Region

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Jerusalem’s Israeli Mayor Nir Barkat visited the Al Aqsa Mosque compound Tuesday, his office said, prompting criticism from the site’s Muslim authorities following weeks of tension at the flashpoint shrine.

The early morning visit, which saw Barkat touring the compound with a group of Israeli forces, followed weeks of intermittent clashes triggered by reports Israel was mulling a change in the status quo to allow Jewish prayer at the sprawling site inside the Old City.

Barkat “visited the Temple Mount together with the chief of police responsible for the area to assess the current situation and gain a deeper understanding of the issues and challenges at the site”, a statement said, using the Israeli term for the compound.

The Islamic Waqf body that oversees the site “rejected” the visit, saying it had not been coordinated.

The visit was “merely for publicity and its political nature is characteristic of” Barkat, Azzam Al Khatib, head of the waqf, told AFP.

In a statement, the Al Aqsa Foundation condemned what it described as the “storming” of the compound by Barkat.

“This does not give any legitimacy to considering Al Aqsa part of the jurisdiction of the [West] Jerusalem [Israeli] municipality, and does not erase the eternal Islamic character of the mosque,” said the foundation, an offshoot of a radical branch of Israel’s Islamic Movement religious advocacy group.

Tensions often erupt at the site, which is both the third-holiest location in Islam and the most sacred place in Judaism.

A provocative visit by then-opposition leader Ariel Sharon to the compound in 2000 sparked the outbreak of the second Palestinian Intifada, a five-year uprising that left hundreds dead.

Tensions running high 

Non-Muslim visits are permitted and regulated by police, but Jews are not allowed to pray there for fear it could trigger major disturbances, nor do they enter the mosques.

Visits by religious nationalist Israelis tend to trigger clashes between stone-throwing youths and police, as well as complaints from Jordan which oversees Muslim heritage sites in Jerusalem.

Palestinians fear such visits are an attempt to usurp the site and in recent months clashes there have multiplied, prompting a police vow to crack down.

Tuesday’s visit, which came a day after Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah also toured the site, passed off without incident, police said.

Last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reassured Jordan that Israel was not seeking to change the status quo at the compound.

Rumours of an attempted Israeli change were sparked by a draft bill put together by a hardliner from Netanyahu’s rightwing Likud Party that seeks to extend visiting hours for Jews.

Earlier this month, President Mahmoud Abbas urged Palestinians to prevent “settlers” — a euphemism for nationalist Israeli Jews — from visiting the Al Aqsa compound “by all means”, following a series of clashes at the site.

He has also pledged to seek international legal measures to prevent such provocative visits.

Jerusalem’s annexed Arab eastern sector has been the site of near-nightly clashes since the murder of a Palestinian teenager by Jewish extremists in July, which intensified during the 50-day Gaza war over the summer.

Clashes again intensified last week after a Palestinian from Silwan drove his car into Jerusalem pedestrians, killing an infant and a young woman. He was shot dead by police while trying to flee the scene.

But security spokeswoman Luba Samri told AFP that Monday night had passed quietly.

ANKARA — Turkey cannot be expected to send troops to defend the besieged Syrian border town of Kobani and only Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga fighters and Syria's own moderate opposition can save it, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said.

US warplanes have been bombing Islamic State (IS) positions near Kobani for weeks, but air strikes alone will not be enough to repel the insurgents, Davutoglu said.

"Saving Kobani, retaking Kobani and some area around Kobani from ISIS, there's a need for a military operation," he said in an interview with the BBC broadcast on Tuesday.

But made clear neither Turkey nor Western allies would commit troops.

"If they [international coalition] don't want to send their ground troops, how can they expect Turkey to send Turkish ground troops with the same risks on our border," Davutoglu said.

Kobani, on Turkey's southeastern border, has been encircled by IS fighters for more than a month, and the battle to save it has become a test of the US-led coalition's strategy for halting the radical Sunni Muslim group's advance.

Turkish officials have rebuffed international criticism over their reluctance to do more to help Kobani's beleaguered Kurdish defenders, whom they say are linked to the militant Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has fought a decades long insurgency against the Turkish state.

After pressure from Western allies, Turkey last week agreed to let peshmerga forces from Iraq cross its territory to reach Kobani as its preferred alternative to US planes air-dropping weapons to Kurdish fighters in the town.

On Monday, a Turkish official denied accusations from a Syrian Kurdish leader that Ankara was stalling on the deal, saying the peshmerga could cross "as soon as they are ready".

"The only way to help Kobani since other countries don't want to use ground troops, is sending some peace oriented or moderate troops to Kobani. What are they? Peshmerga... and Free Syrian Army [Syrian opposition forces]."

No coalition allies have publicly called on Turkey to intervene militarily but images of Turkish troops standing by as IS advanced just across the border have drawn criticism.

Turkey has repeatedly called for a long-term strategic plan for Syria involving the removal of President Bashar  Assad from power, fearing that Assad's forces or Kurdish militants will fill the void if IS is pushed back.

Davutoglu renewed calls on the United States to train and arm fighters from the Free Syrian Army (FSA), a loose coalition of groups who have been battling Assad and who have long been supported by Turkey.

"Equip and train the Free Syrian Army so that if ISIS [Islamic State] leaves, the regime should not come, so that if ISIS leaves, PKK terrorists should not come," he said.

"We will help any forces, any coalition, through airbases [within Turkey] or through other means if we have a common understanding to have a new pluralistic, democratic Syria."

Washington has committed to arming the Syrian opposition to fight IS, but officials remain concerned about identifying effective, moderate groups in the increasingly bloody and radicalised conflict.

EL ARISH, Egypt — Egyptian authorities on Tuesday ordered residents living along the country's eastern border with the Gaza Strip to evacuate so they can demolish their homes and set up a buffer zone to stop weapons and militant trafficking between Egypt and the Palestinian territory, officials said.

The measure comes four days after militants attacked an army post, killing at least 31 soldiers in the restive area in the northeastern corner of the Sinai Peninsula. After the attack, Egypt declared a state of emergency and dawn-to-dusk curfew there. Authorities also indefinitely closed the Gaza crossing, the only non-Israeli passage for the crowded strip with the world.

The buffer zone, which will include water-filled trenches to thwart tunnel diggers, will be 500 metres wide and extended along the 13-kilometre border.

Army officers spoke to the affected residents in person and initially gave them a 48-hour ultimatum to leave, but put that on hold after they protested, officials said. Residents groups are now negotiating with local officials to see if they can extend the deadline.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to brief reporters.

The Egyptian army has waged a broad offensive in northern Sinai against Islamic militants who have turned several areas into strongholds over the past three years, destroying many of the sprawling smuggling tunnels that connected the area with Gaza

Egyptian media, meanwhile, has accused Gaza's Hamas rulers for meddling in Egypt's affairs, with some suggesting that the Islamic militant group is supporting fighters inside Egypt since the military overthrew Egypt's elected president, Mohamed Morsi, last year.

Hamas officials, meanwhile, deny any interference and criticise Egypt for imposing stricter border crossing rules since then.

DUBAI — A Bahraini court banned the Gulf state's main opposition movement for three months Tuesday, just weeks before a parliamentary election the group had already said it would boycott.

Al Wefaq said it was seriously concerned by the move, which it described as "irrational and irresponsible".

The Manama administrative court ruled that Al Wefaq, which draws most of its support from the Sunni-ruled kingdom's Shiite majority, had violated the law on associations, a court official said.

Political parties are banned in key US ally Bahrain, as in other Gulf Arab monarchies. Al Wefaq has the status of an association.

In July, the justice ministry sued Al Wefaq, demanding it rectify its "illegal status following the annulment of four general assemblies for lack of a quorum and the non-commitment to the public and transparency requirements for holding them".

The court gave the group three months to hold a general assembly to elect its leaders, the official said.

Without commenting on the accusations, Al Wefaq responded saying "the tyrannical dictatorship in Bahrain is ruling with an iron fist and moving to destroy the political and social life by blocking the people out".

The United States had voiced "strong concerns" over the lawsuit, warning of its potential impact on the November 22 polls.

Not only has Al Wefaq announced a boycott, but so have other opposition groups.

In July, Bahrain's chief prosecutor tested relations with close ally Washington when he charged Al Wefaq head Sheikh Ali Salman, and his political aide, ex-MP Khalil Marzooq, with violating a law on foreign contacts by meeting US Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labour Tom Malinowski.

Following the meeting, Bahrain told Malinowski he was "unwelcome" and said he should leave the country "immediately".

Vote faces 'organised terrorism'

Elections for a new 40-seat lower house of parliament are the first since 2011 protests demanding more representative democracy. Municipal elections will be held simultaneously.

Al Wefaq, which led the protest movement against the Sunni regime, made slender gains in the last election, in 2010. But it withdrew its 18 MPs after the government crushed the protests in March 2011.

The opposition is demanding an independent electoral commission and the dissolution of the consultative council, parliament's upper chamber whose members are appointed by the king.

It is also demanding the prime minister be appointed by parliamentary majority, instead of the king.

Bahraini authorities accuse Al Wefaq of fuelling unrest across the kingdom, as people in Shiite villages hold frequent protests and sometimes clash with members of the security forces.

But Al Wefaq insists on the "peaceful" nature of its movement.

Tensions are already running high with the pre-election campaign marked by sporadic acts of violence.

The authorities have been accusing dissidents during the past weeks of attacking candidates to whom the interior ministry has offered protection.

And government spokeswoman Sameera Rajab wrote Friday on Twitter that "elections in Bahrain are facing organised terrorism".

But no major incidents or casualties have been reported.

The opposition took part in two rounds of dialogue after the uprising but withdrew from the talks, saying the authorities were not making enough concessions.

In reaction to Tuesday's decision, New York-based Human Rights First warned it could "lead to more friction and instability in the country as it prepares for parliamentary elections".

Human Rights First's Brian Dooley said: "With less than four weeks until Bahrain's parliamentary elections, the decision to suspend Al Wefaq looks far from coincidental."

With the decision, Al Wefaq would no longer be able to carry out public campaigns to persuade people not to vote in the election, said Dooley.

"Today's ruling takes Bahrain further off the path to democracy," he said.

Al Wefaq vowed to "continue in its struggle for democratic transition and justice to build a democratic state for all Bahrainis and end the totalitarian rule that is excluding the people through harsh sentences and security measures that violate fundamental human rights."

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — Despite high praise from politicians, British troops ending their combat mission in Afghanistan's Helmand are leaving behind a province still blighted by insurgency and a huge opium harvest.

The last 400 or so British troops were airlifted from Camp Bastion to Kandahar on Monday in preparation for a flight home, ending a mission that lasted longer than World War II and cost 453 lives.

A similar number of US Marines were flown from the adjacent Camp Leatherneck to Kandahar, from where they will soon depart for the US.

US and British troops have been in Afghanistan since the 2001 US-led invasion which ousted the Taliban government in Kabul.

When the British took over command in the southern province of Helmand in 2006, there were hopes they could employ a softer approach than their US counterparts — and win hearts and minds in the stronghold of Taliban insurgents battling to regain power.

Their mission was hailed Sunday by British Prime Minister David Cameron and senior local Afghan officials as a success that lays solid foundations for NATO's post-2014 training and support mission.

Cameron said troops could be "proud of all they have achieved to keep us safe".

But while the Afghan National Army has been strengthened by billions of dollars of aid and Western training, some analysts warn that a lack of strategic foresight means the British have left with their mission uncompleted.

Chief among the concerns is the growing menace of opium production, which helps sustain the insurgency.

Afghan poppy production hit an all-time high last year as farmers sought to "insure" themselves before the withdrawal of NATO combat forces by the end of this year.

Cultivation nationwide amounted to 207,000 hectares in 2013 — far outstripping the previous record of 193,000 hectares in 2007 and with Helmand accounting for 48 per cent, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

"Farmers may have driven up cultivation... trying to shore up their assets as insurance against an uncertain future," a UNODC report said.

Missed opportunities  

Helmand has seen some of the fiercest fighting of the war.

Despite a mixture of peace deals and major pushes undertaken with US allies, coalition forces failed significantly to dent the insurgents, who this year have redoubled their efforts — killing 7,000-9,000 Afghan security forces nationwide.

A report by the respected Afghan Analysts Network in July detailed how a series of mis-steps allowed one district of Helmand to sink further into the hands of the insurgents.

It said the district's "shadow governor", Taliban commander Mullah Abdul Qayum, was on the verge of switching sides in 2010 because he was incensed by the insurgents' brutality.

But after months of secret communication with Afghan and British officials, Qayum and his entourage were bombed by US forces who hailed it as a triumph.

The report also criticised the British-led Provincial Reconstruction Team for failing to deliver development projects that would have been a sign of good faith to Taliban commanders who had reined in violence, and subsequently allowing the fighting to return.

"It was unfortunate that, although the coalition subscribed in public to the idea that the war in Afghanistan could only be resolved politically, military expediency usually trumped political necessity in practice," it said.

Taliban pushback 

Brigadier-General Robert Thomson, the highest-ranking officer with the British forces, said he felt the time was right to hand over.

"We look back with pride because the Afghans are ready to pick up the baton. They've been in the lead already since May 2013 and they've done well. But there remain some challenges in security and government," he told AFP.

US General John Campbell, commander of ISAF forces, offered an equally sanguine assessment.

"Helmand as you know has been a very tough area, and a very tough last couple of months. Those were very tough to the Afghan security forces as they continue to grow their capacities," he said.

"In Afghanistan it's always going to be a country that's going to have security-type issues."

Some 20 planes and helicopters were involved in the 24-hour evacuation operation, moving back and forth between the two bases.

Many ordinary troops spoke of a job well done.

But on the ground, some locals are fiercely critical about the British record in Helmand, drawing parallels with their ill-fated 19th-century colonial adventures.

"The British troops have been defeated the second time in Helmand, the first time they were beaten almost a hundred years ago," said Mohammad Ismail, a farmer from Helmand's Musa Qala district.

"Now they are fleeing Helmand province. The Taliban are making progress and gaining ground, hundreds of their soldiers were killed and thousands were left wounded, but they are hiding the reality. It was a failed mission for them in Helmand."

RAMALLAH — An Israeli plan to build more than 1,000 new housing units for settlers in occupied East Jerusalem is likely to cause an "explosion" of violence, a senior Palestinian official warned Monday.

"Such unilateral acts will lead to an explosion," Jibril Rajoub told reporters at a news conference in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Rajoub, a senior figure in the Fateh movement of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said such a move would further inflame tensions in East Jerusalem, a sector which has seen almost daily clashes for the past four months.

An official at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's bureau earlier confirmed plans for around 1,000 new housing units in Jabal Abu Ghneim (known to Israelis as Har Homa) and Ramat Shlomo, two Jewish settlement neighbourhoods in Arab East Jerusalem.

Abbas’ spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina slammed the move as a “dangerous escalation” which had the potential to create an “earthquake” in the region.

Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said the new construction would push the Palestinian leadership to “speed up” plans to approach the UN Security Council and to join the International Criminal Court (ICC).

“Everything Netanyahu’s government is doing are war crimes which must be tried according to international law,” he told AFP, calling on Washington to “rethink its biased position” towards Israel.

He also urged the US administration “not to oppose” Palestinians plans to submit a resolution to the Security Council calling for an end to the Israeli occupation within two years.

Should the initiative be thwarted by a likely US veto, the Palestinians have pledged to join the ICC where they could sue Israeli officials for war crimes — a move which Rajoub said could come “within a matter of weeks”.

"We will not give in to any pressure — neither American pressure nor to Mr Netanyahu's threats. We will go to the ICC. We have already made our mind up," Rajoub said.

"If hope is diminishing of coming up with a [Security Council] resolution, then we have no other choice."

He said it would be a mistake to expect the Palestinians to simply ignore Israel's actions in East Jerusalem.

"Mr Netanyahu should not expect a white flag from the Palestinian people," he said.

Israel occupied East Jerusalem during the 1967 war and later annexed it in a move never recognised by the international community.

Israel, regarding Jerusalem as its undivided capital, does not view construction in the eastern sector as settlement building.

But such moves infuriate the Palestinians who want East Jerusalem as capital of their future state.

BAGHDAD — A suicide bomber detonated an explosives-rigged Humvee armoured vehicle near security forces and allied militiamen south of Baghdad, killing at least 14, an officer and a doctor said Monday.

The blast took place on the northern edge of Jurf Al Sakhr, a large area south of the capital, where the government announced it retook the strategic town of the same name from the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group over the weekend.

Accounts of the attack, which also wounded at least 25 people, differed sharply.

Some sources insisted it took place on Sunday while others reported a similar attack in the same area on Monday.

There were also varying reports on the intended target of the attack, though most agreed it was against soldiers and Shiite militiamen.

Security forces and militia allies have fought for months to regain ground in Jurf Al Sakhr from IS, which spearheaded a major militant offensive that has overrun large areas since June.

The jihadists seized significant quantities of military equipment, including Humvees that have been used in suicide attacks on several occasions, as they swept security forces aside.

The expansive Jurf Al Sakhr area is strategic because of its location along the southern approach to Baghdad and on the way to Amriyat Al Fallujah, a town that has been hard-pressed by IS in recent weeks.

And Jurf Al Sakhr lies west of the main highway on which tens of thousands of Shiite pilgrims will travel in the coming days on the way to the city of Karbala for the annual Ashoura commemorations.

Pilgrims taking part in the commemorations, which mark the death of Imam Hussein, one of the most revered figures in Shiite Islam, are often targeted with bombings during the annual rituals, which peak next week.

Karbala governor Aqil Al Turaihi has said that "Securing Jurf Al Sakhr is securing Karbala and the south completely, as the gateway to the south begins from Jurf Al Sakhr”.

And holding it would also better position Iraqi forces to strike at militants in nearby Anbar province, where they have suffered a string of setbacks, prompting warnings that the entire province could fall.

BEIRUT — When Sunni rebels rose up against Syria's Bashar Assad in 2011, Turkey reclassified its protégé as a pariah, expecting him to lose power within months and join the autocrats of Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Yemen on the scrap heap of the "Arab Spring".

Assad, in contrast, shielded diplomatically by Russia and with military and financial support from Iran and its Shiite allies in Lebanon's Hezbollah, warned that the fires of Syria's sectarian war would burn its neighbours.

For Turkey, despite the confidence of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, elected this summer to the presidency after 11 years as prime minister and three straight general election victories, Assad's warning is starting to ring uncomfortably true.

Turkey's foreign policy is in ruins. Its once shining image as a Muslim democracy and regional power in the NATO alliance and at the doors of the European Union is badly tarnished.

Amid a backlash against political Islam across the region Erdogan is still irritating his Arab neighbours by offering himself as a Sunni Islamist champion.

The world, meanwhile, is transfixed by the desperate siege of Kobani, the Syrian Kurdish town just over Turkey's border, under attack by extremist Sunni fighters of the Islamic State (IS) who are threatening to massacre its defenders.

Erdogan has enraged Turkey's own Kurdish minority — about a fifth of the population and half of all Kurds across the region — by seeming to prefer that IS jihadis extend their territorial gains in Syria and Iraq rather than that Kurdish insurgents consolidate local power.

The forces holding on in Kobani are part of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), closely allied to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has fought a 30-year war against the Turkish state and is now holding peace talks with Ankara.

Big risks 

Meanwhile, Turkish tanks stood idly by as the unequal fight raged between the PYD and IS, while Erdogan said both groups were "terrorists" and Kobani would soon fall. It was a public relations disaster.

It drew criticism from NATO allies in the US-led coalition, which has bombed jihadi positions around the town in coordination with the PYD. It also prompted Kurdish riots across south-east Turkey resulting in more than 40 dead.

At the same time, Turkey's air force bombed PKK positions near the Iraqi border for the first time in two years, calling into question the 2013 ceasefire declared by Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed PKK leader. PKK commanders warned that if Turkey let Kobani fall, they would go back to war.

Yet now that the United States has dropped arms to Kobani's defenders, Erdogan has been forced to relent and open a Turkish corridor for Peshmerga fighters from Iraq to reinforce Kobani.

Turkish officials fear this will provoke reprisals in Turkey by IS, activating networks it built during the two years the Erdogan government allowed jihadi volunteers to cross its territory to fight in Syria. Almost anything Turkey does now comes with big risks. 

Polarised nation 

The polarisation within Turkey along sectarian and ethnic lines — which analysts say Erdogan has courted with his stridently Sunni tone as communal conflict between Sunni and Shiite rages to Turkey's south — is easy to detect in the poor and deeply conservative district of Fatih in Istanbul.

"I prefer to have IS than PKK in control of Kobani," says Sitki, a shopkeeper. "They are Muslims and we are Muslims. [But] we as Muslims should be ruled by the Koran under Sharia law."

Another local shopkeeper, Nurullah, 35, broadly agreed.

"The only mistake the government has made is to open the door to Kurdish refugees. PYD and PKK are the same, both terrorists. How do [the Americans] have the nerve to ask us to help PYD?"

"Of course Islamic State has sympathisers here because they are wiping out the PKK," Nurullah continued.

Nearby, a bearded Arabic-speaking man who declined to be named said it made sense that "Turkey as a Sunni nation supports IS over the crusaders", a hostile reference to the US-led coalition against IS of which Turkey looks an unwilling party. 

Zero neighbours 

The increasingly overt Sunni alignment of Erdogan's Turkey is, paradoxically, contributing to its isolation, at a time when the United States has won the support of the Sunni Arab powers, led by Saudi Arabia, in the campaign against IS.

Partly, that is because Erdogan and his new prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who as foreign minister was the architect of Turkey's eastward turn away from the EU, continue to champion the pan-Islamic Muslim Brotherhood, ousted in Egypt last year and banned across the Gulf.

But it is also because of Ankara's ambivalence towards IS, which some in Turkey's government saw as a bulwark against its three main regional adversaries: the Assad regime, the Shiite-led government in Iraq and the Kurds.

"Their policy is making Turkey look completely isolated,” says Hugh Pope of the International Crisis Group.

Yet there is a wide consensus that Erdogan and his Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) tried and failed to take a leadership role as the turmoil of the Arab Spring swept across the region and have ended up by infecting Turkey's secular republic with the sectarianism plaguing the Levant.

"From a zero problems policy [with neighbours] to zero neighbours," said a headline in the leftist Evrensel newspaper in reference to the AKP policy of entente with neighbouring states.

IS fighting Turkey's enemies

Behlul Ozkan, a political scientist at Istanbul's Marmara University, says the Erdogan government has supported Islamist movements in the Middle East to establish a sphere of influence and play a leadership role.

"When the Arab Spring started, Davutoglu saw it as an opportunity for his imperial fantasy of establishing the Ikhwan [Muslim Brotherhood] belt from Tunisia to Gaza.”

"They are obsessed with destroying the Assad regime. They see IS as an opportunity for Turkey since it is fighting its enemies on three fronts: against Baghdad's Shi'ite-dominated leadership, against Assad and the PYD, which is an affiliate of the PKK."

Soli Ozel, a prominent academic and commentator, said the Erdogan government's initial expectation was that the Muslim Brotherhood would come to power in Syria.

"Turkish officials believed a year and a half ago they could control the jihadis but they played with fire. This was a policy of sectarianism and they got into something... they couldn't control, and that is why we are here."

Other commentators and Turkish officials say Western and Arab powers that called for Assad to be toppled but refused to give mainstream Syrian rebels the weapons to do it are to blame for the rise of Jihadis in the resulting vacuum.

"They [Turkish officials] bet on Assad to fall and when they lost, instead of backing off they are doubling down," says Hakan Altinay of the Brookings Institution. "They are not the only culprits. The international community is also a culprit in this affair."

Caught between two fires

But uppermost among Ankara's fears is the prospect that Syrian Kurds led by the PYD — newly legitimised by their alliance with the United States — will establish a new Kurdish entity on Turkey's frontiers, which will incite Turkey's Kurds to seek self government.

"In the realpolitik of all this, IS is fighting all the enemies of Turkey — the Assad regime, Iraqi Shiites and the Kurds — but the spillover effect is that it is now paying the price in terms of its vulnerability on the Kurdish question," says Kadri Gursel, a prominent liberal columnist.

Cengiz Candar, veteran columnist and expert on the Kurdish issue adds: "If Syrian Kurds are successful and establish self-rule they will set a precedent and a model for Turkey's Kurds, and more than 50 per cent of Kurds in the world live here.”

Turkey is thus caught between two fires: the possibility of the PKK-led Kurdish insurgency inside Turkey reviving because of Ankara's policy towards the Syrian Kurds; and the risk that a more robust policy against IS will provoke reprisal attacks that could be damage its economy and the tourist industry that provides Turkey with around a tenth of its income.

Internationally, one veteran Turkish diplomat fears, IS "is acting as a catalyst legitimising support for an independent Kurdish state not just in Syria but in Turkey" at a time when leading powers have started to question Turkey's ideological and security affiliations with the West.

LONDON — A British surgeon who died in a Syrian prison last year days before his planned release was unlawfully killed, a London jury investigating the case ruled on Monday.

Abbas Khan, a 32-year-old orthopaedic surgeon from London, was detained in Syria almost two years ago and found dead in a prison cell last December.

His family said Khan had been arrested in the northern city of Aleppo within 48 hours of arriving in Syria to volunteer as an emergency doctor and had not hanged himself days before his scheduled release, as the Syrian authorities had said.

Hundreds of Western Europeans are suspected of travelling to Syria to fight with Islamic State insurgents who have seized control of large parts of Syria and Iraq. The Khan family had always said that Abbas Khan had gone to the region solely to offer his medical services.

"We have always maintained that he was mistreated, maltreated and tortured by the Syrian authorities... [and that] he was murdered by the Syrians," Khan's brother Afroze told reporters outside court in central London.

"Today, our position as a family has been vindicated completely. All the aspersions and allegations against my brother — that he had gone for any other reason apart from helping the innocent civilians — have been disproved today."

His mother Fatima spent five months in Damascus working for her son's release, but when she went to pick him up in December 2013 she was told he had killed himself.

"He was not a man that was in despair or had lost hope," Afroze told Reuters in an interview shortly afterwards. "He wasn't in that state of mind. He was cheerful. That sort of man doesn't commit suicide. It is a falsehood for anyone to say otherwise."

The British Foreign Office said it supported the court inquest and was considering its next steps.

"Dr. Khan's imprisonment without consular access was unacceptable," said Foreign Office Middle East minister Tobias Ellwood, saying Britain had made repeated requests for his detention to be reviewed.

"The Syrian regime ignored these approaches. It can no longer do so. His family deserve answers and those responsible for Dr. Khan's death should be brought to justice."

A subdued Fatima Khan told reporters on Monday she welcomed the ruling but said governments around the world, including the British, had failed to help her son.

"I'm proud but I'm hurt, I lost my son," she said, adding that he had gone to save lives.

ISTANBUL — The Hungarian consulate in Istanbul on Monday became the sixth diplomatic mission in Turkey's largest city to receive a suspicious powder through the post but the authorities said there was no indication the substance was dangerous.

The consulates of Belgium, Canada, Germany, France and the United States — all countries involved in the international coalition against Islamic State (IS) jihadists — had reported receiving the yellow powder on Friday.

The Hungarian consulate informed the authorities Monday that it had also received the powder and experts from Turkey's disaster management agency AFAD were sent to the scene, the Istanbul authorities said in a statement.

The statement said it appeared the powder sent to the Hungarian consulate was likely to have been sent in the same batch as the others, given that the consulate had been closed for the last two working days.

In a similar incident, an envelope containing an unidentified yellow powder was also sent the main criminal court in Ankara, Turkish media said.

The health ministry said Monday that tests on samples of the powder collected Friday had showed no evidence of lethal viruses or substances including anthrax, plague, ricin, tularemia or other biological warfare agents.

However it said that tests were continuing throughout the day and final results would be announced later Monday.

The Ankara governor's office also said that the powder sent to the courthouse in the capital contained no dangerous substances.

At least 25 people — six foreigners and 19 Turks — working at the consulates who came into contact with the powder were kept in hospital over the weekend as a precautionary measure.

All, however, were released after the negative results and were in good health, the ministry said.

Six staff from the Hungarian consulate in Istanbul were hospitalised as a precaution after the powder was opened, Anatolia news agency said.

Hungary announced in August it would send ammunition to Iraq to help the Iraqi authorities fight against the IS jihadists, who have seized large parts of the country.

The scare in Istanbul came amid mounting concerns about the growing national security threat to Turkey and Western states posed by the jihadists, who are trying to seize the town of Kobane close to Turkey's border with Syria.