Iran has threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz, used for
a third of the world’s seaborne oil trade, if pending Western
moves to ban Iranian crude exports cripple its lifeblood energy
sector, fanning fears of a descent into wider Middle East war.

Tehran, which denies suspicions it is seeking nuclear
weapons, was riled earlier this week when Saudi Arabia asserted
it could swiftly raise oil output for key customers if needed, a
scenario that could transpire if Iranian exports were embargoed.

“We want peace and tranquility in the region. But some of
the countries in our region, they want to direct other countries
12,000 miles away from this region,” Iranian Foreign Minister
Ali Akbar Salehi said in English during a visit to Turkey.

The remark was an apparent reference to the alliance of
Iran’s Arab neighbours with the United States, which has a huge
fleet in the Gulf and says it will keep the waterway open.

“I am calling to all countries in the region, please don’t
let yourselves be dragged into a dangerous position,” he told
Turkey’s NTV broadcaster.

Salehi added the United States should make clear that it was
open for negotiations with Tehran without conditions. He
referred to a letter Iran says it received from U.S. President
Barack Obama about the situation in the Straight of Hormuz, the
contents of which have not been made public.

“Mr. Obama sent a letter to Iranian officials, but America
has to make clear that it has good intentions and should express
that it’s ready for talks without conditions,” he said.

“Out in the open they show their muscles but behind the
curtains they plead to us to sit down and talk. America has to
pursue a safe and honest strategy so we can get the notion that
America this time is serious and ready.”

The United States, like other Western countries, says it is
prepared to talk to Iran but only if Tehran agrees to discuss
halting its enrichment of uranium. Western officials say Iran
has been asking for talks “without conditions” as a stalling
tactic while refusing to put its nuclear programme on the table.

With EU foreign ministers preparing to approve a phased ban
on imports of Iranian oil at a meeting on Jan. 23, Salehi said
on Wednesday that the Islamic Republic was in touch with world
powers to reopen talks frozen for a year.

Washington and the EU have denied this, saying they are
still waiting for Iran to show it wanted serious negotiations
addressing fears that it trying to master ways to build atom
bombs behind the facade of a civilian nuclear energy programme.

TARGETING IRANIAN CENTRAL BANK

In addition to an embargo on Iran’s economically vital oil
exports, EU diplomats said member governments had agreed in
principle to freeze assets of Iran’s central bank, but had yet
to agree how to protect non-oil trade from sanctions.

Iranian politicians said Obama had expressed readiness to
negotiate in a letter to Iran’s clerical supreme leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

“In this letter it was said that closing the Strait of
Hormuz is our (U.S.) ‘red line’ and also asked for direct
negotiations,” the semi-official Fars news agency quoted
lawmaker Ali Mottahari as saying.

Washington denied there were any new discussions under way
about resuming talks with Iran, but declined to comment on
whether Obama had written to Khamenei.

“There are no current talks about talks,” State Department
spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said on Wednesday.

“What we are doing, as we have said, is making clear to the
Iranians that if they are serious about coming back to a
conversation, where they talk openly about their nuclear
programme, and if they are prepared to come clean with the
international community, that we are open to that,” she said.

The die was cast for international oil sanctions against
Iran when Obama signed legislation on Dec. 31 that would freeze
out any institution dealing with Iran’s central bank, making it
impossible for most countries to buy Iranian oil. Similar
measures are expected from Europe this month.

“On the central bank, things have been moving in the right
direction in the last hours,” one EU diplomat said on Wednesday.
“There is now a wide agreement on the principle. Discussions
continue on the details.”

The State Department denial about talks was echoed by a
spokesman for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, who
represents the six world powers trying to engage with Iran.

“There are no negotiations under way on new talks,” he said
in Brussels. “We are still waiting for Iran to respond to the
substantive proposals the High Representative (Ashton) made in
her letter from October.”

FAR APART OVER AGENDA FOR TALKS

Ashton underlined that talks must focus on Iran’s
underground uranium enrichment activity, whereas Tehran has
wanted to discuss only broader security issues up to now.

Tehran denies wanting nuclear bombs, saying its enrichment
work is for power generation and medical applications.

But a U.N. nuclear watchdog report in November lent weight
to concerns that Iran has worked on designing a nuclear weapon,
and Tehran is shifting enrichment to an underground bunker in a
mountain fortified against air attack.

Israel, which is believed to have the Middle East’s only
nuclear arsenal but sees Iran’s nuclear ambitions as a mortal
threat, and the United States have not ruled out military action
as a last resort to prevent an atomic “breakout” by Tehran.

However, Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak said on
Wednesday that any decision about an Israeli assault on Iran was
“very far off”.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said Iran had to be
ready for serious negotiations. “It is significant that when we
are discussing additional sanctions in the European Union an
offer of negotiations emerges from Iran,” he said.

“We will not be deterred from imposing additional sanctions
simply by the suggestion there may be negotiations. We want to
see actual negotiations,” he told a news conference in Brazil.

The last talks between Iran and the permanent members of the
U.N. Security Council – the United States, Britain, France,
Russia and China – along with Germany stalled in Istanbul a year
ago, with the parties unable to agree even on an agenda.

The six countries have also failed to agree on a common line
in their relations with Iran.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao defended his country’s extensive
oil trade with Iran against Western sanctions pressure in
comments published on Thursday. Even so, he said Beijing firmly
opposes any efforts by Tehran to acquire nuclear weapons.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said a last-ditch
military option mooted by the United States and Israel would
ignite a disastrous, widespread Middle East war. Russia has also
criticised the new sanctions.

The strikes sparked clashes on Friday in Turkey’s restive mainly Kurdish southeast and in the autonomous Kurdish northern Iraq region.

In the border village of Gulyazi, thousands of mourners attended funerals after digging deep graves along a steep cliff. The bodies, most of them young villagers who were smuggling cigarettes and diesel, were ferried on tractors or wrapped in carpets lashed to donkeys making their way along snowed tracks.

Breaking his silence over an attack Turkey’s largest pro-Kurdish party has labeled a crime against humanity, Erdogan said video recordings of the air raid would be examined and forensic experts would be dispatched to the area.

“All necessary steps will be taken,” Erdogan told reporters, calling the incident, one of the largest single-day civilian deaths in a decades-long conflict, unfortunate and saddening.

But Erdogan also defended the Turkish military, which has been fighting Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) armed militants since the group took up arms against the Turkish state in 1984.

The military had said its warplanes launched air strikes after drones spotted what looked like suspected PKK militants.

“Unfortunately, it’s not possible to determine who’s who from these images taken by drones. These images showed a group of 40 men near the border,” Erdogan said, adding the PKK has used smugglers and mules to carry out attacks in the past.

“Our F16 jets have bombed the area as a result.”

The attack undermined efforts by Erdogan to engage Kurds in talks to write a new constitution expected to address long-held Kurdish grievances. Kurds, a minority that inhabits Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran, have become increasingly assertive.

Some 500 protesters gathered on Friday in Arbil, the capital of Iraq’s Kurdish region, to protest the killings. Some protesters threw stones and clashed briefly with Kurdish security forces, but there were no reports of casualties.

“The crime … is a real genocide, a war crime and a crime against humanity, and breaches international laws,” Kurdish activist Ali Mahmoud said. “We demand that Turkey be judged in the international courts.”

The protesters carried PKK flags and pictures of its leader, Abdullah Ocalan, and shouted, “fight, fight for freedom” and “Erdogan is a terrorist.”

“The Kurdish people must protest and condemn what happened,” activist Lalo Rangder said. “Erdogan is a terrorist and has two faces in the sense that he asks the international community to protect Syrians and at the same time is killing Kurdish people with forbidden weapons.”

Clashes also broke out across cities in Turkey’s Kurdish areas and in its largest city Istanbul.

UN PROBE

Turkish rights groups called for a U.N.-sponsored probe.

“Turkish and international non-governmental organizations should investigate the incident and the U.N. Human Rights Committee should send a committee right away,” human rights groups IHD and Mazlumder said in a preliminary report into Wednesday’s airstrike.

IHD and Mazlumder said most of those killed near the border village of Uludere were between the ages of 12 and 18. Turkish media have reported that 28 out of the 35 dead belonged to the same extended family and carried the same surname.

In their report, IHD and Mazlumder quoted 19-year-old Haci Encu, who survived the attack and was in hospital, as saying the smugglers were a group of about 40-50 people with mules and were attacked as they were crossing the border to Iraq.

As the group saw the planes overhead, “we started running towards Iraq, and bombs started to fall on those who were left behind on the rocky area. We were six people in my group, and three of us survived. We had civilian clothes and nobody was armed,” Encu said.

“We have been doing this for a long time. Two people from the group were married, the rest were high school and secondary school students. Nobody has contacted me for testimony yet, and I haven’t seen a single soldier since the incident.”

The deaths threatens to ignite more violence from the PKK, which is regarded as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the European Union and the United States. The group has been fighting for an ethnic Kurdish homeland in a conflict that has claimed the lives of 40,000 people.

A PKK commander called on Kurds to rise up to what he called an organized and planned massacre.

“We call on all the people of Kurdistan and especially those of Hakkari and Sirnak to show their reaction against this massacre and to hold the perpetrators of this massacre accountable through their uprising,” Bahoz Erdal said in a statement.

With most Turks favoring a hardline military response against the PKK, the incident is unlikely to hurt the popularity of Erdogan, who won a third term in office in a June vote.

(Additional reporting by Ece Toksabay and Daren Butler in Istanbul and Shamal Aqrawi in Arbil; Writing by Ibon Villelabeitia; Editing by Alessandra Rizzo)

The incident, which is under government investigation, has raised tensions with minority Kurds in Turkey, sparking clashes between stone-throwing protesters and police in cities in the restive mainly pro-Kurdish southeast and areas in Istanbul.

The attack, one of the largest single-day civilian death tolls since the militants launched their armed insurgency in 1984, came at a time when Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has been trying to engage Kurds in talks to write a new constitution expected to address long-held Kurdish grievances.

“The incident requires a more detailed investigation, but it is an execution without due process, and carries the characteristics of a mass murder in terms of the number of victims,” human rights groups IHD and Mazlumder said in a preliminary report into Wednesday’s airstrike.

“Turkish and international non-governmental organizations should investigate the incident and the U.N. Human Rights Committee should send a committee right away.”

Erdogan’s government, which has admitted that those killed were civilian smugglers whom the military mistook for Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants, has promised not to allow a cover-up of the incident.

“We are waiting for the investigation results. We will share its results with the public,” Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc told reporters on Friday.

“These incidents can take place in the process of the fight against terror.”

IHD and Mazlumder said most of those killed near the border village of Uludere were between the ages of 12 and 18. Turkish media has reported that 28 out of the 35 dead belonged to the same extended family and carried the same surname.

In their report, IHD and Mazlumder quoted 19-year-old Haci Encu, who survived the attack and was in hospital, as saying the smugglers were a group of about 40-50 people with mules and were attacked by drones when they were crossing the border to Iraq.

“We were going for sugar and diesel. We even heard the drone, but we kept on walking because it’s our ordinary route,” Encu is quoted as saying.

“The first drone killed 20 people, who were right on the border. We started running towards Iraq, and bombs started to fall on those who were left behind on the rocky area. We were six people in my group, and three of us survived. We had civilian clothes and nobody was armed,” Encu said.

“The attack lasted around an hour. Me and a couple of other people with three mules, we went into a river, waited there for an hour and went out to hide beneath rocks,” he said.

“We have been doing this for a long time. Two people from the group were married, the rest were high school and secondary school students. Nobody has contacted me for testimony yet, and I haven’t seen a single soldier since the incident.”

“CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY”

The funerals were expected to be held on Friday.

Turkey’s largest pro-Kurdish party, the Peace and Democracy Party, or BDP, labeled the strike a crime against humanity, and has accused the armed forces of a cover-up.

The Turkish military had said its warplanes launched air strikes after drones spotted suspected PKK militants in the area. The military said there were was no civilian settlement in the area.

Turkish newspapers on Friday carried front-page pictures showing lines of corpses covered by blankets on a barren hillside, with weeping relatives around the bodies.

“Deadly intelligence,” read pro-government Zaman.

The incident threatens to ignite more violence from the PKK, which is regarded as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the European Union and the United States. The group has been fighting for an ethnic Kurdish homeland in a conflict that has claimed the lives of 40,000 people.

A PKK commander called on Kurds to rise up to what he called an organized and planned massacre.

“We call on all the people of Kurdistan and especially those of Hakkari and Sirnak to show their reaction against this massacre and to hold the perpetrators of this massacre accountable through their uprising,” Bahoz Erdal said in a statement.

With most Turks favoring a hardline military response against the PKK, the incident is unlikely to hurt the popularity of Erdogan, who won a third term in office in a June vote.

Smuggling is an important source of income for locals in provinces along the Iraqi border, with many villagers involved in bringing fuel, cigarettes and other goods from Iraqi villages. PKK militants also cross the border in these areas.

(Additional reporting by Ece Toksabay and Daren Butler in Istanbul; Writing by Ibon Villelabeitia)

Lawmakers in France’s National Assembly – the lower house of parliament – voted overwhelmingly in favour of a draft law outlawing genocide denial, which will be debated next year in the Senate.

French Foreign Affairs Minister Alain Juppe, speaking to journalists after the vote, urged Turkey not to overreact to the assembly decision, called for “good sense and moderation.”

But Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan angrily criticized France for passing the draft legislation, which touches on a highly controversial period in his country’s history.

The bill, put forward by members of French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s ruling party, was “politics based on racism, discrimination, xenophobia,” Erdogan told journalists.

He said Sarkozy, was sacrificing good ties “for the sake of political calculations,” suggesting the president was tying to win the votes of ethnic Armenians in France in an election next year.

Erdogan said Turkey was cancelling all economic, political and military meetings with its NATO partner and said it would cancel permission for French military planes to land, and warships to dock, in Turkey.

Juppe said Turkey had also recalled its ambassador from France, a decision he regretted.

“What I hope now is that our Turkish friends do not overreact about the French national Assembly decision. We have lots of things to work on together,” Juppe said.

Armenia, backed by many historians and parliaments, says about 1.5 million Christian Armenians were killed in what is now eastern Turkey during World War One in a deliberate policy of genocide ordered by the Ottoman government.

Successive Turkish governments and the vast majority of Turks feel the charge of genocide is an insult to their nation. Ankara argues that there was heavy loss of life on both sides during fighting in the area.

“I don’t understand why France wants to censor my freedom of expression,” Yildiz Hamza, president of the Montargis association that represents 700 Turkish families in France, told Reuters outside the National Assembly.

Earlier, about 3,000 French nationals of Turkish origin demonstrated peacefully outside the parliament ahead of the vote, which came 32 years to the day since a Turkish diplomat was assassinated by Armenian militants in central Paris.

The authorities in Yerevan welcomed the vote. “By adopting this bill (France) reconfirmed that crimes against humanity do not have a period of prescription and their denial must be absolutely condemned,” Armenia’s Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian saying in a statement.

France passed a law recognizing the killing of Armenians as genocide in 2001. The French lower house first passed a bill criminalizing the denial of an Armenian genocide in 2006, but it was rejected by the Senate in May this year.

The latest draft law was made more general to outlaw the denial of any genocide, partly in the hope of appeasing Turkey.

It could still face a long passage into law, though its backers want to see it completed before parliament is suspended at the end of February ahead of elections in the second quarter.

National Assembly speaker Bernard Accoyer said on Wednesday that he doubted the bill would pass by the end of the current parliament, as the government had not made the bill priority legislation.

TURKISH ANGER, FRENCH ELECTIONS

The French government has stressed that it did not initiate the bill, which mandates a 45,000-euro fine and a year in jail for offenders, and says Turkey cannot impose unilateral trade sanctions.

Faced with Sarkozy’s open hostility to Turkey’s stagnant bid to join the European Union, and buoyed by a fast-growing economy, Ankara has little to lose by picking a political fight with Paris.

With Turkey taking an increasingly influential role in the Arab world and Middle East, especially Syria, Iran and Libya, France could experience some diplomatic discomfort, and French firms could lose out on lucrative Turkish contracts.

France is Turkey’s fifth biggest export market and the sixth biggest source of its imports. About 360 French companies operate in Turkey , employing more than 80,000 people, according to export consultancy UbiFrance.

“Turkey is a democracy and has joined the World Trade Organisation so it can’t just discriminate for political reasons against countries,” Europe Minister Jean Leonetti told France Inter radio. “I think these threats are just hot air and we (have) to begin a much more reasoned dialogue.”

The French bill feeds a sense shared by many Turks that they are unwanted by Europe and it fires up nationalist fervor. However, in a more self-confident Turkey, popular reaction has been more muted than in the past.

France has been pushing Turkey to own up to its history, just as France belatedly recognized the role of its collaborationist Vichy government during World War II in deporting Jews to Nazi concentration camps.

(Additional reporting by Pauline Mevel and Emile Picy in Paris, Tulay Karadeniz in Ankara and Hasmik Mkrtchyan in Yerevan; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said the draft law put forward by members of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s ruling party was “politics based on racism, discrimination, xenophobia.”

“This is using Turkophobia and Islamophobia to gain votes, and it raises concerns regarding these issues not only in France but all Europe,” he told a news conference, adding that Turkey could “not remain silent in the face of this.”

France had opened wounds with Turkey that would be difficult to mend, he said, adding that Sarkozy, who faces a tough reelection battle in April, was sacrificing good ties “for the sake of political calculations.”

Erdogan said Turkey was cancelling all economic, political and military meetings with its NATO partner and said it would cancel permission for French military planes to land, and warships to dock, in Turkey.

Earlier in the day, Turkish officials told Reuters their ambassador in Paris had been recalled for consultations.

Lawmakers in France’s National Assembly — the lower house of parliament — voted overwhelmingly in favor of the bill, which will be debated next year in the Senate.

A French diplomatic source said Paris still considered fellow NATO member Turkey an important partner.

“I don’t understand why France wants to censor my freedom of expression,” Yildiz Hamza, president of the Montargis association that represents 700 Turkish families in France, told Reuters outside the National Assembly.

Earlier, about 3,000 French nationals of Turkish origin demonstrated peacefully outside the parliament ahead of the vote, which came 32 years to the day since a Turkish diplomat was assassinated by Armenian militants in central Paris.

The authorities in Yerevan welcomed the vote. “By adopting this bill (France) reconfirmed that crimes against humanity do not have a period of prescription and their denial must be absolutely condemned,” Armenia’s Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian saying in a statement.

France passed a law recognizing the killing of Armenians as genocide in 2001. The French lower house first passed a bill criminalizing the denial of an Armenian genocide in 2006, but it was rejected by the Senate in May this year.

The latest draft law was made more general to outlaw the denial of any genocide, partly in the hope of appeasing Turkey.

It could still face a long passage into law, though its backers want to see it completed before parliament is suspended at the end of February ahead of elections in the second quarter.

National Assembly speaker Bernard Accoyer said on Wednesday that he doubted the bill would pass by the end of the current parliament, as the government had not made the bill priority legislation.

Armenia, backed by many historians and parliaments, says about 1.5 million Christian Armenians were killed in what is now eastern Turkey during World War One in a deliberate policy of genocide ordered by the Ottoman government.

Successive Turkish governments and the vast majority of Turks feel the charge of genocide is an insult to their nation. Ankara argues that there was heavy loss of life on both sides during fighting in the area.

TURKISH ANGER, FRENCH ELECTIONS

The French government has stressed that it did not initiate the bill, which mandates a 45,000-euro fine and a year in jail for offenders, and says Turkey cannot impose unilateral trade sanctions.

Faced with Sarkozy’s open hostility to Turkey’s stagnant bid to join the European Union, and buoyed by a fast-growing economy, Ankara has little to lose by picking a political fight with Paris.

With Turkey taking an increasingly influential role in the Arab world and Middle East, especially Syria, Iran and Libya, France could experience some diplomatic discomfort, and French firms could lose out on lucrative Turkish contracts.

France is Turkey’s fifth biggest export market and the sixth biggest source of its imports.

“Turkey is a democracy and has joined the World Trade Organization so it can’t just discriminate for political reasons against countries,” Europe Minister Jean Leonetti told France Inter radio. “I think these threats are just hot air and we (have) to begin a much more reasoned dialogue.”

Ankara considers the bill, originally proposed by 40 deputies from Sarkozy’s party, an attempt to win the votes of 500,000 ethnic Armenians in France in next year’s elections.

It believes the measure would limit freedom of speech and represents an unnecessary meddling by politicians in a business best left to historians.

The French bill feeds a sense shared by many Turks that they are unwanted by Europe and it fires up nationalist fervor. However, in a more self-confident Turkey, popular reaction has been more muted than in the past.

France has been pushing Turkey to own up to its history, just as France belatedly recognized the role of its collaborationist Vichy government during World War II in deporting Jews to Nazi concentration camps.

(Additional reporting by Pauline Mevel and Emile Picy in Paris, Tulay Karadeniz in Ankara and Hasmik Mkrtchyan in Yerevan; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

Turkey is still trading with its neighbour but has sought
new trade routes to the Middle East since relations with
Damascus worsened.

They broke down following Ankara’s increased criticism of
President Bashar al-Assad over his crackdown on a popular
uprising that began in March.

“It will be Syria who loses in this process of introducing
alternative trade routes,” the Turkish Economy Ministry said in
a statement.

It said it had finalised talks to start exporting goods to
Egypt via sea in January and from there overland to the Gulf.

Turkish trucks will go by ship to Egypt and use its Nuweiba
port to trade with Jordan and Safaga port to trade with Saudi
Arabia. Turkey said it was also studying other routes.

“After alternative trade routes start operating, Syria’s
loss in transportation revenues will be over $100 million per
year.”

It calculated this based on the 46,000 Turkish trucks that
passed through Syria in 2010, with Syrian charges per truck of
$2,135.

Turkish truck drivers who return from Syria have described
chaos on the road to Homs, a centre of opposition to government
forces, saying they were sometimes caught in the cross-fire and
saw bodies lying by the road and burned-out military vehicles.

They have complained of being singled out by Syrian state
forces because of Ankara’s tough stance towards Damascus.

Muslim Turkey, a rising economic and political power in the
Middle East, was one of Syria’s closest regional allies and
Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan built a strong rapport
with Assad.

But as the violence worsened and Assad ignored Erdogan’s
advice to halt the crackdown and make urgent reforms, relations
turned frosty and Erdogan has bluntly told Assad he should quit.

Earlier this month, non-Arab Turkey followed a move by the
Arab League to impose sanctions on Syria which it said would
target the government, including freezing state assets, banning
entry by senior officials and suspending financial transactions.

Syria responded by suspending a bilateral free-trade
agreement and imposing a 30 percent tariff on all Turkish
imports and prohibitive duties on fuel and freight.

Turkey was a major trading partner for Syria with bilateral
trade last year totalling about $2.5 billion.

Syria received more than 10 percent of its imports from
Turkey in 2010. Imports from Syria made up 0.3 percent of
Turkey’s imports.

A captain in President Bashar al-Assad’s army, Kurdi, 30, a soft-spoken man with a trimmed black moustache, deserted his post in June and fled to neighboring Turkey with his family.

He is now a member of the Free Syrian Army, a loose collection of deserters who are fighting to topple Assad.

Other Free Army officers have taken refuge in Turkey as well, including the group’s most senior commander, from where they communicate and coordinate operations with rebel units inside Syria.

“I left because of the massacres of civilians in Syria. Every day the regime is killing up to 30 people in Homs and sending tanks to the streets,” he said, referring to the city that has become the focus of protests against Assad.

Speaking to Reuters over thick dark coffee in the house of a Syrian émigré in the southern Turkish city of Antakya, Kurdi said the Free Army needed more weapons and equipment, and that foreign intervention might be needed to prevent Syria from descending into civil war or a drawn-out conflict.

FOREIGN INTERVENTION

“If there is no foreign intervention and the international community does not step in to assist Syria, the situation is unlikely to change and the regime can last for a long time,” he said.

“If Arab states fail to stop a bloodbath it would be an obligation for Europe and the U.S. to intervene militarily. We prefer a diplomatic solution but if this fails we would want a military intervention. This could take the form of a no-fly zone and a buffer zone,” Kurdi said.

Like most of the military, Kurdi is a Sunni Muslim; but the command is in the hands of officers from Assad’s Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam that also dominates the security apparatus and ruling elite in the majority Sunni country.

He said more and more mid and lower-ranking units were defecting to the Free Army, which rebels say numbers about 10,000.

“In the first months of the revolt there were fewer desertions but the number has significantly increased in the last 10 days to a month. Five days ago in a military base in Deraa, 20 soldiers slipped guards a sedative, then stole all the guns and fled.”

Based on recent movements by government tanks and troops, he said he feared Assad might be preparing to launch a large-scale onslaught in Homs, in nearby Hama or in the coastal towns of Latakia or Tartus.

But this would only galvanize more opposition across Syria, he said. The United Nations says more than 4,000 people have been killed since protests began in March, inspired by the Arab Spring uprisings which have toppled autocrats in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.

“If they enter to crush Homs it will be a big mistake. It will trigger a reaction across the country. There are rumors the regime is moving the Alawites away from Homs in preparation for a major crackdown.”

FEAR

Another defector who lives in one of six refugee camps set up by Turkey to accommodate more than 8,000 Syrians painted a picture of low troop morale in the rank-and-file, who are forced to follow orders from commanders or face reprisals.

“They ordered us to deploy in Deraa and open fire on people who were causing trouble. But when we got there they were just protesting and they had no weapons,” said Ahmed, who fled in August and is from Hama.

“Many people feel the same way I do. If you are in the army you do what you are told, you follow orders to shoot and kill. Many soldiers don’t want to do this but if they desert they fear for their families. If you leave the army they can take your mother or father to prison.”

Turkey’s decision to offer safe haven to the Free Army along with blunt calls by Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan for Assad to quit have shattered once close ties between Ankara and Damascus. Damascus says the rebel soldiers are traitors serving the enemies of Syria.

The group’s top commander, Colonel Riad al-Asaad, is staying along with 60-70 officers in a refugee camp at Apaydin, some 10 miles from Antakya and close to the Syrian border.

Turkey closely monitors Colonel Asaad’s movements. He is not allowed to receive visitors without authorization from the Turkish government. A Reuters crew was warned not to stop its vehicle near to where he was camped.

From outside, the camp, which is surrounded by trenches, fences and Turkish military outposts, offers a more serene atmosphere than violence-plagued Syria.

It lies in a plain that is home to cotton fields and olive groves, flanked by snow-capped mountains. Cows and sheep graze nearby.

No weapons are allowed in the camp. Defectors dress in civilian clothes and live with their families.

“We are taking precautions for Asaad’s security,” a Turkish diplomatic source said.

“Not even an envelope-opener is allowed in the camp. If anything happens to him we will face accusations that Turkey allowed his assassination. The Syrian intelligence is trying to reach that end.”

The rebels say they want to avoid a civil war in Syria, and that their main goal is to disrupt military convoys, attack security police and intelligence complexes involved in the crackdown and to defend civilians from repression.

“There have been a few operations against intelligence service buildings because they are the tools the regime uses to kill civilians. These centers house Shabiha militias (state-backed paramilitaries) but the main focus is to cut supply lines of convoys. We don’t fire at tanks that do not open fire on civilians,” Kurdi said.

“The regime has tried from the beginning to start a sectarian civil war. But we want to avoid it. We are telling the Alawites to denounce the regime so they don’t end up paying the bill.”

Kurdi, who lives with his wife and three children, says he stays mostly indoors in Antakya, a frontier city where family and cultural ties with Syria transcend political borders and where Arabic language flows as freely as Turkish on the streets.

Kurdi said he will only return to Syria when Assad is gone. Otherwise, he would be killed.

“We are willing to pay whatever the price to end Assad.”

(Editing by Rosalind Russell)

$INS01; Line LNY Insave:- TI line name (Map report)

And it’s not just those on foot who are at risk. Lorry drivers who have returned from Syria talk of dead bodies by the roadside and burned-out military vehicles.

Syrian troops guarding the border are opening fire at “anything that moves”, residents and refugees said, apparently fearing armed infiltrators will cross into Syria to join the fight against President Bashar al-Assad.

“We hear gunshots at night and during the day,” said a Syrian who had taken shelter in the village of Guvecci, close to the border in Turkey’s Hatay province.

“Yesterday two men who crossed the Syrian border were shot, one in the face and the other in the arm. They were taken to Turkish hospitals,” said the man who declined to be named.

Residents and refugees from Syria sheltering with local families said smuggling back and forth through the wooded hills was continuing, but they said they had not seen any armed men infiltrating into Syria from Turkey.

Turkey long courted Assad after he came to power in 2000, but it is now calling for him to step down, giving refuge to Syrian army defectors and hosting Syria’s opposition movement.

There is little sign of an increased Turkish military presence along the frontier but Syrian guards open fire at “anything that moves fearing they are infiltrators”, said another Syrian who lives in Guvecci.

Rebel deserters with the Free Syrian Army have said their forces clashed with the Syrian government this week, but denied they had moved into Syria from Turkey.

At the official border crossing at Cilvegozu, hundreds of Turkish trucks carrying food and goods for the Gulf waited to enter Syria.

Many of the drivers were nervous about the journey ahead and the tales of drivers leaving Syria gave them good cause for concern.

“BODIES ON ROAD”

“If anyone wants to end his life or kill himself, he should go to Syria,” said 38-year-old Turkish lorry drivers Tayfun Sari who had just spent nine days crossing Syria from Jordan, a journey he said normally took him a day.

“The army is fighting against civilians. They are shooting civilians. Yesterday I saw five soldiers dead on the road after Homs to Turkey and nobody was doing anything for them. They were lying on the road,” he said, his eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep.

“In Homs, civilians were cutting off the road with burning tires and the military was opening fire on protesters.

“There were many bullet shells on the road and some trucks had flat tires. I was caught in cross-fire but luckily my truck was not hit. I saw a Syrian military vehicle on fire and a house on fire.”

“I am never going back to Syria. That’s it.”

He and other drivers waiting to enter Syria said they were increasingly singled out by Syrian government forces because of their government’s tough stance towards its neighbor.

Turkey, with the second biggest army in NATO, said on Friday it did not want to interfere in Syria’s internal affairs but could not stand by if its neighbor became a risk to regional security.

“Turks are being attacked on the road and receiving death threats just because we are Turks,” said driver Huseyin Sahin.

Despite the danger, the drivers said that the only alternative land route from Turkey to the Gulf, through Iraq, was much longer and even less safe.

(Writing by Jon Hemming; editing by Robert Woodward)

“We clearly have a situation that needs to be solved so that
Turkey moves forward,” secretary general Thorbjorn Jagland told
a group of foreign journalists in Ankara during a visit.

Jagland said Turkey had some 16,000 cases pending in the
Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights, of which about
1,000 concerned media freedom, a situation he said had “a
chilling effect” on freedom of expression.

“Turkish courts and prosecutors need to have a better
understanding of European standards of what journalists are
allowed to write and say without being put in jail,” said
Jagland, who met members of Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s
government to discuss media freedom.

Since coming to power in 2002, Erdogan’s party has earned
praise for political reforms aimed at bringing Turkey closer to
European Union norms and for liberalising an economy that is now
among the fastest-growing in the world.

But his government also faces accusations of trying to tame
the media and smother opposition. Critics say the prime minister
uses Turkey’s harsh defamation laws to intimidate journalists
and counter personal criticism.

According to the Organisation for Security and Cooperation
in Europe, there are 57 journalists in Turkish jails although
Turkish media groups put the number at nearly 70.

Most are held under broad antiterrorism laws, for allegedly
promoting terrorist propaganda, that allow for suspects to be
detained for lengthy periods before being formally charged.

Turkey has fallen to 138th out of 178 countries reviewed for
the World Press Freedom Index by Reporters without Borders, a
media freedom pressure group, from 101st in 2007 due to the
proliferation of lawsuits.

It is not uncommon for investigative reporters in Turkey to
face prosecution. Journalists Nedim Sener and Ahmet Sik, known
for articles they wrote about an alleged 2003 plot to topple
Erdogan’s government, have been in jail since March.

The government rejects accusations that it curbs media
freedom and says journalists are not in jail because of what
they wrote, but for non-journalistic activities.

Gerard Stoudmann, special advisor to Jagland and media
freedom rapporteur, said Turkey had “difficulty” understanding
what is investigative journalism.

“Besides the issue of law, it’s an issue of mindset, of how
the judiciary and prosecutors see their roles,” Stoudmann said.

(editing by Rosalind Russell)

That day, on October 23, a powerful earthquake killed nearly 600 people in eastern Turkey, devastating towns and villages and leaving tens of thousands homeless.

Rumeysa now lives with her family in a tent pitched on a windswept soccer field with other survivors, where she sometimes has nightmares in which the earth moves again and her two-year-old brother is missing in the rubble. She has to queue up in the freezing cold for soup and pasta. Her school is closed.

But in the last few days Rumeysa has begun to laugh and sing again, thanks to a group of voluntary psychologists who work with traumatized children in a tent camp on the outskirts of Ercis, the town hardest hit by the 7.2 magnitude earthquake.

“They teach us songs, we play games all day and we are having lots of fun,” said Rumeysa, a skinny, chatty girl who wears a pink coat she got at the camp.

“After the earthquake I was afraid of the dark. My little brother could sleep but my sister and I could not. I don’t have nightmares now,” she said.

Psychologists and pediatricians say the devastation caused by the earthquake, Turkey’s most powerful in a decade, has placed enormous stress on children, harming their ability to communicate and socialize.

Many have become withdrawn, afraid to leave crowded tents where they cling to their parents. Older ones are showing anti-social behavior and aggressiveness, adding to parents’ woes.

In a town where at least 455 people were killed and thousands of homes were destroyed or made uninhabitable, the children of Ercis are among the most vulnerable victims. Many lost parents, brothers or sisters, their school life interrupted and their friends gone.

“Children are the ones who suffer the most the effects of such tragedies,” said Alay Sekman, a 27-year-old social worker who volunteers for the Turkish Red Crescent at the largest tent camp in Ercis, with 300 tents and more than 1,500 residents.

“We take them away from this difficult world they live in now to the life they had before, where they had friends and played games. It’s an opportunity for them to heal.”

Since the psychologist center opened, the children’s lives — and that of the camp — has changed, said parents.

The children’s voices rise above the otherwise dreary camp, a collection of tents flapping in the cold winter wind and frequent rain, as they sing, dance and play games with the psychologists on a muddy patch.

Some of the children went to the same school before the quake and have reunited at the play groups.

They have acrobatics contests, do impromptu performances or break into songs they have learned at the camp.

Many have bonded with the 30-odd young psychologists, whom they hug and kiss when they show up for their morning games.

“One more time, one more time,” they chanted in unison when Sekman performed a pirouette and bowed to the young crowd.

Nedret Oztan, head of the Turkish Psychological Association, who has also worked with quake survivors in Pakistan and Iran, said 80 percent of people affected by earthquakes develop psychological traumas.

She said children sometimes feel guilty for what has happened to the family. Food and shelter are a basic necessity but psychological reconstruction takes time.

“The problem is this is just the beginning of winter. If they don’t get proper housing it will double the trauma.”

Parents say the psychologists have pulled some of their children out of depression, easing their own heavy burdens.

“After the quake she went into shock and couldn’t stop crying. Now she gets up early, eats breakfast and rushes to the tent of the psychologists,” said Rumeysa’s mother, Sevda Kalkan. The father, a baker, is now unemployed.

Families in the tent camp are eager for their children to return to school, but in its absence they are happy the children are being entertained so they can take care of things such as filling out funeral papers or applying for prefabricated homes.

“My kids still have nightmares and have difficulty sleeping at night, but Songul seems more joyful nowadays,” Ahmet Karlidag, a 42-year-old father of four, said of his 11-year old daughter. “She changed after they started playing in that tent.”

Others like 13-year-old Sevgi struggle more. While other children appear blissful, she claps in a corner of the psychologists’ tent following the games with her big brown eyes but keeps to herself, haunted by memories.

“My brother and I try to forget. It helps being here but I still can’t help but remember the scenes I saw that day.”

(Editing by Alistair Lyon)