Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Friday (April 7) hailed an attack by the United States on a Syrian air base as a positive development but said it was not enough on its own and "serious steps" were needed to protect the Syrian people.
The United States fired cruise missiles earlier on Friday at a Syrian base from which President Donald Trump said a deadly chemical weapons attack had been launched, marking the first direct U.S. assault on the government of Bashar al-Assad in six years of civil war.
At least 70 people, many of them children, were killed in Tuesday's (April 4) attack on Khan Sheikhoun by what US government sources said was sarin gas -- the deadliest chemical attack in Syria since the same nerve agent killed hundreds of people in a rebel-held area near Damascus in 2013. The Syrian government and Moscow have denied that Syrian forces were behind the gas attack.
Turkey, a NATO member and part of the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State, has long argued there can be no peace in Syria under Assad. But following a rapprochement with Russia, it had appeared in recent months to accept the possibility of the Syrian leader staying on in a transitional role.
