Nearly 3,000 Syrians have fled into southern Turkey fearing a military assault and the Syrian army has begun a military operation near the border in the town of Jisr Al-Shughour, Syrian television said on Friday.
“Foreign Ministry officials said that among scenarios that had been discussed was the creation of a buffer zone if hundreds of thousands want to seek refuge in Turkey,” the Hurriyet daily reported.
However, this is not seen as a near-term prospect. Foreign Ministry officials were not immediately available to comment.
Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan reiterated on Thursday that Turkey would keep its gates open to people from Syria. But Damascus, he said, was taking the issue “very lightly” and Ankara could not defend Syria’s “inhumane” response to the unrest.
The Syrian government has said armed gangs killed more than 120 security personnel in Jisr Al-Shughour, a town of 50,000 near the Turkish border, earlier this week. Rights campaigners said the fighting was between loyalist and mutinous soldiers and that scores of civilians were killed.
“We can’t close our door to those people who run away for their lives, but how long is it going to be like this?” Erdogan told a Turkish television station in comments reported by state-run Anatolian news agency.
“We, as Turkey, cannot stand up for Syria in the face of all this. We still have relatives there,” Erdogan said.
The Red Crescent has opened a second camp to deal with the influx and a total 2,792 people are lodging at the two camps, said UNHCR spokesman Metin Corabatir.
He said the Red Crescent was working on setting up a camp north of Altinozu in Hatay province, with 1,000 tents and a capacity to host 5,000 people.
“It’s Friday so we’re afraid the number of people fleeing may increase, that’s the general pattern in Middle East uprisings,” he added, referring to protests and accompanying crackdowns which have taken place after Muslim Friday prayers.
At the Yayladagi refugee camp, set in a picturesque valley just north of the Syrian border, children played football while families sat talking under trees.
Police kept journalists away from the tent camp, set up by Turkey’s Red Crescent five weeks ago on the grounds of a disused tobacco factory.
Turkey has had to cope with large influxes of refugees in the past. Some 460,000 refugees from northern Iraq fled to Turkey at the time of the 1991 Gulf War.
Turkey made preparations for a buffer zone at the time of the 2003 Iraq war but only around 10,000 came on that occasion.
