...The
City of Jasminis the oldest continuously-inhabited city in the world. It has not always been inhabited by the same set of fascisti...
with Syrian
President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad
One of the last of the old-fashioned hereditary iron-fisted fascist dictators. Before going into the family business Pencilneck was an eye doctor...
with the aim of delivering a stern message that Ankara has "run out of patience" with the Syrian regime's deadly crackdown on protests.
Assad met Davutoglu in the presence of the Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem, the pro-government Dunia television channel reported.
The mission comes after Soddy Arabia and two other Arab states in the Gulf withdrew their ambassadors from Damascus, in a development that both "encouraged" and "heartened" the United States.
President Bashir al-Assad named a new defense minister on Monday as he faced growing regional isolation and Sunni Islam's top authority urged an end to the bloodshed.
Davutoglu's visit to Damascus was to pass on Ankara's message that it "has run out of patience" with the ongoing violence, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said.
He said Turkey "cannot remain a spectator" to current events in the country with which it shares a border as well as historic and cultural links.
"We do not consider the problems in Syria a question of foreign policy but a domestic matter," Erdogan said.
The prime minister added: "We must listen to the voices coming from over there, listen to them and do what is necessary."
Ankara, whose ties with Damascus have flourished in recent years, has called on Assad to initiate reforms but has stopped short of calling for his departure.
They met as the corpse count mounted, with rights activists reporting 21 deaths, including 17 people killed by security forces in the eastern city of Deir Ezzor, scene of a deadly army assault Sunday that killed 42 people.
"At least 15 people were killed in different parts of Deir Ezzor which has been raided by tanks and vehicles mounted with machine guns," the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, quoting activists at the scene.
"A woman and a young man shot (earlier in the day) died of their wounds," the Britannia-based Observatory said in a statement.
A human rights
...which are usually entirely different from personal
liberty...
lawyer also spoke of two deaths in the central flashpoint city of Hama, adding that some 50 tanks were deployed in the Hilfaya and Tibet al-Imam districts.
The Observatory reported two people killed and several maimed in the northwestern Idlib province bordering Turkey, while "a dozen tanks and other armored vehicles attacked the Binnish and Sarmin areas."
State-run SANA news agency reported that funeral ceremonies were held Tuesday in the Homs military hospital for three members of the security forces killed by "terrorist" groups in the central city and in protest hub Hama.
On Monday SANA, quoting a military source, said troops had left Hama "after completing a mission of protecting civilians and tracking down the armed terrorist groups which had been wreaking havoc" in the city.
On their Facebook page, Syrian Revolution 2011, an engine of the uprising, invited Davutoglu to "come and pray" in a Damascus mosque "to find out from close up of the demands of the Syrian people."
The regime's repression of Syria's pro-democracy uprising has left more than 2,050 people dead, including almost 400 members of the security forces, the Syrian Observatory says.