Turkey in ring of fire, as security zone off Syria-Iraqi lines: PM

Turkey, as a country shaken through consecutive massive terror activities, is currently in the middle of a ring of fire, the Turkish prime minister has said, adding its security starts off its Syria-Iraqi borders and over a line passing through Syria's Latakia, Aleppo and Iraq's Mosul and Sulaymaniyah. 

"We are in the middle of a ring of fire. I will not announce the number of terrorist attacks we have foiled," Prime Minister Ahmet Davuto?lu told a group of journalists who accompanied him on his two-day trip to the Jordanian capital of Amman on March 27. 

Suicide bomb attacks carried out by outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in recent months have pushed Turkish authorities to rethink their security policies both inside and outside the country. The PKK has its headquarters and training camps in northern Iraq, while its offshoot, the Democratic Union Party (PYD,) is settled in northern Syria, while ISIL controls a good size of territory in both Iraq and Syria. 

"Turkey's security zone starts from Latakia and through Aleppo, Mosul and Sulaymaniyah," Davuto?lu stressed, in remarks which coincided with the Iraqi army offensive launched to liberate Mosul from ISIL. Upon a question on Turkey's approach to this ongoing campaign for Mosul, Davuto?lu said Turkey would welcome the liberation of even the tiniest piece of land from ISIL, recalling it was the common objective of the anti-ISIL coalition. 
   

Aleppo and Mosul two key towns 

The fate of the Middle East is in the hands of two towns, Davuto?lu said, naming them as Syria's Aleppo and Iraq's Mosul. "If Aleppo would fall into the hands of either Daesh [ISIL] or the [Syrian President Bashar al-] Assad regime, then it...