An envoy of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad held crisis talks with Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan today as Turkey pressed its once-close neighbour to end a crackdown that it has called "savagery".
The once-close ties between the neighbours appear close to breaking point, and Mr Assad's envoy, Hassan Turkmani, is likely to face Turkish impatience over Syria's repressive tactics and slowness to reform, as well as anger over a burgeoning humanitarian crisis.
As of this morning, some 8,500 Syrian refugees were lodged in tented camps on Turkey's side of the border. More have been arriving by the day.
Syrian refugees who have fled to Turkey to escape a fierce military campaign staged protests in one of the camps in the town of Yayladagi, chanting "People want freedom!" and "Erdogan help us!", before Turkey's foreign minister was to start a tour of the area.
Speaking to journalists before meeting Mr Erdogan in Ankara, Mr Turkmani said 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."
Mr Assad asked to send an emissary when he called Mr Erdogan yesterday to congratulate him on winning a third term in office.
Mr Erdogan, who had a close rapport with the Syrian president, had said before his re-election that, once the election was over, he would be talking to Mr Assad in a "very different manner", and expressed revulsion over repression being used against the Syrian people.
Thousands of Syrians fled the historic town of Maarat al-Numaan to escape tank forces thrusting into the country's north in a widening military campaign to crush protests against Mr Assad.
In the tribal east, where all of Syria's 380,000 barrels per day of oil is produced, tanks and armoured vehicles deployed in the city of Deir al-Zor and around Albu Kamal on the border with Iraq, a week after tens of thousands of people took to the streets demanding an end to Mr Assad's autocratic rule.
"The army is coming, find safety for yourselves and your families!" residents said mosque loudspeakers announced yesterday in Maarat al-Numaan, a town of 100,000 that straddles the main north-south highway linking Damascus with Syria's second largest city, the merchant hub of Aleppo.
Syrian forces pushed toward Maarat al-Numaan after arresting hundreds of people in nearby villages close to Jisr al-Shughour, residents said.
Syrian state television said security forces "are pursuing and hunting down the remnants of the members of terrorist armed organisations in the areas surrounding Jisr al-Shughour in order to enable the residents to return to their neighbourhoods".
Residents from Maarat al-Numaan, Jisr al-Shughour and surrounding villages streamed toward Aleppo and to villages in the desert to the east, while some headed to neighbouring Turkey, where more than 8,500 Syrians have already fled.
They sought shelter across the border to escape Mr Assad's latest assault on protests demanding more freedoms in a country dominated by the Assad family, from Syria's minority Alawite sect, for the last 41 years. Most Syrians are Sunni Muslim.
France, with British support, has spearheaded efforts for the United Nations Security Council to condemn Mr Assad's repression of the protests. But Russia and China have suggested they might use their veto power to kill the resolution.
Turkey has set up four refugee camps just inside its borders and the state-run Anatolian news agency said yesterday authorities might provide more. It said the number of refugees, mainly from the Syrian northwestern region of Jisr al-Shughour, had reached 8,538, more than half of them children.
Fleeing refugees described shootings by troops and Alawite gunmen loyal to Mr Assad, known as "shabbiha", and the burning of land and crops in a scorched earth policy to subdue people of the region after large protests.
Reuters