Sinirlioğlu spoke to The Associated Press on Thursday on the sidelines of a United Nations gathering of world leaders.
Advertisement
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on 1 October that Syrian people shouldn’t have to choose between President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and “terrorist organisations”, like the Islamic State (Isis) group.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov denied his country’s airstrikes are aimed at non-Daesh positions and said Russia was targeting only the same terror groups as the coalition.
While he did not directly mention the Russian air strikes in Syria, Erdogan told the parliament: “The people of Syria can not be left to choose between the regime that massacres them and terrorist organisations”.
They are also unlikely to heed Davutoglu’s declaration that “anyone thinking of a solution to the Syrian crisis must think of a Syria without Assad, a vicious tyrant killing indiscriminately with chemical weapons and barrel bombs”. “And more than 12 million internally displaced, nearly half of which are children, are in desperate need of help”, Davutoglu pointed out.
Turkey, which has long pushed for Assad to be overthrown, has attacked Islamic State group targets once on its own and participated in at least one other coalition strike, but has recently focused its military efforts on Kurdish rebels.
“I would recall that we always were saying that we are going to fight ISIL and other terrorist groups”, said at United Nations headquarters.
The USA, Turkey and a group of Western and Gulf allies on Thursday urged Russian Federation to immediately stop its airstrikes on Syrian opposition forces and civilians. Chasing Syrian jets out of that region is one thing, but chasing away Russian warplanes would be quite another.
Advertisement
“We feel serious concern over the information that Russia’s airstrikes in Syria targeted Opposition positions instead of Daesh (ISIS) and that as a result civilians also lost their lives”, Mr Sinirlioglu said, quoted by the state-run Anatolia news agency. “Ultimately, the Russian move means Ankara will have to settle for much less than it had hoped for by letting the anti-IS coalition use its air bases”, the report concludes.
