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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Growing protests in northern Syria |
| 2011-06-25 |
| AMMAN - Syrian troops gathered near the Turkish border, witnesses said on Thursday, raising tensions with Ankara as President Bashar Al Assad increases the use of military force against a three-month-old popular revolt. Turkey said the two countries' foreign ministers had consulted by telephone, and Syria's ambassador to Ankara was later summoned to the foreign ministry, demonstrating further how disturbed Turkey is over events in its southeast neighbour. Witnesses said hundreds of terrified refugees crossed into Turkey to escape an army assault. Syrian troops stormed the village of Managh, 15 km (9 miles) south of the border and just north of the commercial hub of Aleppo, according to residents. A Turkish Red Crescent official told reporters about 600 Syrians had crossed the border on Thursday morning. Reuters reporters in Turkey saw half a dozen Syrian soldiers enter a previously unoccupied building on a hill overlooking the border, opposite the Turkish village of Guvecci and hoist a Syrian flag where a Turkish flag had been. They left shortly before noon. Within an hour four busloads of troops arrived, along with a pickup truck mounted with a machinegun. Turkey's 2nd Army Commander visited the Guvecci border post to take stock of the new troop deployments. "They (Syrian troops) have never been this close before," said Reuters Television journalist Omer Berberoglu. "But they didn't come down to where the refugees were." Turkey's Foreign Ministry summoned Syria's ambassador for consultations, state-run Anatolian news agency reported. Protests have grown in northern areas bordering Turkey following military assaults on towns and villages in the Jisr Al Shughour region of Idlib province to the west of Aleppo that had sent more than 10,000 people fleeing across Syria's 840-km (520-mile) border with Turkey. Soldiers and secret police backed by armoured vehicles set up road blocks on Wednesday along the main road from Aleppo to Turkey, a major route for container traffic from Europe to the Middle East. They arrested dozens of people in the Heitan area north of Aleppo, residents said. Central neighbourhoods of Aleppo, a largely Sunni city, have been mostly free of protests, in part due to a heavy security presence and a continuing alliance between Sunni business families and Syria's ruling Alawite hierarchy. A senior Turkish official said on Sunday that Assad had less than a week to start implementing long-promised political reforms before foreign intervention began, without elaborating. |
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #4 Aleppo is in the far west; I don't think it's a Kurdish area. |
| Posted by: Rob Crawford 2011-06-25 13:17 |
| #3 Isn't this Kurd country? IIRC, the Syrian, Turk, Iraq border area has a large Kurd pop. Could this have anything to do with what's going on? |
| Posted by: AlanC 2011-06-25 13:02 |
| #2 Sorry, forgot something... MURAT MURAT MURAT Come home baby, send word. We need an Anatrollian view. |
| Posted by: S 2011-06-25 07:23 |
| #1 Come on boyz! Come on! Lean in, pull out the Kemalist Thought Clubs and remind the Syrians who's damn who. Get out of the sickman-box and listen to your hegemonic roots. |
| Posted by: S 2011-06-25 07:20 |