ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - A senior Syrian minister has condemned Turkey’s military raid into Syria to rescue Turkish soldiers and retrieve a revered shrine, calling the act an “assault” and a violation of sovereignty. Ali Haidar, minister of state for national reconciliation, said Syria would make a “strategic” response to the offensive, which reportedly included nearly 600 troops, and accused Turkey of violating territorial agreements between the neighbors. “Turkey’s direct intervention on Syria soil has showed their true face and the hostile objectives of Turkey towards Syria,” Haidar told Rudaw on Sunday in an exclusive conversation in Damascus. Dozens of tanks and armored vehicles crossed the border near the town of Kobane late Saturday to remove the memorial to Suleyman Shah, grandfather of the founder of the Ottoman Empire, Osman I, to prevent it from being captured and used by militants of the Islamic State, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said in a televised address. “Without engaging in any clashes, Turkish troops left Syria early Feb 22, after detonating the symbolic building to prevent ISIL militants use it as a base,” the Hurriyet daily newspaper reported. Davutoglu later said that a soldier was killed in an accident in the early hours of the operation, which involved the military and intelligence service. The site of the memorial in northern Syria is considered Turkish territory, according to a 1921 treaty, and was guarded by 40 Turkish soldiers. Haidar said the intervention was an act of war. “After the civil war and crises went off in Syria, Turkey waged outright war by opening their borders to rebels and terrorist militants, training them and supplying them with weapons. Turkey has used its soil to launch assault on Syria,” he minister Haidar accused Turkey of assisting ISIS militants, saying “Turkey’s prominent role in helping ISIS is now shown to everyone, and today we see [ISIS] poses a threat not only on Syria and Iraq but whole the world.” “Syria’s reaction will not be direct but strategic, even though our nation calls for repulsing Turkey’s intervention right away,” he said.
