NATO makes show of support for Turks

ANKARA, Turkey — The North Atlantic Treaty Organization praised Turkey’s restraint and pledged support Tuesday as the country’s top general inspected newly deployed units after cross-border shelling by Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces.

Radar-assisted Turkish guns have fired on Syrian artillery units and tanks for six consecutive days in response to the deaths of five people struck by a Syrian shell in the Turkish town of Akcakale last Wednesday and other shellings. At least 14 Syrian soldiers were killed, Al Arabiya television reported.

Turkey subsequently deployed more tanks, howitzers and missile defense systems on the border after the parliament gave the government a one-year mandate to send forces into Syria if necessary.

NATO, which called the attack on Akcakale “a flagrant breach of international law,” praised Turkey’s response to Syrian shelling and assured the Turkish government of the alliance’s military support if it is needed.

Tensions between Turkey, a NATO member, and Syria have risen during the 19-month rebellion against Assad’s government, as Turkey offers support to the rebels. These worsened in June, when Syria shot down a Turkish warplane it said was in its airspace and after last Wednesday’s deaths of two women and three children.

“I would like to commend the Turkish government for the restraint it has shown in its response to the completely unacceptable Syrian attacks,” NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told journalists in Brussels, where defense ministers convened a two-day meeting Tuesday.

“We have all necessary plans in place to protect and defend Turkey if necessary,” Rasmussen said. “We hope that won’t be necessary. I do believe the right way forward in Syria is a political solution.”

NATO officials said the plans have been around for decades and were not drawn up in response to the Syria crisis. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to journalists.

Article 5 of the NATO treaty, drafted at the start of the Cold War, deems an attack on one member an attack on all. It was invoked only once, in solidarity with the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Turkey has invoked Article 4, allowing a country to convene a NATO meeting when its security is threatened.

The U.S. and most of its NATO allies have signaled they are reluctant to intervene militarily inside Syria. The conflict began in March 2011 and has left more than 30,000 dead, according to opposition-supporting rights groups. The Local Coordination Committees in Syria said 31 people had died so far Tuesday, including 28 in Damascus and its suburbs.

Hundreds of Syrian refugees flee to Turkey daily as Syrian rebels engage in fierce clashes with Syrian troops across the border. Almost 94,000 Syrian refugees are inside the country, the United Nations refugee agency estimated on Oct. 2.

In an address to lawmakers from the ruling party, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan reiterated that Ankara will continue retaliating for attacks from Assad’s regime.

“Every kind of threat to the Turkish territory and the Turkish people will find us standing against it,” Erdogan said. “Soldiers loyal to Assad fired shells at us, we immediately reacted and responded with double force. We shall never stop responding.”

At least 25 additional F-16 fighter jets were deployed at Turkey’s Diyarbakir air base in the southeast late Monday, Turkey’s Dogan news agency said, quoting unidentified military sources.

Gen. Necdet Ozel, chief of Turkey’s general staff, on Tuesday inspected troops in Hatay province, which was hit by seven artillery shells and mortar rounds in the past week, staterun TRT television said. Gen. Hayri Kivrikoglu, chief of the land forces, accompanied Ozel along with several other senior officers, the state-run Anatolia agency said. Ozel will inspect troops in Akcakale today, TRT television said.

Syrian forces have continued firing at rebels along the border even though Turkey has responded to artillery shells or mortar shells landing inside its territory. At least 27 schools along the border areas in Akcakale remain closed because of fears they could be hit by an errant shell, Anatolia said Tuesday.

The two countries share a 566-mile border. Turkey has a 720,000-strong military, the second-largest army within the NATO alliance.

Meanwhile, a Sunni extremist group called Jabhat al-Nusra claimed responsibility for an attack on Syrian air force intelligence compound in the Damascus suburb of Harasta on Monday evening. A statement on a militant website by the group’s media arm, Al-Manara al-Bayda, said the bombing aimed “to avenge the killing of Muslims and those who suffered injustice.”

The Syrian state-run news agency did not report the explosion, and there were conflicting reports on how badly the compound was damaged. There were no official reports on casualties, but the pro-government Al-Ikhbariya channel said Monday the blast was heard across Damascus.

Meanwhile, two Syrian rebels said that seven military and intelligence officers belonging to Syria’s ruling Alawite minority have defected to Jordan. The rebels said they helped the seven cross into Jordan on Monday and the highest-ranking figure among them was an army colonel.

Defections by Alawites, who make up the backbone of Assad’s regime, are relatively uncommon. Almost all the defections have been from Syria’s Sunni majority, who dominate the rebellion.

Three other Alawite intelligence officials went to Jordan three weeks ago, said the two rebels, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals from the Assad regime. Jordanian officials declined comment.

In other developments, the U.S. military has secretly dispatched a task force of more than 150 planners and other specialists to Jordan to help the armed forces there handle a flood of Syrian refugees, prepare for the possibility that Syria will lose control of its chemical weapons and be positioned should the turmoil in Syria expand into a wider conflict.

The task force, which has been led by a senior U.S. officer, is based at a Jordanian military training center built into an old rock quarry north of Amman. It is now largely focused on helping Jordanians handle the estimated 180,000 Syrian refugees who have crossed the border and are severely straining the country’s resources.

U.S. officials familiar with the operation said the mission also includes drawing up plans to try to insulate Jordan, an important U.S. ally in the region, from the upheaval in Syria and to avoid the kind of clashes now occurring along the border between Syria and Turkey.

Officials from the Pentagon and Central Command, which oversees U.S. military operations in the Middle East, declined to comment on the task force or its mission. A spokesman for the Jordanian Embassy in Washington would also not comment Tuesday.

Information for this article was contributed by Selcan Hacaoglu, Jonathan Tirone and Donna Abu-Nasr of Bloomberg News; by Slobodan Lekic, Frank Jordans, Barbara Surk, Zeina Karam and Suzan Fraser of The Associated Press and by Michael R. Gordon, Elisabeth Bumiller, Eric Schmitt and Ranya Kadri of The New York Times.