Speaking in the border town of Reyhanli where car bombs killed more than 50 people at the weekend, Gul also called for calm after the incident, which has sparked anti-government protests and a backlash against Syrian refugees in the town.

Four suspects were formally arrested and remanded in custody late on Wednesday over the bombings, state-run Anatolian news agency said. It was not clear what charges they faced.

They were among nine Turks, including the alleged mastermind of the attacks, detained soon after the bombings.

Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has said the perpetrators were from an “old Marxist terrorist organization” with ties to Assad’s government. Damascus has denied any involvement.

Interior Minister Muammer Guler has said the bombings – the deadliest on Turkish soil since Syria’s war began – were carried out by a group with direct links to Syrian intelligence.

Apart from hosting about 400,000 Syrians, Turkey strongly backs the uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and the Reyhanli bombings have sharpened tensions along the frontier as the civil war in its southern neighbor spills over.

“The international community’s contribution to Turkey’s financial aid to these people who are in a difficult situation is only symbolic,” Gul told reporters in Reyhanli.

“From the very start the international community has only used rhetoric and heroism in their approach to the Syrian problem,” he said.

BORDER TENSIONS

Turkey is struggling to manage the flow of Syrians across its border, with only around half of those who have fled living in refugee camps. Tens of thousands of others have settled in towns and cities along the 900 km (560 mile) border.

The United Nations says the number of Syrian refugees in Turkey could climb to one million by the end of the year.

Ankara, reluctant to act unilaterally in Syria, has grown increasingly troubled by what it calls international inaction on the crisis, which has long divided the big powers.

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, who has often voiced such frustrations, was meeting U.S. President Barack Obama in Washington on Thursday, with Syria expected to top the agenda.

The twin bombings in Reyhanli, among the bloodiest in Turkey’s modern history, stoked unease among Turks along the border most affected by the turmoil in Syria.

Several protests have erupted in Reyhanli and other nearby towns since the bombings, with many locals blaming security problems on Ankara’s policy of supporting the Syrian opposition.

Others have taken out their frustration on the Syrians themselves. Thousands of Syrians have settled in Reyhanli because of its proximity to the border and because most of its people are Sunnis, like almost all the refugees.

A Syrian doctor in Reyhanli who treats wounded Syrians at a rehabilitation center said one of his nurses had been attacked on the street hours after the blasts. Others said their cars had been attacked and one said locals had seized him and handed him over to the police.

While the incidents appear to be isolated and sporadic, the general sense of anger directed at the Syrians has made most of the refugees too afraid to venture out of their homes.

Gul said any sudden population influx could allow those with “bad intentions” to surface, but urged people in the area to be “level-headed” and said the bomb perpetrators would be punished.

(Additional reporting by Humeyra Pamuk in Ankara; Editing by Alistair Lyon)

The two car bombs, which ripped through crowded shopping streets in Reyhanli on Saturday, increased fears that Syria’s civil war is dragging in neighboring states, despite renewed diplomatic moves to end it.

Damascus denied involvement, but Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said those behind the attacks were from an “old Marxist terrorist organization” with ties to Assad’s administration.

“It is time for the international community to act together against this regime,” he told a news conference during a visit to Berlin.

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said in a speech broadcast later on Turkish television: “We will not lose our calm heads, we will not depart common sense, and we will not fall into the trap they’re trying to push us into.”

But he added: “Whoever targets Turkey will sooner or later pay the price.”

NATO-member Turkey has fired back at Syrian government forces when mortars have landed on its soil, but despite its strong words has appeared reluctant to bring its considerable military might to bear in the conflict.

It is struggling to cope with more than 300,000 refugees but is not alone in fearing the impact of Syria’s war, which is stirring the Middle East’s cauldron of sectarian, religious and nationalist struggles.

“We, like Jordan, are hosting hundreds of thousands of Syrians. Security risks to neighboring countries are rising,” Davutoglu said.

DIPLOMATIC EFFORTS

The bombings took place as prospects appeared to improve for diplomacy to try to end the war, after Moscow and Washington announced a joint effort to bring government and rebels to an international conference.

Officials from Syria’s opposition coalition, in crisis since its president resigned in March, said it would meet in Istanbul on May 23 to decide whether to participate.

A Syrian opposition group said the toll from two years of civil war had risen to at least 82,000 dead and 12,500 missing.

Syrian Information Minister Omran Zubi, speaking on state TV, held Turkey responsible for the bloodshed in Syria by aiding al Qaeda-led rebels. He said Damascus had no hand in Saturday’s bombings.

“Syria did not and will never do such a act because our values do not allow this. It is not anyone’s right to hurl unfounded accusations,” he said.

Authorities have arrested nine people, all Turkish citizens and including the alleged mastermind of the attacks, Turkey’s deputy prime minister Besir Atalay told reporters.

Interior Minister Muammer Guler said the bombings – the deadliest incident on Turkish soil since Syria’s war began – were carried out by a group with direct links to Syria’s Mukhabarat intelligence agency.

The blasts scattered concrete blocks and smashed cars as far as three streets away.

LOCAL ANGER

There was a heavy police and military presence on Sunday in Reyhanli, where security forces cordoned off both blast sites while bulldozers shifted the rubble and shattered glass.

Men stood loitering around the town, looking on and discussing, often heatedly, the previous day’s events.

There was palpable anger against the tens of thousands of Syrian refugees in the town, which has become a logistics base for the rebels fighting Assad just over the border.

As the conflict has dragged on, local people have grown increasingly resentful over stretched economic resources and the violence being brought to their door.

Some smashed Syrian car windows, and others railed against Turkey’s foreign policy.

“We don’t want the Syrians here any more. They can’t stay here. Whether we even wanted them or not, they can’t stay after this,” said a teacher in Reyhanli, who gave his name as Mustafa.

He said the prime minister’s Syria policy was to blame.

“It’s Tayyip Erdogan’s politics that have done this. Turkey should never have got involved in this mess. We have a 900-km (550-mile) border with Syria. They come and go in wherever they like. Everyone here is in fear.”

Syrian families stayed inside their homes on Sunday, too afraid to come out.

SUNNI-SHI’ITE TENSIONS

Davutoglu said the Reyhanli bombers were believed to be from the same group that carried out an attack on the Syrian coastal town of Banias a week ago in which at least 62 people were killed.

Syria’s conflict has fuelled confrontation across the region between Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims, with Shi’ite Iran supporting Assad, and Sunni powers like Saudi Arabia backing the rebels.

Israel launched air strikes a week ago, aimed at stopping Iranian missiles near Damascus from reaching Tehran’s Lebanese allies Hezbollah for possible use against the Jewish state.

Days later, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said his forces would support any Syrian effort to recapture the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, raising the prospect of renewed conflict after decades of calm on that border.

In a separate development on Sunday, Syrian rebels freed four Filipino U.N. peacekeepers whom they had captured on the ceasefire line between Syria and the Golan last week.

(Additional reporting by Mehmet Emin Caliskan in Reyhanli, Ece Toksabay in Istanbul and Khaled Yacoub Oweis in Amman; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

Turkey is home to some 400,000 refugees from the two-year civil war in Syria, and Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has emerged as one of the most vocal leaders in the region supporting the uprising against Syria’s Bashar al-Assad.

The bombings in the border town of Reyhanli have increased fears that Syria’s civil war is dragging in neighboring states, despite renewed diplomatic moves to end it. Damascus has denied Turkish allegations it was involved in the blasts.

“We are putting our trust in God but our fear is that people will blame us for the bombings and will attack us. We have to protect ourselves,” said 75-year-old Mohammad Nuh, one of thousands of Syrian refugees living in Reyhanli.

“We haven’t been into the town center since Saturday. Only out to the local shop. Other Syrians here won’t even leave the house,” said Nuh, who left Aleppo two months ago.

His grandson, Amr Nuh, 21, said he was out buying mobile phone credits when the blasts took place, and was seized by locals because he was Syrian. They held him and called the police who kept him overnight for questioning.

Since the attacks, some locals have turned their ire on the influx of Syrians in the town. Many have expressed anger over the policies of Erdogan, blaming his support of Assad’s opponents for bringing the war’s impact across the border.

Spontaneous demonstrations by angry young men chanting anti-Erdogan slogans have broken out. Syrian refugees have largely vanished from the streets, staying indoors for their safety.

WE KNEW IT WOULD HAPPEN

A retired tailor who gave his name as Mehmet, 75, said anger was focused not at genuine civilian refugees but at rebel fighters who had taken advantage of hospitality in Turkey and were operating in the area, making it a target.

“We knew this bombing would happen. Even a 5-year-old would have known this was going to happen. There are going to be more,” said Mehmet, who said he was only a few hundred meters from one of the blasts when it happened.

“We do not know who most of these people are who come into our town. They leave at night and go fight over the border and then come back.”

Most of the local residents in this part of Turkey are ethnic Arabs and Sunni Muslims, like the majority of the Syrian refugees who have fled from the government of Assad, a member of the Alawite minority sect.

“A Syrian family lives there,” said Mehmet, pointing to an apartment. “It makes me sad: they are too scared even to come out now. I have nothing against these people. But the other people, we just don’t know who they are.”

Turkey has accused a group with links to Syrian intelligence of carrying out the car bombings.

“This incident is definitely linked to the (Syrian) regime,” Erdogan told reporters on Monday ahead of a trip to the United States. The bombings triggered a wave of anxiety, particularly along the 910 km border.

In Reyhanli, anger has been building for months as the Syrian war makes itself felt in the city. Turkish officials have urged people to keep calm.

NATO-member Turkey has fired back at Syrian government forces when mortars have landed on its soil, but despite its strong words has appeared reluctant to bring its considerable military might to bear directly in the conflict.

When Syrian refugees first entered Turkey in 2011, they were largely well received. But attitudes have soured.

“I blame the Turkish government for this mess. They should never have got involved in Syria … Now we are suffering because of it,” said 20-year-old student Hamdi.

Mustafa, a teacher, said: “We don’t want the Syrians here anymore. They can’t stay here. Whether we even wanted them or not, they can’t stay after this.”

(Writing by Parisa Hafezi; Editing by Peter Graff)

The two car bombs, which ripped through crowded shopping streets in Reyhanli on Saturday, increased fears that Syria’s civil war is dragging in neighboring states, despite renewed diplomatic moves to end it.

Damascus denied involvement, but Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said those behind the attacks were from an “old Marxist terrorist organization” with ties to Assad’s administration.

“It is time for the international community to act together against this regime,” he told a news conference during a visit to Berlin.

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said in a speech broadcast later on Turkish television: “We will not lose our calm heads, we will not depart common sense, and we will not fall into the trap they’re trying to push us into.”

But he added: “Whoever targets Turkey will sooner or later pay the price.”

NATO-member Turkey has fired back at Syrian government forces when mortars have landed on its soil, but despite its strong words has appeared reluctant to bring its considerable military might to bear in the conflict.

It is struggling to cope with more than 300,000 refugees but is not alone in fearing the impact of Syria’s war, which is stirring the Middle East’s cauldron of sectarian, religious and nationalist struggles.

“We, like Jordan, are hosting hundreds of thousands of Syrians. Security risks to neighboring countries are rising,” Davutoglu said.

DIPLOMATIC EFFORTS

The bombings took place as prospects appeared to improve for diplomacy to try to end the war, after Moscow and Washington announced a joint effort to bring government and rebels to an international conference.

Officials from Syria’s opposition coalition, in crisis since its president resigned in March, said it would meet in Istanbul on May 23 to decide whether to participate.

A Syrian opposition group said the toll from two years of civil war had risen to at least 82,000 dead and 12,500 missing.

Syrian Information Minister Omran Zubi, speaking on state TV, held Turkey responsible for the bloodshed in Syria by aiding al Qaeda-led rebels. He said Damascus had no hand in Saturday’s bombings.

“Syria did not and will never do such a act because our values do not allow this. It is not anyone’s right to hurl unfounded accusations,” he said.

Authorities have arrested nine people, all Turkish citizens and including the alleged mastermind of the attacks, Turkey’s deputy prime minister Besir Atalay told reporters.

Interior Minister Muammer Guler said the bombings – the deadliest incident on Turkish soil since Syria’s war began – were carried out by a group with direct links to Syria’s Mukhabarat intelligence agency.

The blasts scattered concrete blocks and smashed cars as far as three streets away.

LOCAL ANGER

There was a heavy police and military presence on Sunday in Reyhanli, where security forces cordoned off both blast sites while bulldozers shifted the rubble and shattered glass.

Men stood loitering around the town, looking on and discussing, often heatedly, the previous day’s events.

There was palpable anger against the tens of thousands of Syrian refugees in the town, which has become a logistics base for the rebels fighting Assad just over the border.

As the conflict has dragged on, local people have grown increasingly resentful over stretched economic resources and the violence being brought to their door.

Some smashed Syrian car windows, and others railed against Turkey’s foreign policy.

“We don’t want the Syrians here any more. They can’t stay here. Whether we even wanted them or not, they can’t stay after this,” said a teacher in Reyhanli, who gave his name as Mustafa.

He said the prime minister’s Syria policy was to blame.

“It’s Tayyip Erdogan’s politics that have done this. Turkey should never have got involved in this mess. We have a 900-km (550-mile) border with Syria. They come and go in wherever they like. Everyone here is in fear.”

Syrian families stayed inside their homes on Sunday, too afraid to come out.

SUNNI-SHI’ITE TENSIONS

Davutoglu said the Reyhanli bombers were believed to be from the same group that carried out an attack on the Syrian coastal town of Banias a week ago in which at least 62 people were killed.

Syria’s conflict has fuelled confrontation across the region between Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims, with Shi’ite Iran supporting Assad, and Sunni powers like Saudi Arabia backing the rebels.

Israel launched air strikes a week ago, aimed at stopping Iranian missiles near Damascus from reaching Tehran’s Lebanese allies Hezbollah for possible use against the Jewish state.

Days later, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said his forces would support any Syrian effort to recapture the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, raising the prospect of renewed conflict after decades of calm on that border.

In a separate development on Sunday, Syrian rebels freed four Filipino U.N. peacekeepers whom they had captured on the ceasefire line between Syria and the Golan last week.

(Additional reporting by Mehmet Emin Caliskan in Reyhanli, Ece Toksabay in Istanbul and Khaled Yacoub Oweis in Amman; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

Several hundred people, mostly leftist and nationalist demonstrators, marched through the center of the city no more than 50 km (30 miles) from the Syrian frontier, carrying banners and shouting anti-government slogans while onlookers cheered.

The protests came after two car bombs ripped through the center of Reyhanli on Saturday, a border town less than half an hour away and the latest flashpoint in the spread of violence from Syria, killing 46 and wounding scores more.

Ankara has blamed fighters loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for the attacks and said they will not go unanswered.

But many in this frontier province of Hatay, a melting pot of sectarian, ethnic and religious groups, some of whom share Assad’s Alawite creed, blame their own government and its policy on Syria for the bloodshed spilling onto Turkish soil.

Turkey has taken in more than 400,000 Syrian refugees, many of whom have settled in Hatay, and has thrown its full weight behind the armed opposition fighting to overthrow Assad, although it denies supplying weapons.

Fighters are able to cross back and forth across the frontier virtually unchallenged, unsettling many on the Turkish side of the border, who say more and more radical groups are joining the opposition ranks.

“We have a message for our people: We will rid our city of the jihadist murderers,” read one of the protesters’ banners.

“Hands off Syria,” read another, with a picture of Turkey’s Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and U.S. President Barack Obama wearing military helmets with a fighter jet in the foreground.

“We don’t have a problem with the Syrian refugees who come here to shelter, but we are against the jihadists and murderers on our streets,” one man in the crowd shouted.

“The people of Reyhanli were not alone,” the crowd shouted back, before breaking into chants calling on Erdogan to resign.

Others tried to dispel suggestions their views are based on sectarian or religious lines.

One man stood silently holding a small placard, which read: “Alawites stand together with their Sunni brothers,” a reference to the bombings in Reyhanli which is a predominantly Sunni town.

A boy next him had drawn a crescent moon, a Star of David and a cross, representing Islam, Judaism and Christianity, with the words “This unity cannot be broken,” written above.

(Writing by Jonathon Burch; editing by Andrew Roche)

Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said those involved in the bombings in Reyhanli on Saturday were thought also to have carried out an attack on the Syrian coastal town of Banias a week ago, in which fighters backing Assad were reported to have killed at least 62 people.

“The attack has nothing to do with the Syrian refugees in Turkey, it’s got everything to do with the Syrian regime,” Davutoglu said in an interview on TRT television.

“We should be careful against ethnic provocations in Turkey and Lebanon after the Banias massacre,” he said.

Syrian Information Minister Omran Zubi denied any Syrian involvement and rejected what he called “unfounded accusations”.

The Syrian conflict, now in its third year, has inflamed a confrontation between Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims in the Middle East, with Shi’ite Iran supporting Assad, and Sunni powers like Saudi Arabia backing the rebels.

Banias is a Sunni pocket in the midst of a large Alawite enclave on Syria’s Mediterranean coast, and activists in the area accuse militias loyal to Assad, an Alawite, of ethnic attacks.

Reyhanli also has a significant Sunni population, including thousands of Syrians, and has become a logistics base for the rebels fighting Assad just over the border.

(Additional reporting by Ece Toksabay in Istanbul; Writing by Nick Tattersall; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

The United States has said it views any use of chemical
weapons in Syria as a “red line”, hinting this could lead to
some form of foreign intervention. But chastened by the false
intelligence that was used to justify the 2003 war in Iraq,
Washington says it wants proof before taking any action.

Turkey confirmed last week that it had begun testing blood
samples taken from Syrian casualties brought over the border for
treatment to determine whether they were victims of a chemical
weapons attack.

Some Turkish newspapers said the forensic institute carrying
out the tests had found traces of ricin, a highly toxic
substance which can be used as a chemical warfare agent. But
Davutoglu said it was too soon to draw conclusions.

“Examinations are continuing. When the final result is out,
whatever that is, we will share this with the public and inform
the relevant international institutions,” he told a news
conference in Ankara.

The latest blood samples were taken from some 12 people from
the Syrian province of Idlib who arrived at a border gate in
Reyhanli in Turkey’s Hatay province with breathing difficulties,
raising fears they had been victims of a chemical attack.

Davutoglu said Ankara had been carrying out such tests for a
while but would now examine every patient that arrived from the
fighting in its southern neighbour.

RECALLING HALABJA

“We will carry out this examination on every casualty that
arrives so that after Halabja nobody will dare carry out such a
crime against humanity in Syria,” Davutoglu said.

An estimated 5,000 people died in the Iraqi Kurdish city of
Halabja in 1988 in a poison gas attack ordered by then-Iraqi
President Saddam Hussein, the most notorious use of chemical
weapons in the Middle East in recent history.

Turkey’s state-run Anatolian news agency said on Thursday a
team of eight experts had been stationed at the Cilvegozu border
gate in Reyhanli to test wounded victims arriving from Syria.

The civil defence team was equipped with a specialist
vehicle which can detect evidence of chemical, biological and
nuclear substances, Anatolian said.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces and opposing
rebels have accused each other of using chemical weapons, and
both have denied this.

Britain said on Thursday it believed it was “very likely”
that the Syrian government had used chemical arms but that it
had “no evidence to date” that the rebels had done so.

Last week a U.N. war crimes investigator said testimony from
Syrian casualties and medical staff indicated that rebels had
used the banned nerve agent sarin, although other investigators
later played down those suggestions.

Davutoglu criticised such declarations made without evidence
to support them. He had raised the issue with U.N. Deputy
Secretary-General Jan Eliasson in London this week, and said
that as a Syrian neighbour, Turkey had the right to know if the
United Nations had evidence of poison gas use by rebels.

Davutoglu said Eliasson had told him the assertion was
groundless.

(Additional reporting by Humeyra Pamuk in Ankara and Ece
Toksabay in Istanbul; Editing by Nick Tattersall)

That is what Turkey’s often divisive prime minister did late
on Friday when he pronounced that the national drink was not
beer, nor the aniseed spirit raki – choice tipple of Turkey’s
founding father – but the non-alcoholic yoghurt drink ayran.

Given the setting of his speech – a symposium on global
alcohol policy in Istanbul – Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s
comments appeared far from controversial, but so sensitive is
the topic that the mere mention of it by the pious leader, known
for his dislike of alcohol, has Turkey’s secularists up in arms.

During the single-party rule of the Turkish Republic’s early
years by what is now the country’s main – and staunchly
secularist – opposition party, state promotion of alcohol
amounted to propaganda, Erdogan said.

“Beer was unfortunately presented as a national drink.
However, our national drink is ayran,” he said, referring to the
staple lunchtime refreshment of yoghurt, water and salt, usually
swilled down with a meaty kebab.

“There is no way you can defend as a lifestyle the
consumption of alcohol which has no benefit to society, but on
the contrary inflicts harm,” Erdogan continued.

No sooner had he made his remarks, broadcast live on
television, than social media lit up with derisive comments
symptomatic of the gaping divide between Turkey’s conservative
Muslims on the one hand and secularists on the other.

“It’s true, all of you drink ayran with your pasta inside
your mosques,” read one comment directed at Erdogan’s official
Twitter account.

“We take example from our FOREFATHER who drank our National
Drink: raki,” the message continued, referring to Turkey’s
founder, soldier-statesman Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who was often
photographed with a glass of the anisette spirit in hand.

“Erdogan, will you do a shot of ayran with me?” taunted
another user on Twitter, while others lamented the prime
minister’s intrusion into their lives: “What’s it to you what
the nation drinks? You go drink ayran. Leave me alone.”

SECULAR UNEASE

Behind the jibes lies a deeper unease among Erdogan’s
opponents who say his government, which has its roots in
political Islam, is eroding the secular foundation of modern
Turkey, not least through its policies on alcohol.

Erdogan’s government has imposed some of the highest
consumption taxes on alcohol in the world, and under its tenure
an increasing number of municipalities have imposed restrictions
on drinking in public as well as on national advertising.

Most recently it banned alcohol sales on all domestic and
some international flights of its national carrier.

The government says it is not attempting to interfere in
people’s lives and is simply trying to bring the country up to
European norms by controlling alcohol sales and protecting the
younger generation as it negotiates to enter the European Union.

But unlike Western countries, which also impose
restrictions, Turkey does not have an alcohol problem. Only six
percent of Turkish households consumed alcoholic drinks in 2008,
down from eight percent in 2003, according to the Betam research
centre at Istanbul’s Bahcesehir University.

For many Turks it is simply the prime minister’s
authoritarian style they have an issue with. Often brusque in
manner, Erdogan can come across as a stern father, also
lecturing people on the dangers of cigarettes and even
suggesting how many children families should have.

But in a country where Erdogan has dominated politics
virtually unchallenged for the past decade, his word is final.
Shares in Turkey’s top listed dairy producer Pinar Sut, which
makes ayran, rose 3 percent shortly after Erdogan’s remarks.

(Writing by Jonathon Burch; editing by Mike Collett-White)

The White House said on Thursday Assad’s government had probably used chemical arms on a small scale, but that President Barack Obama needed proof before he would act.

“We have been hearing allegations of the use of chemical weapons for quite some time now and these new findings take things to another level. They are very alarming,” Turkish foreign ministry spokesman Levent Gumrukcu said.

“Since the very first reports of chemical weapons being used in Syria emerged we have been asking for a thorough investigation by the United Nations to substantiate these reports. However, the Syrian regime has not allowed this.”

Syria, which has so far denied access to U.N. investigators because of a dispute over their remit, denies firing chemical weapons and accuses anti-Assad rebels of using them.

“This has been done by organizations, including al Qaeda, which threatened to use chemical weapons against Syria. They have carried out their threat near Aleppo. There were victims,” Syrian Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi said in Moscow.

“The Syrian army does not have chemical weapons,” Interfax news agency quoted Zoubi as saying.

A once-fervent advocate of foreign intervention in Syria, Turkey has grown increasingly frustrated with the fractured opposition to Assad and with international disunity.

Asked whether Turkey would allow foreign military action in Syria from its soil, Gumrukcu said the facts about chemical weapons usage needed to be substantiated first.

“RED LINE”

“Let’s not jump to that right now, let’s have a thorough investigation,” he said, adding any response if the claims were verified would need to be discussed among the “Friends of Syria” grouping of the opposition’s Western, Arab and other allies.

The U.S. disclosure created a quandary for Obama, who has set the use of chemical weapons as a “red line” Assad must not cross. It triggered calls from some hawkish Washington lawmakers for a U.S. military response, which the president has resisted.

Ankara had been pushing for a foreign-protected “safe zone” inside Syria that could serve as a refuge for civilians caught up in the chaos and ease the burden on refugee camps in Turkey, now housing more than a quarter of a million people.

But it has been less vocal in recent months and officials were privately cautious about the latest U.S. disclosure.

“(The) statements are very vague and they themselves do not seem to be very confident of their arguments,” one source close to the Turkish government said.

“Turkey has been voicing some concerns to that end as well but without proof, I don’t think any further steps than the current level of involvement would be made,” the source said.

“Intervention is very risky.”

The European Union also responded cautiously, saying it hoped the United Nations would be able to send its investigating mission to Syria to check for chemical weapons use.

“We are still monitoring this along with our international partners to see what has really happened because it doesn’t seem entirely clear at this point in time,” said Michael Mann, a spokesman for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.

“We’ve seen that the regime in Syria doesn’t seem to have much respect for human life, but we can’t be definitive on this until we see definitive evidence,” Mann said.

(Additional reporting by Nick Tattersall in Istanbul, Adrian Croft in Brussels and Gabriela Baczynska in Moscow; Writing by Nick Tattersall; Editing by Alistair Lyon)

Erdogan, who has for years spoken of his desire to visit the Palestinian enclave, said last week he planned to go in late May after an official visit to the United States earlier in the same month.

But during a visit to Turkey on Sunday, Kerry said he had asked the Turkish leader to delay his visit so as not to upset U.S. efforts to revive Ankara’s ties with Israel and Middle East peace talks.

“Mr. Kerry’s statement … from a diplomatic perspective was objectionable, wrong and was incorrect,” Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc told reporters in Ankara.

“Only the Turkish government decides when and where the prime minister or any other Turkish official travels to,” said Arinc, who also serves as the government spokesman.

During a visit to Turkey in March, Kerry also called a comment by Erdogan likening Zionism to crimes against humanity “objectionable”, in a disagreement that has cast a pall over talks between Turkey and the United States.

Erdogan had been expected to visit Hamas-controlled Gaza this month but postponed his trip, apparently at the request of the United States. However, Arinc said Erdogan would have visited this month had his schedule allowed.

He will travel to Washington to meet U.S. President Barack Obama on May 16.

Hamas’s refusal to recognize the Jewish state and past vows to destroy it are a key reason behind an Israeli blockade of the coastal territory since Hamas seized it from the more moderate pro-Western Fatah movement in 2007.

Europe and the United States have long demanded Hamas drop violence and recognize Israel as a condition for any dialogue.

Erdogan’s planned trip would also come at a sensitive time for Turkish-Israeli relations, frozen after the 2010 killing by Israeli marines of nine Turks aboard a Gaza-bound aid ship.

In March Obama brokered a first step in reconciliation between Turkey and Israel, two main allies of Washington in the Middle East, by persuading Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to apologize to Turkey over the incident.

ISRAELI DELEGATION

In another sign of rapprochement, an Israeli delegation was in Ankara on Monday for the first time since 2010 to discuss compensation to the victims’ families.

“The meeting was generally a positive meeting … the amount of compensation was not discussed … and was not determined, but methods and rules of calculating the amount were discussed during the meeting,” Arinc said after the talks.

Arinc said a second and possible third meeting would be held in order to resolve the issue, which would be a “major step toward full restoration of diplomatic ties”.

The head of the Turkish delegation meeting the Israelis said the next meeting would be held in the next few days.

Turkey cut its once extensive ties with the Jewish state after the so-called “Mavi Marmara” incident in 2010, named after the Turkish ship which led the flotilla that tried to breach Israel’s blockade of Gaza.

Ankara expelled Israel’s ambassador and froze military cooperation after a U.N. report into the incident, released in September 2011, largely exonerated the Jewish state.

It set precise conditions for normalizing ties – an apology, compensation and Israel lifting its embargo on Gaza.

A mending of ties between two of Washington’s main allies in the region could bolster U.S. influence in the Middle East, help coordination to contain the spillover from the Syrian civil war and ease Israel’s diplomatic isolation among its neighbors.

But for all the diplomatic flurry, a full restoration of ties still appeared some way off.

Israel has made clear it did not commit to ending its Gaza blockade as part of the reconciliation, an oft-repeated Turkish demand, saying days after the apology that it could clamp down even harder on the enclave if security was threatened.

(Writing by Parisa Hafezi and Jonathon Burch; editing by Mike Collett-White)