News / Turkey

Turkey urges Germany to ramp up military involvement in Syria

Saturday, 16 January 2016 4:43 PM [ Last Update: Saturday, 16 January 2016 6:16 PM ]

Refugees wait at the Tabakikh registration center in the Greek island of Chios, on Friday, January 15, 2016. (AP photo)

Turkey’s deputy prime minister has called on the German government to increase its military involvement in Syria, claiming that the move can result in stemming the flow of refugees into Europe.

“If Germany and others want to stop the influx of refugees, they must stop the bombings by Syrian and Russian forces against the Syrian opposition,” Mehmet Simsek said in an interview with German newspaper Die Welt on Saturday.

The remarks came days after 10 German tourists lost their lives in a bomb attack in Istanbul, Turkey. The act of terror was blamed on the Daesh Takfiri terrorists.

Simsek also claimed that the origin of terror in Syria is the chaos on the ground caused by what he called the Syrian government’s “refusal to authorize democratic reform and the existence of an opposition.”

Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Simsek

Since March 2011, hundreds of thousands of Syrians have fled the turmoil in the country. The West and some of its allies in the region have backed the carnage in the Arab country which has so far claimed the lives of over 250,000 people.

Syrian forces have been battling militants, particularly Daesh terrorists, on different fronts throughout the country. They have recently been making rapid advances against terrorists in operations backed by the Russian air cover, which began on September 30 last year at the request of the Damascus government.

Over the past several weeks, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem has reiterated the country’s readiness to participate in the upcoming peace talks in Geneva to end the crisis in Syria.

Elsewhere in his comments, Simsek alleged that Ankara is making efforts to fight Daesh, adding that the group “represents for us the greatest danger.”

This comes as Ankara has been among the main supporters of the militant groups operating in Syria. Turkey has also been accused on numerous occasions of being involved in illegal oil trade with Daesh. Russia has recently released pictures and videos purportedly showing the movement of oil tankers from Daesh-controlled areas in Syria toward Turkey.

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