Also on Wednesday, it was reported Israeli airstrikes hit Damascus. On the same day, in the southern Syrian city of Sweida, security forces opened fire at protesters angry over the country's worsening economy as they tried to break into the offices of President Bashar Assad's ruling Baath Party.

A 52-year-old man was shot in the chest and later died of his wounds.

There was no immediate comment from Ankara on Wednesday's airstrikes. Turkey has been attacking Kurdish fighters in Syria for years, but attacks on the fighters from the country's Christian minority have been rare.

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Erdoğan was returning a visit Francis made to Turkey in 2014.

Vatican sources say that at the meeting Francis and Erdoğan discussed "bilateral relations between the Holy See and Turkey, the situation within the country and the condition of the Catholic community, Turkey's role in receiving refugees and the challenges this poses".

They also discussed "the situation in the Middle East, with particular reference to the status of Jerusalem, highlighting the need to promote peace and stability in the region through dialogue and negotiation, with respect for human rights and international law."

Both Erdogan and Francis are opposed to U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

While they were meeting, Kurdish protestors holding signs calling Turkey a state-sponsor of terrorism tried to enter St. Peter's Square, but police prevented them from doing so.

They were protesting about Turkey's military offensive on Kurdish areas in northern Syria, which began on 20 January, and has resulted in civilian casualties.

Reports say several protesters also held signs calling for the release of Abdullah Öcalan. Öcalan is a Kurdish nationalist leader who has been jailed in Turkey since 1999.

A group of international press freedom groups also expressed concern about the Pope's meeting with Erdoğan. They released an open letter calling on the pope to bring up Turkey's crackdown on independent journalists with Erdoğan.

Signatories included the International Press Institute, European Center for Press and Media Freedom, PEN International, and Reporters without Borders.

• RadioFreeEurope RadioLiberty
• CruxNow
• Reuters
• Catholic News Agency
• Image: RFE/RL

They are a mixed bag across more than 2600 kms of borders - Iran, Iraq, Syria, Armenia, an Azerbaijan enclave, Georgia, Bulgaria and Greece. And across the Black Sea he has Russia.

Now he has an unofficial neighbour: Daesh, also known as Islamic State. It has been active along Turkey's frontier inside Syria and regards territory it has seized as part of its self-styled caliphate.

It poses a dilemma for President Erdogan. He has 1.5 million refugees on his hands, mainly from Syria as a result of barbaric actions by Daesh. The EU has offered him what some see as a generous bribe to deter the refugees from heading west to Europe.

He has joined the U.S.-led coalition fighting the Daesh, but is his heart really in it even though he has blamed it for killing 100 people at a peace rally in Turkey in October? His air force by all accounts prefers to attack Kurdish targets.

His critics say he tolerates Daesh as being good for business and helping deal with what he sees as his real enemy, the Kurds. But for the U.S.-led coalition fighting Daesh, it is the Kurds who have done more than any other force on the ground in repelling its advances.

David Graeber, a professor at the London School of Economics, thinks he has the answer to eliminate Daesh. Writing in the Guardian, he says:

‘All it would really take would be to unleash the largely Kurdish forces of the YPG (Democratic Union party) in Syria and PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party) guerrillas in Iraq and Turkey. But instead the YPG-controlled territory in Syria finds itself placed under a total embargo by Turkey and the PKK forces are under continual bombardment by the Turkish air force. Not only has Erdogan done almost everything he can to cripple the forces actually fighting (Daesh); there is considerable evidence that his government has been at least tacitly aiding (Daesh) itself'. Continue reading

• John Tulloh had a 40-year career in foreign news. This opinion piece was posted on John Menadue's blog.

Showing off its handiwork daily via Twitter and YouTube, Isis has repeatedly demonstrated that it is much more than a transnational terrorist organisation - rather, it is an entity with sophisticated command, control, propaganda and logistical capabilities, and one that has proven its ability to take and hold strategically critical territory at the heart of the Middle East.

But as world leaders grapple with how to respond to this unprecedented crisis, they must first understand how Isis came to exist.

Principally, Isis is the product of a genocide that continued unabated as the world stood back and watched.

It is the illegitimate child born of pure hate and pure fear - the result of 200,000 murdered Syrians and of millions more displaced and divorced from their hopes and dreams.

Isis's rise is also a reminder of how Bashar al-Assad's Machiavellian embrace of al-Qaida would come back to haunt him.

Facing Assad's army and intelligence services, Lebanon's Hezbollah, Iraq's Shia Islamist militias and their grand patron, Iran's Revolutionary Guards, Syria's initially peaceful protesters quickly became disenchanted, disillusioned and disenfranchised - and then radicalised and violently militant.

The Shia Islamist axis used chemical weapons, artillery and barrel bombs to preserve its crescent of influence.

Syria's Sunni Arab revolutionaries in turn sought international assistance, and when the world refused, they embraced a pact with the devil, al-Qaida.

With its fiercely loyal army of transnational jihadis, al-Qaida once again gained a foothold in the heart of the Middle East.

Fuelled by the hate and fear engendered by images of dismembered children or women suffering from the effects of chemical weapons, disaffected youth from around the world rushed to Syria, fuelling an ever more violent race to the bottom. Continue reading

Sources

• The Guardian
• Image: The Telegraph