NATO has promised to back Ankara in its escalating conflict with Syria, as Turkey adds 25 new F-16 fighter jets to its border protection force. It follows days of retaliation from Turkey after Syrian shells started coming over the border last month.
"We have all the necessary plans in place to protect and defend Turkey if necessary," NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told journalists before a defense ministers meeting in Brussels.
Meanwhile, Turkish news agencies report that 25 F-16 jet fighters have arrived at the Diyarbakir base, 100 kilometers from the Syrian border. Local officials say the aircraft have been designated for operations in Kurdistan, the nearby zone of a long-simmering separatist conflict.
A separate convoy of armed vehicles and transports carrying tanks arrived at another border town.
Turkey has endorsed the uprising against Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad for the past 18 months, providing logistics, funding and safe havens for rebels on its side of the 900-kilometer border.
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