ISTANBUL, April 18 (Reuters) – Turkey’s central bank kept interest rates and banks’ reserve requirements on hold on Wednesday but warned it may have to tighten market interest rates more frequently to head off risks to inflation from higher oil prices.

The bank for the first time this year refrained from tinkering with a complicated policy mix aimed at taming inflation while avoiding a collapse in growth.

But its statement again struck a hawkish tone, saying it would not allow inflation to worsen on the back of fuel costs - crucial for a country that imports most of its oil and gas - which it warned will push up prices in the short term.

“The committee will not tolerate temporary factors to have an adverse impact on the inflation outlook,” the bank’s monetary policy committee said in a statement after its monthly rate-setting meeting.

“Accordingly, it was underscored that additional monetary tightening may be implemented more frequently in the forthcoming period.”

As a result, the lira rose against a dollar/euro basket to 2.0674 from 2.0700 late Tuesday.

The lira recovered from early lows against the dollar to stand around 1.7902 to the dollar in late trade, virtually unchanged from late Tuesday.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkey’s ruling party pushed through a school reform act on Friday that provoked brawls among parliamentarians and mass protests by secular Turks and teachers, who said the law was pushing an Islamic agenda and would lower education standards.

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan sent shudders through the secular opposition earlier this year when he said his goal was to raise a “religious youth.” Earlier this month, his AK Party sprang the surprise proposal to overhaul the education system.

Education has been one of the main battlegrounds between religious conservatives – who form the bedrock of AKP support – and secularists since soldier statesman Mustafa Kemal Ataturk founded the Turkish republic in 1923.

Believing that religion was holding back Turkey, one of Ataturk’s first acts was to close madrasas, religious schools. Admirers of Ataturk say the AK Party is rolling back policies hurtful to pious Muslims.

The changes approved on Friday included measures that will allow schools specialising in religious education combined with a modern curriculum, known as imam hatip schools, to take boys and girls from the age of 11 instead of 15, and to provide optional classes in Koranic studies and the life of the Prophet Mohammad in other schools.

The law stipulates that children should complete 12 years schooling, though critics say the overall quality of education will suffer as parents have the option of putting their children into technical colleges grooming them for low-paid blue-collar and service industry jobs, like hairdressing for girls, from an early age.

Opposition anger over the bill boiled over when the AK Party steamrollered it through the committee stage, provoking brawls in parliament earlier this month.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – A well-known Syrian dissident walked out of reconciliation talks in Istanbul on Tuesday aimed at demonstrating that Syrian opposition groups can provide an effective alternative to President Bashar al-Assad.

The opposition groups were invited by Turkey and Qatar, which holds the rotating chair of the Arab League, to the talks to try to form a common front in the one-year uprising against Assad.

More than 300 dissidents listened to an opening address by Turkish Foreign Ministry official Halit Celik at the seaside hotel in Pendik, a suburb on the Asian side of the city.

“Turkey will not leave the Syrian people to their fate,” Celik said. He said there was no alternative except for Assad’s regime to go, and extended support to the Syrian National Council (SNC) umbrella group, as a platform for different strands of the opposition.

Opening proceedings were interrupted by Haitham al Maleh, a liberal Islamist and grand old man of the opposition, walking out of the hall after SNC president Burhan Ghalioun set out an action plan that called for greater unity.

Maleh, a former judge now in his 80s who has been jailed by both Assad and his father, said he was quitting the meeting because the SNC had assumed too much dominance and failed to let other activists have their say.

His walkout heralded expected fierce debates over the strategy to overthrow Assad, as well as on calls for reform of the SNC, delegates said.

ISTANBUL, March 27 (Reuters) – Syria’s fractious opposition groups begin reconciliation talks in Istanbul on Tuesday aimed at demonstrating they can provide an effective alternative to President Bashar al-Assad.

The opposition forces have been invited by Turkey and Qatar, which holds the rotating chair of the Arab League, to talks in Istanbul to try to form a common front while their homeland suffers under Assad’s brutal repression of a year-old uprising.

About 300 dissidents attended the welcome dinner at a seaside hotel in Pendik, a distant suburb on the Asian side of Istanbul, and more were expected to join what the Turkish hosts call an “open house” meeting on Tuesday.

Burhan Ghalioun, president of the main opposition umbrella group, the Syrian National Council, has sought support for the reconciliation meeting to end with a “national oath”, committing all the opposition to building a democratic state, without any agenda for revenge, and to seek national reconciliation once Assad is removed.

“Based on the national responsibility on all the political powers in the Syrian revolution and the efforts to unite the opposition and its vision, we declare the basic principles that the new state will be based upon,” a draft declaration said.

It said the new Syria will be “civic, democratic and totally free”, with a transitional government to organise a ballot to elect a founding assembly to draft a new constitution.

“The Syrian people are proud of their cultural and religious diversity. Everyone will contribute in building the future,” it said.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Osman, the 16-year-old son of an Istanbul central heating engineer, reckons he is at the ideal school – one where a quarter of the 40 hours he spends a week in class is dedicated to becoming a better Muslim.

He is a credit to Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s goal of raising a more pious generation through school reform proposals to be debated in parliament next week. But the secular opposition is up in arms, even to the point of fisticuffs.

What is more, Osman goes to the same school Erdogan attended as a boy, the Imam Hatip High School in Fatih, a humble, conservative neighbourhood where the large numbers of Islamic beards and veils stand out.

The education minister went to the same school there too, as did the current mayor of Istanbul – who also belongs to Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).

The unremarkable five-storey dull pink block amid Fatih’s narrow lanes was one of the first Imam Hatip schools, founded in 1951, to teach future imams.

They subsequently evolved into institutions that offered parallel mainstream curricula, and graduates could earn admission to university. Privately funded by foundations these schools often have better facilities than state counterparts.

“It’s perfect,” says Osman, enjoying a chance to practice his English as he stands with half a dozen friends on the school dormitory steps.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Syrian refugees have crossed to Turkey in growing numbers in recent days, frightened by a government assault to drive rebels from the Baba Amr neighbourhood of Homs, officials said.

During the past year Turkey has turned against former friend President Bashar al-Assad over his brutal crackdown, and fears of massacres in Syrian towns and cities that are centres of opposition to his rule.

Close to 12,000 Syrians were registered at the camps set up to provide refuge for them in Turkey’s southeast province of Hatay, after the arrival of around 800 during the past week, according to a Turkish foreign ministry official.

“After they saw what had happened in Baba Amr they were scared the same could happen to them. That’s why they’re trying to get out of the country,” the official in the provincial capital of Antakya told Reuters by telephone.

Syrians were crossing into Turkey at a rate of 150 to 200 a day, the Turkish official said, more than three times the rate seen most days since late last year.

Those figures don’t tell the full story as many people sneak in illegally to seek refuge with friends and relatives rather than enter the camps.

The influx is tiny compared with the half a million Iraqi Kurds who poured into Turkey to escape Saddam Hussein’s wrath during the 1991 Gulf War. They returned only after Western powers, along with Turkish contingents, set up a safe haven on Iraqi territory.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkish President Abdullah Gul said on Thursday Russia and Iran would soon realise they had little choice but to join international diplomatic efforts for the removal of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

He acknowledged, however, the divisions in the Syrian opposition and its lack of preparedness to take power, saying it must create a structure that embraces all segments of society.

“This transformation will no doubt take time.”

Turkey has been in the forefront of fostering the Syrian opposition since abandoning its long-time ally Assad over his violent crackdown on protests. The opposition Syrian National Council meets in Istanbul and the ‘Free Syrian Army’ operates from Turkish soil on the Syrian border.

Turkey and Western and Arab allies were angered by Russia’s vetoing, along with China, of a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Assad’s use of force, which has intensified in past days with a siege against the city of Homs.

“We have to wait and see how long Russia will be able to take upon itself the burden of this regime,” he told Reuters in an interview. “In my opinion, it won’t be very long.

“In the time of the Cold War, such things happened in a very closed environment. However, today developments take place in the open.

ANKARA (Reuters) – NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the Western alliance had no intention of intervening in Syria even in the event of a U.N. mandate to protect civilians, and urged Middle East countries to find a way to end the spiraling violence.

Rasmussen told Reuters Friday he also rejected the possibility of providing logistical support for proposed “humanitarian corridors” to ferry relief to towns and cities bearing the brunt of President Bashar al-Assad’s crackdown on pro-democracy protesters.

“We have no intention whatsoever to intervene in Syria,” Rasmussen said in an interview, during a visit to mark the 60th anniversary of Turkey joining the alliance.

While NATO had acted under a United Nations mandate to protect civilians in Libya and had also received active support from several fellow Arab countries, neither condition had been fulfilled in Syria.

Asked if NATO’s stance would change if the United Nations provided a mandate, Rasmussen was doubtful.

“No, I don’t think so because Syria is also a different society, it is much more complicated ethnically, politically, religiously. That’s why I do believe that a regional solution should be found,” he said.

Thousands of civilians have been killed by Syrian security forces since an uprising against Assad’s rule began last March. The government says more than 2,000 soldiers and police have been killed by foreign-backed “terrorists.”

ANKARA (Reuters) – The international community must send a strong message of support to Syrians under artillery attack from government forces, particularly the opposition bastion of Homs, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told Reuters.

Turkey was ready to host an international conference to support the Syrian people, and to send a message to President Bashar al-Assad to halt an 11-month crackdown on his opponents.

History taught that leaders who fired on their own people did not survive, Davutoglu added in an interview shortly before he was due to leave for the United States for talks on Syria.

He said that if the U.N. Security Council failed to protect civilians, then like-minded countries should find ways to end the killing and deliver aid to civilians trapped by military assault, especially those in Homs.

“We definitely want to have this meeting in our region showing concerns and the sensitivities and solidarity and regional ownership, maybe in Turkey, maybe in another country,” Davutoglu said.

“It is not enough being an observer. It is time now to send a strong message to the Syrian people that we are with them.

“We are ready to help them, and (give) a message to the Syrian regime that they cannot continue these methods of oppression,” he said.