The Syrian foreign minister accused the administration of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan over its actions on Syrian soil with some of the the most striking remarks used by a senior Syrian official against Turkey since the beginning of the Syrian civil war in 2011.

Faisal Mekdad said in a presentation on Monday in Syria’s legislative authority the People’s Assembly that Turkish presence in Syria’s north is ‘an aggression and occupation, seeking the formation of tense hotbeds in the region’, according to a report by North Press Agency.

Mekdad also said: “Aggression and occupation are the only legal real descriptions of the Turkish illegal presence on Syrian soil.”

He continued:

“The destruction the Turkish regime is practicing on Syrian lands is an act of aggression that seeks to create persistent tense hotbeds inside Syria to continue supporting, arming and operating terrorist organisations in favour of prevarication and opportunistic policies adopted by Erdogan’s regime, posing a notable threat to both regional and international peace and stability.”

He added:

“Any measure or act the Turkish regime has practiced or is practicing in Syrian lands is but illegal and null, and amounts to war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

He further stressed that Turkey seeks through its acts of “ethnic and social cleansing”, “to move and displace people from their homes and homelands in order to seize their properties, houses and lands, and threaten their life and future.”

Mekdad also warned against legal consequences of funding projects and programs that the Turkish administration implements in occupied Syrian territories, under the pretext of addressing the situation surrounding the Syrian refugees.

He said that the true objective of such projects is to seize the properties of the original inhabitants of these territories where refugees are planned to be settled.