TURKISH President Recep Tayyip Erdogan lashed out at domestic and foreign opponents yesterday ahead of talks with Saudi Arabian King ­Salman.

 

Speaking to reporters before his departure for the Saudi capital Riyadh, Mr Erdogan accused Syrian President Bashar al-Assad of slaughtering his own people.

 

In comments apparently directed at Russia’s military intervention in Syria, Mr Erdogan said: “You cannot go anywhere by supporting a regime that has mercilessly killed 400,000 innocent people with conventional and chemical weapons.”

 

The UN estimates casualties in the four-year war at 250,000, while the Syrian government allowed its chemical weapons stockpiles to be destroyed under the 2013 UN security council resolution 2118.

 

Mr Erdogan said his government and Saudi Arabia were still pushing for regime change in Syria.

 

Nato member Turkey is among the 34 nations named by Saudi Arabia as part of its so-called anti-terrorism alliance of Muslim nations announced two weeks ago.

 

Mr Erdogan also warned supporters of the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) militia they were “adding fuel to fire.”

 

The YPG, which controls most of Syria’s border with Turkey, has received arms and air support from both the US and Russia.

 

It is politically linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), branded a terrorist organisation by both Ankara and Washington, but has been the most effective ground opponent of Isis.

 

Protest rallies called by Turkey’s largest trade unions against its pre-election military crackdown on Kurdish areas were broken up by police with water cannon and tear gas on Monday, but demonstrators gathered again yesterday.

 

Mr Erdogan also took the occasion to accuse opposition Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) co-chair Selahattin Demirtas of “provocation and treachery” for supporting the PKK’s aim of regional autonomy for predominantly Kurdish south-eastern Turkey

 

On Monday authorities launched an investigation into Mr Demirtas and other politicians in the city of Diyarbakir.