Turkey Urges U.N. to Mobilize Aid Efforts for Syria

Turkey urged the United Nations on Wednesday to appeal to the Syrian leadership to allow a humanitarian operation to help Syrians suffering from the months-long bloodshed.

Speaking to reporters, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said the U.N. should step in not only on political matters "but also on humanitarian issues," vowing that Turkey would keep the Syrian crisis "on the U.N. agenda."

Turkey is a former ally of Syria but broke off relations because of the violent backlash against demonstrators by the Bashar al-Assad regime which has claimed more than 6,000 lives since mid-March according to monitoring groups.

Diplomatic sources said Turkey refrained from making an open appeal to Assad to open a corridor for the delivery of the humanitarian aid and instead contacted the United Nations to address the problem.

"The opening of an aid corridor is purely for humanitarian means and we want to extend this corridor inside Syria as far as it can go," a Turkish diplomat told Agence France Presse, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Asked if the Damascus regime was turning down calls from the United Nations, the diplomat said: "That's another story," without elaborating.

On Saturday Davutoglu disclosed Turkish plans to lodge a formal request with the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Geneva on the subject of humanitarian aid.

Tunisia will host a "Friends of Syria" meeting on February 24 in another attempt to isolate Assad further and stop the violence, days after the defeat at the Security Council of a U.N. resolution by veto-holding powers Russia and China.

On Wednesday, Davutoglu said he hoped a "strong message" would come out of the Tunisia meeting.

"That would be a kind of message calling for solidarity with the Syrian people and a warning for the regime," he said.

Turkey, which has a 910-kilometer border with Syria, has been at the forefront of international criticism of Damascus, and has become a haven for opposition activists.