Turkey tells Bashar al-Assad to cease Syria repression

[alp227]

Source: The Guardian

Tension between Turkey and Syria is worsening as thousands of refugees from repression by president Bashar al-Assad flee across the border

Officials in Ankara were watching closely as Syrian forces deployed in a village close to the border, Khirbet al-Jouz, after Turkey had flatly rejected an appeal from Damascus to moderate its increasingly angry public comments about the crisis.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's prime minister, has attacked the repression as "savagery" and urged Assad to sack its military mastermind, his brother Maher, and implement genuine reforms in the spirit of the "Arab spring".

But Erdogan has so far failed to demand that the Syrian president stand down – as he did with Egypt's Hosni Mubarak and Libya's Muammar Gaddafi.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/23/syria-bashar-al-assad-turkey-refugees

[atreides1]

1. It's easier to demand someone stand down...

...when they don't share a border with you, and their military is right on your doorstep!!!

Look at the bright side, if the Syrians did attack, Turkey could call on NATO for assistance...the part of NATO that isn't in Libya, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

[harun]

2. Syria certainly won't attack Turkey. It is busy fighting its own people and

Turkey is key to the current regimes survival. Not to mention Turkey has a vastly superior army and like you stated NATO behind it.

From the people I know from Syria they would much rather be administered by Turkey than Assad and his goons. It is really too bad Assad didn't use this for an opportunity for reform.