WORLD WAR III 'INEVITABLE' Turkey warns there WILL be all-out nuclear war – because nobody can stop America and Russia coming to blows over Syria

Deputy Prime Minister, Numan Kurtulmus said the conflict had put the world "on the brink of the beginning of a large regional or global war

Smoke rises over Damascus after an airstrike led by the regime of President Assad

TURKEY has warned the world will be plunged into global conflict over Syria – with superpowers Russia and the US on opposing sides.

The country’s deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said the conflict had put the world “on the brink of the beginning of a large regional or global war”.

In an interview he said: “If this proxy war continues, after this, let me be clear, Americaand Russia will come to a point of war.”

US President Barack Obama is backing rebels against Assad regime

Turkey and its Western allies, the US and Britain are calling for Syrian President President Bashar al-Assad to step down.

But Russia’s President Vladimir Putin is a key backer of the Syrian leader.

Tensions between Russia and the US have ratcheted up this week as the US pulled the plugs over talks on Syria and accused Russia of hacking attacks.

US Secretary of State John Kerry last week called for a war crimes investigation after accusing Moscow and the regime of deliberately bombing hospitals as a Russian-backed assault on Aleppo in northern Syria continues.

Relations between the two countries were already at their lowest since the Cold War over the Ukraine conflict, after the Russian annexation of the Crimean Peninsula.

Earlier this month, Moscow said it was suspending joint research with the United States on nuclear energy projects.

In the interview with Turkey’s state-run press agency, Kurtulmus also insisted that Turkish forces at the Bashiqa camp in northern Iraq were “legitimate” and would remain in the country for “as long as necessary”.

But Iraq’s chiefs called Turkey an “occupying” force last week when the Turkish parliament agreed to extend its military operations in Iraq and Syria for a year.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin is throwing his weight behind Syria’s Assad

Turkey has said its forces are training Iraqi fighters to help retake the country’s second biggest city, Mosul, from IS in the near future.

Kurtulmus’s promise came after a bitter war of words between President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi on Tuesday.

Erdogan told Abadi to “know your place” and that the leader was not his equal.

Abadi responded by mocking Erdogan’s plea to the Turkish people to counter the attempted coup in July via a video phone call.

“We will liberate our land through the determination of our men and not by video calls,” Abadi’s official Twitter account said.