Syria: Bashar al-Assad tells Turkey to stop meddling

Turkey has repeatedly denied that it allows attacks in Syria to be launched
from its territory and insists it is not giving any support to the Free
Syrian Army as alleged by Syria and reports in the foreign media.

The Syrian president further accused Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan of being motivated by “sectarian instincts.”

Turkey, which shares a long border with Syria, is majority Sunni Muslim, like
most Syrians, while the government in Damascus, the army and the ruling
party are chiefly members of the Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shia Islam.

In the first part of the interview with Cumhuriyet, Mr Assad said he regretted
that his country’s defence forces shot down a Turkish fighter jet on June
22, but still insisted the plane was in Syrian airspace.

“I would have wished 100 per cent that we had not attacked it,” he
said two weeks after the F-4 Phantom jet on a training mission was shot at
and crashed into the Mediterranean off Syria.

But he said the plane was flying at low altitude and in an air corridor used
in the past by the Israeli planes to attack Syria.

He also insisted the plane was in Syrian airspace, and not international
airspace as maintained by Ankara.

Source: AFP

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