Turkey to create military ‘buffer zone’ within Syria for refugees

Turkey is planning to create a military “buffer zone” for refugees inside the country as protests against the Assad regime spiral, it was claimed on Thursday.

By Andrew Osborn, in Guvecci and Richard Spencer, Middle East Correspondent

8:57PM BST 16 Jun 2011

Government sources told a leading Turkish newspaper that soldiers could be sent in to Syria to set up a “safe haven” under plans being considered should the flood of those fleeing the fighting worsened.

“We would close the border but we cannot turn our back,” a Turkish official told the newspaper, Hurriyet. “If chaos starts, then we will have to form a security zone or a buffer zone inside Syrian territory.”

The suggestion, which would be a marked escalation of the crisis and seriously alarm Damascus, came as Turkey faced pressure to take tougher action over the crisis in a neighbour until recently seen as an ally.

Amnesty International on Thursday accused the Turkish government of helping Syria to cover up crimes against its own people by stopping refugees telling their stories to journalists and human rights groups.

It has locked the more than 8,000 refugees who have crossed the border up in fortresslike camps and isolated them from the outside world, even obscuring them from view by covering the fences with blue plastic sheeting.

“The Turkish authorities are effectively gagging the victims,” Neil Sammonds, Amnesty’s Syria expert, told The Daily Telegraph.

“Already there have been three months of widespread killings, often it seems as part of a shoot-to-kill policy, torture, mass arbitrary arrests and extrajudicial executions. These amount to possible crimes against humanity.

“Were Amnesty and other rights groups or journalists able to meet the refugees in the camps and listen to and document their stories it is possible it would stir the international community and especially the United Nations Security Council into condemning the Syrian government.”

Syrian activist groups claim 1,500 people have been killed since the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began in March. In the last week, Syrian forces have moved against two towns close to the border, Jisr al-Shughour and Maraat al-Numaan, where they said troops had been attacked by “armed gangs”.

Refugees said the Syrian army was continuing to make punitive raids on towns and villages in the region. Soma, a 20-year-old farmer, said his village just two miles from the Turkish border had been shelled in the early hours of Thursday and was now in the army’s hands.

“They destroyed it,” he said. “If I go back they will kill me. They want to raze our homes so we cannot return.” Ibrahim, 33, an olive farmer, said he had reliable information about two separate atrocities against women, saying that Syrian security forces were using sexual violence as a weapon.

In the first case, he said a group of 16 soldiers had gang-raped the wife of a pro-democracy activist. In another more recent case two or three days ago in Jisr al-Shughour Syrian soldiers forced three protesters’ wives to strip and serve them tea in the nude in order to humiliate them, he said.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s prime minister, turned on the Assads last week, accusing the president’s brother, Maher, in particular of “savagery” in putting down protests.

The Hurriyet report said Mr Erdogan was “losing hope” in President Assad but also added he had not yet “burned his bridges” as he had with Col Muammar Gaddafi of Libya, whom he has told to step down.

Mr Sammonds said Turkey was playing a “dubious game” pursuing narrow national interests rather than international justice.

“No one understands why they are doing this but there are plenty of hypotheses,” he said. “One of the more compelling ones is that the Turkish government does not want people inside Syria to know what is going on because it might cause a larger wave of refugees to flee to Turkey.

“Another is that Turkey still wants to maintain good relations with Syria while at the same time making strong statements about reform and the need to end the violence.”

via Turkey to create military ‘buffer zone’ within Syria for refugees – Telegraph.