(Reuters) Turkey will no longer stop Syrian refugees from reaching Europe, a senior Turkish official said, as Ankara responded on Friday to the killing of 33 Turkish soldiers in an air strike by Syrian government forces in Syria’s northwestern Idlib region.
President Tayyip Erdogan chaired an emergency meeting on the attack in Ankara overnight, while Defence Minister Hulusi Akar and Turkish force commanders directed operations in Syria at the Turkish border, state-owned Anadolu news agency said.
Turkey has sent thousands of troops and heavy military hardware into Syria and Erdogan has warned that Turkey would launch a full-scale offensive to repel Syrian forces unless they pulled back from Turkish observation posts in the region.
