More than 1,600 Turkmens flee from intensifying Russian and Syrian regime airstrikes

Turkey's Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) announced on Sunday that more than 1,600 Syrian Turkmens crossed the Turkish border in the last two days to escape Russian and Syrian regime airstrikes. Villages and towns around Syria's Mount Turkmen have been hit from three surrounding hills, as the regime seized the strategic area in Latakia.

Syrian Turkmen National Movement Party Vice Chairman Tarık Sülo Cevizci said that civilians in the Bayırbucak region started to flee to Turkey when rumors that the Syrian regime was mounting a ground offensive. He said that it is impossible to stand against the bombing, which intensifies daily.

"Villages have been bombed from hill number 45 and the Kızıldağ and Burc Kasab hills. Mount Turkmen has fallen into the hands of the regime. Civilians are leaving the region due to rumors that civilians will be killed in a ground operation by [President Bashar] Assad's regime," he said.

According to Cevizci, the regime has not been able to widen its area of impact for the last three months despite Russia's intensified bombings, and is now only mounting an offensive on Mount Turkmen to strengthen its hand against the opposition at the Syrian peace talks in Geneva.

"This place has strategic importance. If no solution-based conclusion comes out of the talks and each party in Syria establishes its own state, Assad wants to see the Mount Turkmen area within Alawite borders. If North Kurdistan is established, this place would be a door opening to the Mediterranean region" Cevizci said.

The governor of Turkey's southern province of Hatay, Ercan Topaca, said that on Friday and Saturday alone a total of 1,635 civilians, mostly women and children arrived in the Yamadi refugee camp. He added that many Syrians and Turkmens fleeing from Obin camp are heading to Turkey due to increasing clashes in the Bayırbucak region.

Some 300,000 Syrian Turkmens have been displaced so far since the beginning of the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in March 2011, and 25,000 of them have taken shelter in Turkey.

Operations by Syrian regime forces supported by Russian airstrikes on the Turkmen-populated Bayırbucak region in northern Syria are ongoing. Turkmens are a Turkic ethnic group largely based in Syria and Iraq where they live alongside large Arab and Kurdish populations. The Turkmen community, which includes both Sunni and Shiite Muslims, shares close cultural affinities with the Turks of Turkey.