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Jolie visits Syrian refugees in Turkey

ISTANBUL (AP) — Hollywood star Angelina Jolie met with Syrian refugees in Turkey on Thursday to draw attention to the plight of the hundreds of thousands who have fled their nation’s civil war.

The trip by Jolie, who is a special envoy for the U.N. refugee agency, comes as Turkey grows increasingly concerned that the number of registered Syrian refugees on its soil — about 80,000 — is becoming difficult to manage.

Turkey has also been frustrated in attempts to persuade the international community to help set up safe havens for Syrian civilians inside Syria.

Jolie and Antonio Guterres, the U.N. high commissioner for refugees, met privately with refugees at two camps near the Syrian border. Jolie’s two-day itinerary in Turkey was also to include a stop in Ankara, the capital, for talks with officials including President Abdullah Gul.

Jolie said the refugees had told her they were grateful to Turkey for its help. “And they are very, very emotional and very deeply saddened by the situation in Syria and very concerned about their families and their friends in their country,” the actress said.

Earlier this week, Jolie and Guterres visited Syrian refugees in Jordan, which is also sheltering those who have fled the 18-month-long conflict in neighboring Syria. Guterres said the sheer number of refugees is taking a toll on Jordan’s economy and resources.

The U.N. refugee agency has said the number of Syrian refugees seeking its help now tops a quarter-million — and could be far higher. Activists estimate some 23,000 people have been killed in the bloodshed in Syria since March 2011.

Turkey, which supports the Syrian opposition in its fight against President Bashar Assad’s regime, has maintained what it calls an “open door” policy for Syrians fleeing the violence. Turkey has spent more than $300 million on the refugee crisis and is building three new camps, raising the total number of camps to 14.

Several thousand Syrians have been stranded on the Syrian side of the border this month, barred from entering Turkey while they await transfer to the new camps.

via Jolie visits Syrian refugees in Turkey – SFGate.

September 14, 2012
Turkey Is No Partner for Peace

How Ankara’s Sectarianism Hobbles U.S. Syria Policy

Halil Karaveli

September 11, 2012

Letter From

Turkey’s Democratic Dilemma

Piotr Zalewski

After years of cozying up to Middle East dictators, Turkey now urges its neighbors to liberalize — or risk regime change. But these calls for change will ring hollow unless Turkey gets its own democracy in order.

Erdogan, right, attends the funeral of two pilots shot down by Syria in June. (Umit Bektas / Courtesy Reuters)

At first glance, it appears that the United States and Turkey are working hand in hand to end the Syrian civil war. On August 11, after meeting with Turkish officials, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton released a statement that the two countries’ foreign ministries were coordinating to support the Syrian opposition and bring about a democratic transition. In Ankara on August 23, U.S. and Turkish officials turned those words into action, holding their first operational planning meeting aimed at hastening the downfall of the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Beneath their common desire to oust Assad, however, Washington and Ankara have two distinctly different visions of a post-revolutionary Syria. The United States insists that any solution to the Syrian crisis should guarantee religious and ethnic pluralism. But Turkey, which is ruled by a Sunni government, has come to see the conflict in sectarian terms, building close ties with Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood–dominated Sunni opposition, seeking to suppress the rights of Syrian Kurds, and castigating the minority Alawites — Assad’s sect — as enemies. That should be unsettling for the Obama administration, since it means that Turkey will not be of help in promoting a multi-ethnic, democratic government in Damascus. In fact, Turkish attitudes have already contributed to Syria’s worsening sectarian divisions.

Turkey has framed the Syrian conflict in alienating religious terms.

Washington is pushing for pluralism. In Istanbul last month, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Philip Gordon emphasized that “the Syrian opposition needs to be inclusive, needs to give a voice to all of the groups in Syria . . . and that includes Kurds.” Clinton, after meeting with her Turkish counterpart, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, stressed that a new Syrian government “will need to protect the rights of all Syrians regardless of religion, gender, or ethnicity.”

It is unclear, however, whether Ankara is on board. As it lends critical support to the Sunni rebellion, Turkey has not made an attempt to reach out to the other ethnic and sectarian communities in the country. Instead, Turkey has framed the Syrian conflict in alienating religious terms. The governing Justice and Development Party (AKP), a Sunni conservative bloc, singles out Syria’s Alawites as villains, regularly denouncing their “minority regime.” Hüseyin Çelik, an AKP spokesperson, claimed at a press conference on September 8, 2011, that “the Baath regime relies on a mass of 15 percent” — the percentage of Alawites in the country. Such a narrative overlooks the fact that the Baath regime has long owed its survival to the support of a significant portion of the majority Sunnis.

The AKP has antagonized not only Syria’s Alawites but also its Kurds. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has insisted that his country would resist any Kurdish push for autonomy in parts of northeastern Syria, going so far as to threaten military intervention. The Turkish government’s unreserved support for the Sunni opposition is due not only to an ideological affinity with it but also to the fact that the Sunni rebels oppose the aspirations of the Syrian Kurds.

Meanwhile, the AKP has sought to sell its anti-Assad policy to the Turkish public by fanning the flames of sectarianism at home. The AKP has directed increasingly aggressive rhetoric toward Turkey’s largest religious minority, the Alevis, and accused them of supporting the Alawites out of religious solidarity. The Alevis, a Turkish- and Kurdish-speaking heterodox Muslim minority that comprises approximately one-fifth of Turkey’s population, constitute a separate group from the Arab Alawites. But both creeds share the fate of being treated as heretics by the Sunnis.

At the September 2011 press conference, Çelik insinuated that Kemal Kiliçdaroğlu, an Alevi Kurd who leads Turkey’s social democratic Republican People’s Party (CHP), based his opposition to Turkey’s entanglement in the Syrian civil war on sectarian motives. “Why are you defending the Baath regime?” he inquired. “Bad things come to my mind. Is it perhaps because of sectarian solidarity?” In a similar vein, Erdogan claimed in March that Kiliçdaroğlu’s motives for supposedly befriending the Syrian president were religious, stating, “Don’t forget that a person’s religion is the religion of his friend.”

On the face of it, the Obama administration’s positions on Syria are consistent with those of Turkey. In their meetings in Turkey, Clinton reiterated that Washington “share[s] Turkey’s determination that Syria must not become a haven for [Kurdish] terrorists,” and Gordon underlined that the United States has “been clear both with the Kurds of Syria and our counterparts in Turkey that we don’t support any movement towards autonomy or separatism which we think would be a slippery slope.” Such statements may comfort the Turkish government, but the preferred U.S. outcome of a Syria where all ethnic and religious communities enjoy equal rights would nonetheless require accommodating the aspirations of the Kurds to be recognized as a distinct group. And that is precisely what Turkey deems unacceptable. Consider the fact that Turkey has persecuted its own Kurdish movement for raising the same demand; in the last three years, Ankara has arrested 8,000 Kurdish politicians and activists to keep the nationalist movement in check.

None of this is to suggest that the United States should not work with Turkey, especially since Saudi Arabia, the other main participant in the effort to bring down Assad, has even less of an interest in promoting democracy. But to have a reliable partner in the Syria crisis, Washington will have to pressure Ankara to rise above its ethnic and sectarian considerations.

The United States should therefore confront these differences in approach head-on and encourage Turkey to see the benefits of pursuing a more pluralistic policy. Despite its fear of Kurdish agitation at home, Turkey would stand to gain from establishing a mutually beneficial relationship with the Kurds in Syria, like the one that it has come to enjoy with the Kurdish regional government in northern Iraq. Indeed, representatives of the leading Syrian Kurdish party, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), have urged Ankara to forge a similar partnership. In an interview with the International Middle East Peace Research Center, Salih Muhammad Muslim, the leader of the PYD, said that Turkey should get over its “Kurdish phobia.” Erdogan’s government seems reluctant to do so, fearing that by reaching out to Syria’s Kurds and other minorities, and accepting the idea of a pluralistic Syria, Turkey would encourage its own ethnic and religious minorities to seek constitutional reform and equality. But if Turkey allows ethnic and sectarian divisions in Syria to further spiral out of control, those divisions may spill over its own borders.

By now, it should have dawned on Ankara that shouldering the Sunni cause to project power in its neighborhood courts all kinds of dangers. Framing Turkey’s involvement in Syria in religious terms leads Sunni Turks to imagine that they are waging a battle for the emancipation of faithful Muslims from the oppression of supposed heretics. This fanning of sectarian prejudice against Syria’s Alawites naturally engenders hostility toward religious minority groups in Turkey, leading the country’s already fragile social fabric to fray.

There is a bigger risk here, too. The AKP’s pro-Sunni agenda in Syria threatens to embroil Turkey in the wider Sunni-Shiite conflict across the Middle East. By taking on Iran’s ally, Turkey has exposed itself to aggression from the Islamic Republic. In a statement last month, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s chief of staff, General Hasan Firouzabadi, warned that Turkey, along with the other countries combating Assad, can expect internal turmoil as a result of their interference. The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the Kurdish rebel group considered a terrorist organization by Turkey and the United States, stepped up its attacks over the summer, notably staging a major offensive in Turkey’s Hakkari Province, which borders Iran and Iraq. Iran denies any responsibility for the PKK attacks, but Turkish officials assume that Tehran is involved and that PKK militants cross into Turkey from Iran.

Until now, the Sunni bent of Turkish foreign policy has suited the geopolitical aims of the United States, as it has meant that Turkey, abandoning its previous ambition to have “zero problems” with its neighbors, has joined the camp against Iran. That advantage quelled whatever misgivings U.S. officials may have harbored about Turkey’s sectarian drift. But if the United States achieves, with Turkish help, its strategic objective of ousting Assad, it will need a different kind of Turkey as its partner for what comes after.

September 12, 2012
Hackers Reveal How They Accessed Syrian President Bashar Assad’s Email Using World’s Worst Password

Assad Worst Password

Hackers recently disclosed they broke into Syrian President Bashar Assad’s email using the password “1234.”

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s private email address was sam@alshahba.com. His password was 1234.

This absurd factoid about the now-floundering president came to light on Thursday, in an interview with opposition hacker Abdullah al-Shamri gave to the Arabic language newspaper Al-Hayat.

In February, under the aegis of an opposition group, Shamri’s confederates released 3,000 of Assad’s private emails to the Guardian. But until Al-Hayat published Shamri’s interview on Thursday, the world knew little of the hackers themselves, or of the absurd tale that was their break-in.

The Times Of Israel reports:

After a week of attempting to decipher what they thought would be an enigmatic code protecting Assad’s private correspondences, one of the sophisticated cyber-burglars tried ‘thinking like an idiot,’ Al-Hayat reported Thursday.

‘You’re doing it wrong,’ said hacker Abdullah Shamri, recalling for the paper the moment at which epiphany struck one of his criminals-in-arms. ‘You always call the heads of the regime morons, so let’s try to work like morons’.

An enterprising hacker immediately tried a password widely acknowledged to be one of the most imbecilic possible: 1234…Within moments the hackers had at their fingertips a trove of private missives belonging to the dictator of Damascus.

But 1234 isn’t just a bad password; it is, as the Times of Israel notes, widely acknowledged to be one of the most imbecilic password possible, thanks to the famous scene in “Spaceballs”.

Shamri and his group didn’t release the emails immediately upon cracking the code, however. For eight months, they used this exclusive access to read the private emails of Assad and his wife Asma, looking for a “devastating revelation” that would help “oust” the regime, the Guardian reports.

They did not find it, but they did, however, find valuable information, including some they later used to protect opposition leaders and Western journalists in Homs.

But as Shamri and his confederates waited to move and the civil war in Syria escalated, another tribe of hacktivists turned interested in the regime: the hacker group Anonymous.

In January of 2012, Anonymous broke into the mail server of the Syrian Ministry of Presidential Affairs and gave whistleblowing-site Wikileaks 2.4 million formerly regime-eyes-only emails. By Feb. 7, the owner of the sam@alshahba.com address was known, and Assad began receiving threatening emails. He closed the presidential account the same day, according to Information Week.

Ironically, Assad did appear to have knowledge of security procedure, at least in the way he treated his email account. he deleted his mail after reading and never attached his name or initials to any email he sent from sam@alshahba.com. But in other ways, he and his wife were woefully out of touch.

After the missives leaked to the Guardian, blog Foreign Policy reported that “Asma is apparently an Internet shopaholic, buying enough luxury items to stock a Tom Wolfe novel: Necklaces of amethyst, diamond, and onyx; a Ming Luce vase; and roughly $15,000 worth of candlesticks, tables, and chandeliers” — all while the country was falling apart around her.

Assad, meanwhile, “made light of reforms he had promised in an attempt to defuse the crisis, referring to ‘rubbish laws of parties, elections, media’” and at one point forwarded to an aide “a link to YouTube footage of a crude re-enactment of the siege of Homs using toys and biscuits,” the Guardian reports.

At the beginning of the Syrian crackdowns, Shamri was running the Internet’s first Arab-language information network, and he also moonlighted as an opposition blogger.

Shamri told Al-Hayat (per Al-Monitor):

I received a call from a Presidential Office official, who told me: ‘We used to hold a grudge against you. However, we found out that although your words are cruel, they speak the truth. I cannot deliver your articles to the President. I will give you his private and confidential e-mail and you send him your articles in your own way’.

Originally, Shamri planned to use the emails to petition the president for reform, but when the crackdowns worsened and his emails stayed unanswered, he decided to hack the president’s account instead.

Now the Guardian claims it has 3,000 of Assad’s emails, and Shamri says he has “7,500 Emails”, many unseen, that “blow the lid off the President’s secrets.”

In the leak to the Guardian, the hackers claimed their motive was to “show the world what this regime is like.” Now, says Shamri, he plans to sort and document the emails for “recorded history.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6iW-8xPw3k

WATCH the scene from “Spaceballs:”

via Hackers Reveal How They Accessed Syrian President Bashar Assad’s Email Using World’s Worst Password.

September 10, 2012
US not interested in military intervention in Syria

The United States would not take unilateral military actions against Syria before or after its general election, said an American political professor on Friday.

“In my opinion, the US is not interested to take the responsibility alone to end the Assad regime,” Professor John Louis Esposito said in an interview with Xinhua on the sidelines of a two-day international conference held in Istanbul.

Titled “The Arab Awakening and Peace in the Middle East: Muslim and Christian Perspectives,” the conference brings more than 200 religious and academic leaders from 19 countries to Istanbul to discuss peaceful co-existence and religious pluralism in the Middle East after the Arab revolutions.

“The United States just finishes two exhausting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and has no intention to start a new war in the Middle East. There is strong aversion of war among the American public,” Esposito said, adding “The United States has many domestic problems such as economy recession to deal with. So it is not a good time for the US to send troops directly to Syria.”

The specialist holds that it was not easy to end the current Syria crisis soon. “It takes at least another six month to see the end of war,” he said.

“The Gulf states and Arab countries should take more responsibilities in solving the regional problem of the Middle East. It is not America’s responsibility to solve the Syrian problem alone,” he said.

Esposito is a professor of International Affairs and Islamic Studies from Georgetown University, the founder and current director of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding of the same university.

On Wednesday, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the United States lacks initiative on Syria and its general election hampers its Syrian action.

“Right now, there are certain things being expected from the United States. The United States had not yet catered to those expectations,” Erdogan said.

via US not interested in military intervention in Syria – Globaltimes.cn.

September 9, 2012
Turkey facing questions on Syria policy…washingtonpost

View Photo Gallery — Syrian refugees flock to Turkey and Jordan: Tens of thousands of Syrian refugees have spilled across the border into Turkey and Jordan since the 17-month uprising in their homeland began.

By Karin Brulliard, Published: September 7

ANTAKYA, Turkey — Turkey, a rising heavyweight in the Muslim world, has led the international campaign to oust the regime in next-door Syria. But as the fighting drags on, Turkey is complaining that the United States and others have left it abandoned on the front line of a conflict that is bleeding across its border.With its calls for an international haven for refugees in Syria going nowhere, Turkey is rushing to shelter an influx of about 80,000 Syrians. In the east, Kurdish militants who Turkey alleges are aided by Syria are intensifying deadly attacks. And in this Alawite-heavy border region, a rest and resupply hub for the mainly Sunni Syrian rebels, worries are growing that Syria’s sectarian strife might infect Turkey.

Turkish officials stand behind their Syria policy, and the problems have posed little threat to the moderately Islamist government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan or to Turkey’s carefully cultivated popularity in the region. But as opinion polls indicate declining domestic support for the government’s stance, Turkey is finding it has limited room to manage fallout that analysts say it did not anticipate when it turned against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad last year.“Ankara now realizes that it doesn’t have the power to rearrange — forget it in the region, but also not in Syria,” said Gokhan Bacik, director of the Middle East Strategic Research Center at Turkey’s Zirve University. “So Ankara desperately needs American support. But American supportis not coming.”When a U.S. delegation visited late last month, the Turks made the case they had made two weeks earlier to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, a senior administration official said: They were overwhelmed with Syrians, and they wanted the United States and others to establish safe areas, protected by a no-fly zone, for them inside Syria. Their limit, the Turks warned, was 100,000 refugees.Clinton, confronted with emotional Turkish pleas, said that a no-fly zone would require major outside military intervention and that the United States did not believe it would help, according to the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive conversations. But rather than dismiss Turkey’s concerns outright, Clinton called for further bilateral discussions and an “operation and command” structure for the two governments to coordinate their responses to the crisis.Turkey’s posture toward Assad is the result of an about-face. Before the uprising, Syria was the centerpiece of Turkey’s “zero problems with neighbors” foreign policy, and trade and travel between the countries flourished.Now Turkey hosts the opposition Syrian National Council and provides a havento the rebel Free Syrian Army and hundreds of defected Syrian soldiers. On Wednesday, Erdogan called Syria a “terrorist state.” The stance has boosted Turkey’s credibility in the Arab world but complicated its relations with Iran and Russia, which support Assad.Turkey has constructed a string of 11 refugee camps along its border and is building more for newcomers, who the government says enter at a rate of 4,000 a day. Thousands are packed into public schools and dormitories, and hundreds of Syrians are being treated in Turkish hospitals.

Turkey backtracked on a recent statement that it would close its doors at 100,000 refugees. But Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who is facing growing criticism at home, suggested regret last week over the open-door policy.“There is an increasing sense in Turkey that, through making such a sacrifice and tackling an enormous issue all by itself, we are leading the international community to complacency and inaction,” he said at the United Nations.

The refugee crisisis swelling as Turkish headlines are dominated by deadly battles in the alpine southeast between security forces and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which has waged a separatist insurgency for 28 years. Turkish officials accuse Syria of arming the guerrillas and empowering a PKK offshoot in sections of northeastern Syria along the Turkish border. Last month, Turkish officials blamed the PKK for a bombing that killed nine civilians in the city of Gaziantep.Turkey is particularly concerned that Syrian missiles could fall into the hands of the PKK, enabling it to attack the helicopters Turkey relies on to fight the insurgents, Bacik said.Yet even as Turkey condemns Assad, frets about a growing power vacuum in Syria and pleads for international intervention, officials and analysts say the country has no appetite for deploying its military unilaterally to confront Assad or secure a refugee zone.There is widespread public opposition in Turkey to military action, and analysts say Turkey is wary of jeopardizing its popularity in a region where the legacy of Ottoman rule remains fresh. The Turkish military is ill-prepared for what could be a prolonged, Iraq-style sectarian war, said Henri Barkey, a Turkey expert at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania.“They realize this is a Pandora’s box, that you go in and God knows how you’re going to come out,” Barkey said.Barkey said Turkey’s 566-mile border with Syria made the conflict “a no-win situation for the Turks from the beginning.” Turkish commentators and opposition politicians have seized on the issue as a policy failure, and some analysts and U.S. officials said Turkey exacerbated its woes by limiting U.N. involvement in the camps and allowing Sunni rebels and refugees to concentrate in the largely Alawite province of Hatay.

“The government is facing a crisis for which it has no answers, and a public at home that is growing increasingly uneasy over this,” Semih Idiz, a foreign policy analyst, wrote in the Hurriyet Daily News, an English-language newspaper in Turkey. “If this is not a debacle, then what is?”

That unease is palpable in Antakya, less than an hour from the border. Many residents of this scenic town and surrounding Hatay province are members of the Alawite minority Shiite sect that dominates the Syrian regime. Syria and Turkey are majority Sunni.

Antakya had been a shopping destination for Syrians. Since the rebellion, it has become a base for Syrian refugees and rebels, including thickly bearded men who stand out in a town where sundresses and shorts are common. Cross-border trade has slowed, and apartment prices have spiked.Here, support for Assad remains strong, and there is simmering anxiety that Erdogan, the prime minister, is supporting the Syrian rebellion to cement Sunni supremacy in the region. Those fears have been stoked by Turkey’s main opposition party, which has accused the government of training radical Islamists in a nearby camp for defectors. The government denies that and says it has not armed rebels.

“They’re shaping some new religious fighters. What is the guarantee those fighters would not fight back against Turkey someday?” said Refik Eryilmaz, an opposition member of parliament from Hatay, which hosts five refugee camps.

Ismail Kimyeci, the Hatay chairman of Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, said critics are overstating the presence of fighters in Antakya. He dismissed the concerns as propaganda meant to stir division. “The Syrian people are demanding a new, free country,” Kimyeci said. Of the Syrians in Hatay, he said: “We don’t really see which religion they are. The Turkish policy is to help everyone.”But tensions are festering. In interviews, Antakyans complained about Syrian rebels ditching restaurant tabs or robbing women of their jewelry, though none could cite personal experience. Last weekend, several thousand people protested Turkey’s participation in what was described as an imperialist plot against Syria. Some said all rebels must leave Turkey.“They are saying, ‘After we finish in Syria, we will cut your throats here,’ ” said Ali Zafer, 33, a teacher who said he supports Assad, describing one common rumor about the rebels. Turkey, he said, “especially brought them to Antakya, to kill Alawites.”Syrians interviewed said they generally feel welcome but know that might wear off. At a rebel safe house in Reyhanli, where the Alawite population is smaller, occupants said Turks stop by with supplies and encouragement.“We are trying our best to obey the rules of a foreign country,” said a rebel commander who goes by the nom de guerre Abu Hashim.

But he also contended that the controversy should motivate Turkey to speed an end to the war. “It’s better for the Turkish government to send us weapons,” he said, “so they can avoid this fuss here.”

Karen DeYoung in Washington contributed to this report.

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Comments

djfeiger

1:04 AM EDT

The question is how to blame this all on Israel. When Obama establishing his Middle East policy only leftists Jews willing to abandon their self esteem, history, religion, humanity and right to life one can only say, ” So what is new”? As Hitler stated so many times who want’s the Jews? No One. He ased” who mentions the Armenian Genocide , today?”. Once again if we only go rid of Israel and the Jews all would be right. Middle East Peace? Sunni and Shia ending 2000 years of bloody massacres. In 2009 Pres. Obama gave a speech in Cairo, abandoning US commitment to the rule of law and embracing a myth contradicted by the historical record, signed treaties, Israel-Trans Jordan Armistice under US and UN co signs, Res 242 and 338 and a reluctance to embrace anti American dictators. Insisting 10 members of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood attend his Cairo speech insulting Egypt’s hosting government, their assasination of Anwar Sadat, destruction of Israel, creation of a Pan Arab Sunni, Islamist theocracy After Obama’s speech demanding more sacrifice from Israel’s 6,000,000 Jews on 7,000 sq miles of land rather then flying there a 250 mi flight he instead flew to a Nazi Death Camp. US commentator’s are to ignorant to see the symbolism on the genocidal Arab world. Btw the MB as were the Arab Pals were Allies with the facists as Hitler told the Haj Amin al Husseini, ” Germany and the Arabs are naturual allies united in our hatred and desire to exterminate the Jews. So Obama favoring dead Jews over living, Israel’s and US enemies who call for war not peace, his inability to see PA intransigence, terror, infighting, mutual slaughter, creating a death cult santifying slaughter of innocents similar to Japan’s Kamikazes except slaughter of military. When Iran butchered it’s dissidence Obama was silent while legitimizing Tehran’s Tyrants. Perhaps if Iran wished to build Jews homes Obama, Biden, Dempsey and Clinton would mobilize. But. just vaporizing 6,000,000 Jews isn’t worth raising a sweat. Appeasement of our enemies and back stabbing our allies has brought chaos to an entire region. Iran is supporting Assad against the West while using a rudderless US to exacerbate US Israeli divisions, embarressing Turkey which abandoned Israel for Iran only to be betrayed. Since Dempsey designated any Israel self defense as a criminal conspiracy what does Israel have to loose? Why hold back when as the US did in WWII use Nukes to save lives. If 2 bombs were worth 400,000 GI then what number of bombs to save 6,000,000 Jews?That’s what happens when you pull the rug out from under an ally. Turkey fears Iran and what if it were nuclear? Egypt? Saudi Arabia? Bahrain? And the media and anti-Semites are bladed by hate to see how this Pres is subverting our world. It’s 1914 and everyone is enjoying the summer season.

spamsux1

9/8/2012 3:40 PM EDT

As far as setting up no-fly zones, the US could easily provide AWACS support for Turkey’s air force to create a large zone along the border and if Iraq agreed the same could be done along that border.The wealthy countries in the area could easily pay for it.Highly unlikely Obama will do anything beyond his months of finger-wagging and scolding.He has more important matters to attend to…

nick212

9/8/2012 4:44 PM EDT

Do you have any idea what it would cost to set up a no fly zone – which would probably have to last until boots on the ground secured the country – a long time ….

September 9, 2012
Is Turkish camp the Syrian rebels’ HQ?

Thomas Seibert

Sep 5, 2012

ISTANBUL // Turkey is offering more support for Syrian rebel fighters than the government in Ankara is ready to admit, opposition politicians say.

Related

■ More than 100,000 refugees fled Syria last month

■ Syria warned of ‘blistering’ response if it uses bio-weapons

■ Civilians trapped in Syria’s crossfire

Turkish legislators visited a special camp for Syrian military deserters in Apaydin in the southern border province of Hatay yesterday. This camp, two kilometres from the Syrian border and closed to the media, is widely believed to be the headquarters of the rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA) that is fighting to topple Bashar Al Assad’s regime.

Although Turkey hosts leaders of the main body of the political opposition, the Syrian National Council, the Turkish government insists that it is not giving military support to the rebels fighting Mr Al Assad’s security forces.

Turkish opposition leaders have pointed to the Apaydin camp as evidence to the contrary, claiming it houses about 300 Syrian ex-soldiers and policemen, including about 30 former generals, according to Turkish officials.

Riad Al Asaad, the FSA commander, is also believed to be in Apaydin.

“Apaydin is an illegal military base on Turkish territory,” Mehmet Ali Ediboglu, an opposition legislator from Hatay, said yesterday. “There are five or six other places in Hatay with weapons and training facilities” of the FSA, he added. “People in Hatay know the naked truth, but the government keeps telling lies.”

Mr Ediboglu, a member of the Republican People’s Party (CHP), Turkey’s biggest opposition group, said he wanted to visit Apaydin with other politicians 10 days ago but was not allowed to enter the camp. He said by the time yesterday’s visit by the human-rights committee of Turkey’s parliament had been arranged, Apaydin had been cleared of weapons.

“We don’t assume that, we know that,” he said, adding his party was boycotting the visit.

Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the CHP leader, also boycotted the visit but said FSA activities in Apaydin violated international law. “People undergoing military training there cross over into Syria and take part in the fighting,” Mr Kilicdaroglu said according to Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency.

Two other opposition parties did visit the camp.

Mr Ediboglu and other opposition members also drew attention to a recent statement posted on the FSA’s website that defined Hatay as the rebel army’s “main base”. The website has been changed and says the FSA’s main base is in Damascus. But the rebels provide a Turkish telephone number.

Last week, an unnamed FSA member from Apaydin camp told reporters outside the camp that the rebels had training facilities across the border on Syrian territory and were going into Syria and back to Turkey on a daily basis. “But the Republic of Turkey has asked us not to walk around with weapons during the day”, he said.

News reports said that the FSA, not Turkish forces, controlled the camp. But Turkey’s state agency for disaster relief, which runs the camps housing about 80,000 Syrian refugees along the border, issued a statement on its website to deny the claims.

Mr Ediboglu said that apart from the FSA, many Islamist fighters from countries such as Afghanistan were using Hatay as a base for entering Syria. “There are armed foreigners walking around here, but the government keeps saying that there is no problem.”

A Turkish government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, rejected the accusations. “There are no weapons or training facilities in Apaydin,” the official said. Ankara says access to the camp is restricted because of concerns for the safety of the ex-soldiers there and their 2,500 family members that are staying with them.

Speaking after yesterday’s visit in Apaydin, Sefer Ustun, the head of the human-rights commission and a member of the ruling Justice and Development Party, also denied charges that the camp was being used as a military base. Mr Ustun told Anadolu that 80 per cent of the people in the camp were women and children. “Seen in that light, other things are not possible here anyway,” he said

via Is Turkish camp the Syrian rebels’ HQ? – The National.

September 5, 2012