," Davuto?lu said.

"If there is an attack that would lead to an intense influx of refugees to Turkey, required measures would be taken both inside Syria and inside Turkey," he said. 

"Looking at background of these attacks; in a region where very clearly there is no element of DEASH [ISIL], where there is no terrorist element, first Russian airplanes come and then with support from foreign fighters," he said. 

"I want to underline this: foreign fighters are not solely DEASH elements in Syria; every non-Syrian inside Syria is a foreign fighter, whether they be Hezbollah coming from Lebanon or elements coming from other places, these foreign fighters aim at civilian people where the regime no longer has the power to resist," he said.

"We will take the required measures also diplomatically for the protection of our siblings there in the place in which they are located and for protection of their human rights in the face of any threat," he said.

But prominent Syrian Turkmen figure Ali Türkmani challenged Ankara's claims that Syria's Turkmen...