Syria-Turkey tensions soar with flight bans

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Syria-Turkey tensions soar with flight bans

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Syria accuses Turkey of channelling arms from Gulf Arab states to rebels fighting its troops.

15 October,2012 10:37 am

Turkey has banned Syrian flights from its airspace in a tit-for-tat move, while Iran handed a detailed proposal to UN-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi aimed at ending the conflict between the Syrias army and rebels.On the ground regime forces pressed their counter-attack against rebels to regain territory lost in northern battlegrounds.The reciprocal flight bans heightened tensions between neighbours Syria and Turkey days after Ankara confiscated a cargo of what Russia said was radar equipment being flown from Moscow to Damascus.The moves brought a flurry of diplomacy intended to calm soaring tensions between the neighbours.Syria accuses Turkey of channelling arms from Gulf Arab states to rebels fighting its troops, who have been under mounting pressure across large swathes of the north, including in second city Aleppo.The Syrian flight ban went into force from midnight (2100 GMT Saturday) in accordance with the principle of reciprocity, SANA state news agency said.Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said later that Ankara had already banned Syrian civilian flights from its airspace.Yesterday (Saturday) we closed our airspace to Syrian civilian flights as we have previously done for Syrian military flights, he said.As we have established that civilian flights were being misused by the Syrian defence ministry to transport military material, we sent a note yesterday to the Syrian side, Davutoglu said.Ankara has taken an increasingly strong line towards its southern neighbour since a shell fired from inside Syria killed five Turkish civilians on October 3.It has since repeatedly hit back for cross-border fire, prompting growing UN concern and a hasty series of diplomatic contacts.Tensions from the conflict are also being felt in neighbouring Lebanon, and hundreds of people took to the streets of Beirut for two separate rallies, one supporting the Damascus regime and the other calling for its downfall.With the violence raging, Brahimi on Sunday went to Iran, where foreign minister Ali Akbar Salehi handed him an unofficial detailed proposal aimed at ending the conflict in its closest ally Syria.Brahimi, on his second regional tour after taking up his post at the start of September, welcomed the initiative but reiterated a call by UN chief Ban Ki-moon for Damascus to initiate a ceasefire.I thank you for the proposals and as I told you there are some ideas in your proposals which can help by adding to that forwarded by other nations who are also important with regards to the Syrian situation, Brahimi said.We hope all these ideas gather into a project to put an end to the Syrian peoples nightmare, he added.