EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton offered her “heartfelt condolences” to the 14 confirmed victims of an attack on a Turkish-Syria border crossing Monday, as she “strongly condemned” the attack and committed the EU’s assistance to “Turkish authorities in the fight against all forms of terrorism”.
The incident occurred when a minibus exploded at the Cilvegozu customs post on the Syria-Turkey border, one of the main border crossings between the two neighbouring countries.
According to Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bulet Arinc, the explosion which occurred on the Turkish side of the border, occurred only metres from the Turkish border gate, as authorities sought to establish whether the vehicle was packed with explosives or whether the eruption was caused by something else. “
“All possibilities are on the table, including political motives,” he revealed.
Her brief statement Tuesday echoed French foreign minister Laurent Fabius’ statement, a day after meeting with his Turkish counterpart Ahmet Davitoglu in an effort to breach the diplomatic impasse between their two countries, as he expressed solidarity with Turkey and innocent Syrian civilians and reiterated his “concern about the risk of overflow of the Syrian crisis in neighbouring countries”.
Turkey has largely borne the brunt of the refugee exodus from war-torn Syria, along with fellow Syrian neighbour Jordan, and reinforced European rhetoric that “it is more urgent than ever to find a solution to the crisis, to open the way for a political transition in lien with the democratic aspirations of the Syrian people”.
The US State Department was reticent to attribute responsibility to any group for the deadly attack in its daily press briefing Tuesday as the Turkish government investigation was ongoing, however department spokesman Victoria Nuland stressed that “there is no excuse for violence of the kind that we saw yesterday at a peaceful border crossing”.
Careful to evade incriminating Bashar al Assad’s authoritarian regime for the attack, she nevertheless concluded that “whether it was this incident or some of the other mass incidents of violence we’ve seen inside Syria, it’s very clear that the Assad regime is trying to target opposition leaders, whether they’re fighters or whether they’re political opposition”.
However, she refuted that Turkish authorities had sought US help in the investigation, as she conceded that whilst their assistance had not official been sought, were we to have that request bilaterally or through NATO, we would want to do what we could”.
Nuland evaded questioning on whether the Turkish government had responded to a direct request from the Syrian opposition coalition to help educate them on chemical weapon protection issues, she conceded that “it would be, obviously, irresponsible for us and other members of the international community not to be having that dialogue with them, given how dangerous these weapons are”.