It started partly as a sectarian war in some areas, but now it's not, because when you talk about sectarian war or religious war, you should have a very clear line between the sects and religions in Syria according to the geography and the demography in Syria, something we don't have.

You hardly find any military base in distant areas from the [Syria] cities unless it's an airport or something like this, but most of the military bases or centers within inhabited areas.

Whether [Turkey] is a NATO country or not, it doesn't have the right to invade any other country according to the international law or to any other moral value.

From the first day I took the decision as President to defend my country.

We said [U.S] are going to be repercussions of the mistaken way of dealing with it, of treating the terrorism, but nobody expected 11th of September. So, you cannot expect. It is difficult for anyone to tell you what is going to happen. It's an area where everything is on the brink of explosion. You have to expect everything.

I don't believe in war, I believe in the principle of deterrence.

In the eighties, we asked for international coalition against terrorism after the Muslim Brotherhood crisis in Syria when they started killing, of course they were defeated at that time. We asked for the same thing. So, this is a long-term policy that we base our policy on for years now.