Protecting Syria's territorial integrity an 'unchanging line' for Turkey: Erdogan

Ensuring the protection of Syria's territorial integrity is an unchanging line for Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday.

"Protecting Syria's territorial integrity and unitary structure under all circumstances is Turkey's unchanging line. We never step back from this," he said after remarks warning Israel that it would be "forced" to withdraw from land it had seized.

Last week, Erdogan hit out at Israel over its plans to double the population living in the occupied and annexed Golan Heights, denouncing it as a bid to "expand its borders" in the wake of the fall of Syria's Bashar al-Assad.

The move came just days after Israeli troops seized a UN-monitored buffer zone bordering Syria.

"Although Israel is opportunistic, sooner or later it will withdraw from the lands it occupies. It will be forced to do so," Erdogan said, without elaborating.

The Golan Heights is a mountainous plateau at Syria's southwestern edge, most of which was captured by Israel during the 1967 Six-Day War and later annexed.

It is separated from the Syrian side by the UN-patrolled buffer zone. Israel has said its presence there was a "limited and temporary step" for "security reasons".

Erdogan also said Turkey would continue to press its offensive against "terrorist organisations" in northern Syria, which were being carried out with "surgical precision without harming civilians".

On Saturday, a war monitor said five civilians in northeastern Syria were killed by a Turkish drone.

Two days earlier, two Kurdish journalists were killed in similar circumstances while covering clashes between Ankara-backed and Kurdish fighters, the war monitor and journalists' groups said.

The Turkish army insists it never targets civilians but only "terrorist" groups.

Turkey has been pressing an offensive there to root out Kurdish fighters it sees as linked to the banned PKK which has fought a decades-long insurgency on Turkish soil.

"The PKK and its extensions will either disband or be destroyed. Time is running out for them, the end is in sight. They cannot escape," he said.

Agence France-Presse