Turkey's Erdogan presses Assad's envoy over unrest (Reuters)

ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan held crisis talks with an envoy of Syria's president on Wednesday as Ankara pressed its once well-regarded neighbor to end a crackdown on protesters that it has called "savagery."

Relations between Turkey and Syria have been strained as some 8,500 Syrian refugees have poured across the border into Turkey seeking sanctuary in makeshift camps of tents from an onslaught by President Bashar al-Assad's security forces.

Assad envoy Hassan Turkmani met for almost three hours with Erdogan, who has expressed impatience over Assad's repressive tactics and slowness to reform, as well as anger over a burgeoning humanitarian crisis.

No statements came out of the meeting. But Erdogan, who had a close rapport with Assad, had said before his re-election on Sunday that once the vote was over he would be talking to Assad in a "very different manner."

Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, the architect of Ankara's policy of cultivating closer ties with Middle East countries including Syria and Iran, went to the border and talked to refugees, including wounded men lying on beds in camp hospitals.

Seeing Davutoglu approach, the Syrians -- men, women and children -- gathered together chanting "Freedom" and "Erdogan."

"I'll talk to Turkmani and will share with him with all frankness what I saw. We are seeing a humanitarian situation here and developments are concerning," Davutoglu told reporters after visiting a camp in Yayladagi, across from the restive Syrian town of Jisr al-Shughour, 20 km (13 miles) away.

He said he would meet with Turkmani in Ankara on Thursday.

Turkmani told journalists before meeting Erdogan the refugees would stay in Turkey for a "short period of time."

"Soon they will be returning. We have prepared everything for them, they have started returning," he said.

Assad asked to send an emissary when he called Erdogan on Tuesday to congratulate him on winning a third term in office.

On Wednesday, a group of refugees in Yayladagi got their message out, chanting "People want freedom!" and "Erdogan help us!," while journalists watched on the other side of the gate.

The crowd was made up of veiled women and young men, some with children on their shoulders. Police did not interfere.

"THEY TREAT US LIKE INFIDELS"

With Assad facing mounting international condemnation, Erdogan has become regarded as a saviour by Syrian refugees.

A 36-year-old Syrian man in a street in the Turkish border village of Guvecci, who gave his name as Ahmed and refused to be filmed, gave a taste of what Davutoglu was likely to hear.

"We decided to flee to Turkey after learning troops arrived in Jisr al-Shughour: I, my wife and six kids. We heard they were burning down the city, including the mosques," he said.

"We came here to protect our family, we're not against them, but they fight us like we were infidels.

"I don't plan to go back until the situation improves there. Some of my relatives were wounded during protests in Jisr al Shughour, one of them was shot in the foot, two were killed, one was shot in the head and is in intensive care now."

Preparations are being made for another influx of refugees far to the east along the 800 km border.

A Turkish Red Crescent official, who requested anonymity, said more tent camps, able to shelter 10,000 people, were being set up near the Turkish city of Mardin and the town of Nusaybin.

Erdogan has called Assad several times since public unrest first broke out in Syria three months ago, each time urging reforms and an end to the bloodshed.

In a telephone call on Tuesday, Erdogan told Assad to avoid using violence against his people and advised him that reforms should be undertaken as soon as possible. Erdogan also raised concern over protests outside Turkey's embassy in Damascus.

The Turkish English-language newspaper Today's Zaman reported that some 2,000 demonstrators marched to the Turkish embassy in Damascus on Sunday and tried to hoist a Syrian flag.

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Erdogan set for comfortable win as Turks vote (Reuters)

ANKARA (Reuters) – Turks began voting in an election on Sunday that is expected to return Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan to office for a third consecutive term and could give him a mandate to rewrite the constitution.

A Muslim democracy and European Union-candidate, Turkey has become an economic powerhouse and influential player on the global stage since Erdogan's AK Party swept to power in 2002.

Polling stations in the country of 74 million opened first in the east, including in the restive Kurdish region. There were no immediate reports of trouble. Polls were due to open later in the west, including in the capital Ankara and Istanbul.

"I hope these elections will be good for the country," said Mehmet Mikailoglu after casting his vote in Diyarbakir, the largest city in Turkey's economically backward southeast where a decades-old Kurdish separatist conflict is focused.

Opinion polls have shown Erdogan set to win four more years of single-party rule in the nation that straddles Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

His support has been built on his success in creating a booming economy and in ending decades of chaotic coalitions, military coups and failed international financial bailouts.

The only doubt hanging over Sunday's vote was about the margin of victory. Erdogan needs more than a simple majority to be certain of pushing through plans for a new constitution to replace one written in 1982, two years after a military coup.

Erdogan, whose party evolved from banned Islamist movements, says the new charter will be based on democratic and pluralistic principles that will bring Turkey closer to EU standards.

While foreign investors traditionally have seen AK as the most market-friendly party, Erdogan's critics say he has an authoritarian streak. They fear he will use his growing power to switch to a more presidential system of government, with an eye on becoming president himself in the years ahead.

Opponents also point to rampant use of wiretaps by state agencies, the detention of journalists critical of the government, nepotism and a widening gap between rich and poor.

CONSTITUTION

AK, a socially conservative party, held 331 of the 550 seats in the last parliament. Polls show it scoring the same or more.

At least 330 seats would give AK the power to call a referendum on rewriting the constitution. If it gets more than a two-thirds majority, it will be able to change the constitution without resorting to a plebiscite.

"These elections are not about who wins, but about whether AK will win a strong majority to rewrite the constitution," Sinan Ulgen, from the Istanbul-based Center for Economics and Foreign Policy Studies, told Reuters.

The opposition has been in disarray since AK routed establishment parties tainted by graft and financial mismanagement in 2002.

The Republican People's Party (CHP), the party of Turkey's once-dominant secularist, Westernised elites, has been revitalized under new leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu.

Opinion polls put support for the CHP at 25-30 percent.

Kilicdaroglu has dropped the CHP's old scaremongering tactics of accusing AK of wanting to turn Turkey into an Iran-style Islamic state and has focused his campaign on human rights and inequality, while warning of Erdogan's growing power.

The performance of independents fielded by the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) and far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) could prove key to AK's margin of victory.

The outcome of Sunday's vote will have repercussions outside Turkey, a NATO member and U.S. ally that has forged stronger ties with fellow Muslim neighbors.

Analysts have warned the new government will face sobering economic challenges. The current account deficit is ballooning, fiscal policy needs tightening to cool overheating and youth unemployment is high in a country where the average age is 28.

(Additional reporting by Simon Cameron-Moore, Daren Butler, Seda Sezer and Ece Toksabay in Istanbul and Tulay Karadeniz in Ankara; Editing by Michael Roddy)

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Turkey's Role in Arab Spring: Can Erdogan Influence Assad? (Time.com)

On Oct. 13, 2009, the Oncupinar border gate between Turkey and Syria played a starring role in a diplomatic photo op. Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and his Syrian counterpart, Walid al-Moualem, shook hands, smiled for the cameras and - en route to signing an agreement to end visa requirements between the two countries later that day - lifted the border barrier. The symbolism was lost on no one. Only 11 years earlier, thousands of Turkish troops had massed along the same border, awaiting orders to deploy. Throughout the 1990s, the Syrian government had sheltered Turkey's public enemy No. 1, Abdullah Ocalan, leader of the PKK, the Kurdish terrorist group. If Syria refused to expel him, the Turkish leadership made clear in 1998, then the Turks would march on Damascus. The Syrians flinched. Ocalan was sent packing.

In the years that followed the standoff, Syria and Turkey became close allies. Long-running land and water disputes were either settled or shelved. Trade boomed, from $773 million in 2002 to $2.5 billion in 2010. In April 2009, the two countries held joint military exercises. Just last year, together with Jordan and Lebanon, they signed a free-trade agreement that many Turkish commentators hailed as the dawn of a Middle East Union. (See pictures of the protests in Syria.)

In reaching out to the Syrian regime, Turkey managed to inspire its confidence, says Khaled Khoja, a Turkish-based member of the Damascus Declaration committee, a Syrian opposition group. In 2005, Khoja recalls, Syrian President Bashar Assad, whose government had been accused of orchestrating the assassination of Lebanese President Rafiq Hariri, found himself in a major bind. But Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan refused calls by the U.S. and others to isolate the Syrian regime. Instead, says Khoja, he helped bring Assad's regime in from the cold: "He made Turkey a bridge to Syria." What Turkey got out of all this, more than anything else, says Khoja, was Syria's trust - the kind of trust that allowed it to mediate between Syria and Israel in 2008. This, says Khoja, "was a very good approach."

But, he adds, it was not enough. "Turkey should have pushed Bashar to make reforms in past years," says Khoja. "You cannot have an attitude, an active role, unless you are brave enough to step behind the reforms. You have to say this strongly." Turkey did not. Over the past few years, in the face of Syria's dismal human-rights record and its legacy of authoritarian rule, the government in Ankara has remained silent. If autocrats like Assad were to be prodded into changing course, Turkish officials argued, it would be through diplomacy, not pressure. "We tell our counterparts the importance of being respectful of human rights," Davutoglu once said. "But we don't do it in public." (See "How Syria and Libya Got to Be Turkey's Headaches.")

Turkish officials were wrong to assume that a policy of behind-the-scenes prodding could yield tangible results in Syria, says Walid Saffour, president of the London-based Syrian Human Rights Committee. "All the time they were hearing that the Syrians were going to do so and so," he says. "The Turkish government believed what Bashar and his advisers told [them]. That was a game of deception on the part of the Syrian government."

In recent weeks, with the turmoil across its southern border showing no signs of coming to an end - threatening not only its rapprochement with Syria but also the stability of the entire region - Turkey has gone into emergency mode, with Erdogan regularly on the phone with Assad and top officials, including Davutoglu and an intelligence chief, Hakan Fidan, who was dispatched to Damascus. As a senior Western diplomat in Damascus tells TIME, Turkey's backdoor diplomacy might now be the outside world's last remaining chance to persuade Assad to introduce new reforms and avoid more bloodshed. "The Turkish approach allows the Syrians to listen to the outside world's concerns without feeling as if they are being lectured," the diplomat tells TIME, speaking on condition of anonymity. "It allows them to make changes without giving the impression that someone is forcing their hand." (See pictures of tempers flaring across the Middle East.)

Oppositionists like Saffour would prefer for the Turks to align themselves squarely with the demonstrators. "Today Erdogan condemns the killing, the detentions and the repeated massacres," says Saffour, "but he is not blaming Bashar for this." As much as the Turkish leader might want to ensure Assad's survival, he adds, he will soon have to choose between the leadership and the protesters. "The people inside Syria are now calling for a change of regime altogether," says Saffour. "The Turkish stand shouldn't be [opposed to] the stand of the people. If they want to do something, they should support the people, not the regime."

Reached by phone during a visit to Turkey, Riad al-Shaqfa, secretary general of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, says he believes Assad can step back from the brink. "The doors of reform always remain open if Bashar is serious in this matter and if the people feel that he is serious about it," al-Shaqfa says through a translator. "To make the reforms does not take much. It took them 15 minutes to amend the constitution so that Bashar could inherit the country from his father. They can issue orders to withdraw the security forces and the tanks from the streets and to the stop bombardment of the people in a matter of hours." However, the outlook is getting bleaker by the day, says al-Shaqfa, who adds, "There can be many initiatives and the Turks are demanding this, but nobody is listening." Khoja sees no room for optimism. "If Bashar is not listening to Turkey," he says, "then he is not listening to anyone."

Piotr Zalewski is the Turkey correspondent for the Polish newsmagazine Polityka. He has contributed to Foreign Policy, the Atlantic.com and the National.

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