The European Union on Monday unanimously condemned Turkey’s military operation in Syria and asked member states to block arms sales to Ankara.
Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Borrell said the 28 member states “have unanimously decided to condemn — that is the verb, not concern, not worry — but to condemn in strong terms what in the end is a military attack.”
Borell added that the EU had called on Turkey “to stop immediately these military actions.” He said that at the meeting of EU foreign ministers, the member states “call also (on) all member states to stop selling any kind of arms” to Turkey.
The Turkish offensive was launched last week after U.S. President Donald Trump announced that he would pull American forces from Syria’s northern frontier, where they served as a buffer between the Turkish military and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.
On Monday, a French diplomatic official said his country would also pull out its troops from Syria, following the U.S. decision to withdraw amid the Turkish offensive in the border area.
As of Thursday, the UN human rights office, OHCHR, reported that seven civilians, including two women and a boy, had been killed in the first two days of the Turkish operation.
On his part, the U.N. Secretary-General on Thursday called for a de-escalation of the conflict in Syria, saying that he did not “believe in military solutions for the Syrian problem, also for any other problem in the world. I always strongly believe in political solutions.”
