Kurdish lawmaker calls on Erdogan to stay away from war on Syria

A senior Kurdish member of the Turkish Parliament voiced his strong opposition to any possible US-led military strike on Syria, and urged the Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government to avoid joining the dangerous war with Syria in blind obedience to the US. Sari Soraya Onder, a representative of Turkey’s Peace and Democracy Party, a political branch of Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), told FNA that he would do his best to prevent Turkey from becoming involved in such a war. He underlined his opposition to any US possible attack on Syria. Onder said that he would strongly oppose the Turkish prime minister’s possible initiative to get involved in the US war against Syria, and urged Erdogan not to stand beside the US in its possible war on the Muslim state of Syria. Last month, the Iranian foreign ministry cautioned Turkey and other regional states against the repercussions of joining any future war on Syria, saying such a move will merely serve the interests of the Zionist regime. Speaking to reporters during a weekly press conference here in Tehran, former Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Seyed Abbas Araqchi asked the regional states and "Turkish friends" to "be careful about what is going on in Syria as any attack against that country will serve the interests of the Zionist regime". "The entire region should keep vigilant and don't allow further spread of the crisis by indigested measures," he added. Earlier reports said that Ankara has sent 400 tons of arms supplied by some Persian Gulf states to militants in Syria to bolster their fight against the government of President Bashar al-Assad. "Twenty trailers crossed from Turkey and are being distributed to arms depots for several brigades across the North," said Mohammad Salam, a rebel operative who witnessed the crossing from an undisclosed location in Hatay. The delivery is being called the single biggest weapons cache to reach the rebels since the unrest began two years ago. The shipment follows last week’s gas attack in the suburbs of Damascus that killed anywhere from dozens to over 1,000 civilians. Syrian officials, who said they discovered chemical weapons in a rebel hideout outside the capital, blame the rebels for the attack. The consignment - mostly ammunition for shoulder-fired weapons and anti-aircraft machine guns - came into northern Syria via the Turkish province of Hatay, and was already being handed out, sources said.