The international community cannot afford to watch the "massacre" taking place in Syria without acting, Turkish foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Thursday during a visit to Washington.

Davutoglu is calling for an international conference to resolve violence that erupted when demonstrators began demanding last spring that Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad be removed from office.

The government crackdown on dissidents has killed more than 6,000 people since March 2011, according to human rights organisations.

"We cannot let Syrian people die every day and the international community will follow blindly," Davutoglu said at a lecture at George Washington University in the US capital.

The Turkish government announced Wednesday that it was trying to organise an international conference "as soon as possible" that seeks a peaceful settlement of the Syrian crisis.

A peace conference also has supporters in the US government, which is organising its own meeting, called "Friends of Syria," among stakeholders in the uprising.

Davutoglu is scheduled to hold talks with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the Syrian crisis during his stay in Washington.

"We want to have an international platform if the UN doesn't function in that way, to show solidarity with the Syrian people against this bloodshed, massacre," the Turkish minister said.

He was referring to a UN Security Council vote last week that struck down a resolution calling for a transition in the Al-Assad government to end the violence. Russia and China vetoed the measure.

Davutoglu did not give details on the location or date of the peace conference he proposes.

Turkey is a former ally of Syria but broke off relations because of the violent backlash against demonstrators by the Al-Assad regime.

In a related development, Russia said the Syrian opposition bore full responsibility for the ongoing violence and accused the West of being an "accomplice" that pushed the regime's opponents into armed conflict.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told the ITAR-Tass news agency that the opposition's refusal to enter direct talks with the Syrian government meant it "bears full responsibility for improving the situation," accusing the West of being "accomplices in the process of inflaming the crisis."