Syria's official news agency said two of its warplane were shot down by Turkish forces inside northwest Syria, amid a military escalation there that's led to growing direct clashes between Turkish and Syrian forces.
Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter
SANA says the jets were targeted over the Idlib region, and that the four pilots ejected with parachutes and landed safely. These confrontations have added to soaring tensions between Turkey and Russia, which support opposing sides of the Syrian civil war.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Saturday announced his country had opened its western borders to migrants and refugees hoping to head into the European Union. The United Nations said Sunday that at least 13,000 people were massed on Turkey's land border with Greece,
Erdogan did not explicitly link his decision to open the gates to Europe to the military escalation in Syria's northwestern Idlib province. However, he has warned that Turkey "can't handle a new wave of migration," an apparent reference to Idlib where hundreds of thousands of desperate Syrian civilians fleeing Syrian troop advances moved toward the Turkish border.
Turkish Defense Minsiter Hulusi Akar, speaking from military headquarters near the Syrian border, said Turkey aimed to confront Syrian government forces rather than Russian troops. He called on Moscow to persuade Syrian President Bashar Assad to withdraw to 2018 cease-fire lines on the edges of Idlib.
Referring to losses inflicted on Syria, he said Turkey had "neutralized" more than 2,200 Syrian troops, 103 tanks and eight helicopters.
"The Spring Shield operation, which was launched following the abominable attack in Idlib on Feb. 27, continues successfully," Akar said, referring to airstrikes that killed 33 Turkish soldiers.
The operation is Turkey's fourth in the war-torn country since 2016.
The heavy fighting in northwest Syria has also triggered a humanitarian catastrophe and the single largest wave of displacement in the nine-year Syrian civil war.
Ankara is worried it might come under renewed international pressure to open its now sealed border with Syria and offer refuge to hundreds of thousands more Syrian civilians. Turkey already hosts 3.6 million Syrian refugees.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's decision to open his country's borders with Europe made good on a longstanding threat to let refugees into the continent. His announcement marked a dramatic departure from the current policy and an apparent attempt to pressure Europe into offering Turkey more support in dealing with the fallout from the Syrian war to its south.
The UN's International Organization for Migration said Sunday that by the previous evening, its staff working along the Turkish-Greek land border "had observed at least 13,000 people gathered at the formal border crossing points at Pazarkule and Ipsala and multiple informal border crossings, in groups of between several dozen and more than 3,000."
Greek authorities fired tear gas and stun grenades through Saturday to prevent repeated attempts by a crowd of more than 4,000 people massed at the border crossing in Kastanies to cross, and fought a cat-and-mouse game with groups cutting holes in a border fence along the border to crawl through.
Erdogan's communications director Fahrettin Altun later said Turkey had changed its focus to preparing for the possibility of new arrivals from Syria "instead of preventing refugees who intend to migrate to Europe."
"Europe and others must take robust action to address this monumental challenge," Altun said. "We can't be expected to do this on our own."
He accused critics of Turkey's refugee policy of "rampant hypocrisy."
He claimed 80,888 had left Turkey for Europe "in the past several days" and called on Europe to share the burden of looking after refugees. But there was no evidence to support his claim. Greece has shut its border, and there were a few dozen arrests of people who managed to cross through the border, Greek authorities have said.
Erdogan has warned of an "imminent" operation against Assad's forces unless they pull back from Turkish lines in Syria by the end of February.
As that deadline passed Saturday night, Turkish drones bombed Syrian government targets in Idlib, and Turkey-backed rebels shelled Syrian army positions. Fighting raged near the strategic town of Saraqeb as government troops sought to take it back from rebels, opposition activists and Syrian state media said. The town, which lies on the Damascus-Aleppo highway, had changed hands several times in the last month.
Turkey has lost 55 soldiers in Idlib in February, including 33 killed in an airstrike on Thursday, and now feels the need to respond strongly. Talks between Turkey and Russia, the main power brokers in Syria, have so far failed to defuse tensions.
On Saturday, Erdogan said Turkey would no longer stand in the way of refugees and migrants already in the country who hope to head to Europe.
"We will not close the gates to refugees," he said. "The European Union has to keep its promises. We are not obliged to look after and feed so many refugees."
Under a 6 billion euro deal in 2016, Turkey agreed to stem the tide of refugees to Europe in return for financial aid after more than a million people entered Europe in 2015. It has since accused the EU of failing to honor the agreement. Erdogan has frequently threatened to "open the gates" and allow refugees and migrants to head to Europe unless more international support was provided.
