Turkey says Syria offered no formal apology on mortar strike

The official spoke to Today's Zaman on condition of anonymity on Friday, a day after Deputy Prime Minister Beşir Atalay said Syria, after mediation by the UN, had apologized to Turkey over Wednesday's incident and said that the incident would not be repeated again. “Syria accepted that it fired the bomb and apologized. They said nothing like this would happen again. That's good. The UN had mediated and spoke to Syria in the evening,” Atalay told reporters, without elaborating.

Hours after the incident in the border town of Akçakale, Syrian Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi offered his “sincerest condolences on behalf of the Syrian government to the family of the deceased and the Turkish people,” but said Turkey must do more to control its borders and “prevent militants and terrorists from sneaking across.”

Speaking before a UN Security Council vote on a statement condemning Syria for the mortar strike, Syria's UN envoy Bashar Ja'afari said his government was not seeking any escalation of violence with Turkey and wants to maintain good neighborly relations but added that his government hasn't apologized for the shelling because it is waiting for the outcome of an investigation on the source of the firing.

Syria's ally Russia said it had received assurances from Damascus that the mortar strike had been a tragic accident while there have been suggestions that the mortar bomb might have been fired by the Free Syrian Army forces, which are fighting Syrian forces on the Turkish border.

Ja'afari also said Syria wants to explain to the Turkish people that their government's policies of supporting the opposition “are wrong and have been wrong since the beginning of the crisis.”

According to the Syrian envoy, two Syrian army officers were injured in retaliatory attacks from Turkey but that the Syrian side did not respond. “Our forces practiced self-restraint and did not respond to this Turkish artillery shelling,” Ja'afari said.

Speaking late on Thursday, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said his government, which received parliamentary authorization for military operations against Syria earlier that day, did not seek to go into war with Syria but dismissed Syrian suggestions that the mortar strike was an accident. Erdoğan said such shells had fallen on Turkish territory on seven previous occasions since Syria's civil war began last year and that it was unlikely that shells could land in Turkish territory for an eighth time accidentally.

Erdoğan had even tougher words on Friday, saying there could be no talk of peace after “my citizens were martyred.”

“We are not keen on war, but we are not away from war either. My citizens were martyred but we still talk about peace. What peace?” Erdoğan said in a speech in İstanbul.