Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan compared Syrian President Bashar Assad to Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi on Wednesday, as the violent crackdown on protesters in Syria continued.
“We made our calls (to Qaddafi) but unfortunately we got no result,” Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan was quoted by The Associated Press as having said. “The same thing is happening with Syria at the moment.”
Erdogan made the comments after Syrian government forces began Wednesday morning to withdraw from the port city of Latakia, leaving 34 dead and more wounded, in their wake.
Earlier in the week, troops rounded up some 10,000 Arabs in the al-Ramel neighborhood into a stadium, where they confiscated their identity cards and mobile phones. It is estimated that as many as 1,790 civilians have died since protests calling for Assad’s ouster began in March.
On Monday, Turkey’s foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu urged Syria to immediately end its deadly suppression of the five-month-old uprising, threatening it with unspecified “steps” if it fails to do so.
Davutoglu said the bloodshed must end “immediately and without conditions or excuses.”
He had made the same demands from Assad in a direct meeting the two had in Damascus last week.
But Erdogan said Wednesday that despite him personally speaking to Assad and sending his foreign minister to Damascus, “despite all of this, they are continuing to strike civilians.”
The United States has already slapped sanctions on Syria in response to the violence against civilian protesters, and the European Union has done so as well. But Erdogan stopped short of announcing sanctions against Assad, noted AP.