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Category: Syria

Hillary Clinton’s Turkey visit: Iran, Syria top agenda

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton leaves next week on an eight-day trip to Scandinavia, the Caucasus and Turkey that will cover security issues such as Iran and Syria as well as the environment and health.

Clinton will begin her trip May 31 and ends it in Istanbul on June 7, speaking at a counterterrorism forum and holding talks with Turkish officials on Syria, where President Bashar Assad is seeking to crush an uprising against his rule, and Iran, whose nuclear program the United States suspects is designed to develop atomic weapons.

Iran, which says its program is for civilian purposes, held a second round of talks with major powers in Baghdad this week and the two sides are due to meet again in Moscow on June 18-19.

AP

At least 50 people, including 13 children, were killed when Syrian forces attacked the town of Houla in Homs province on Friday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and activists said.

Activists said clashes erupted in the town when Syrian forces opened fire on a protest against the rule of President Bashar Assad and killed one protester.

“The soldiers are shelling Houla right now, the casualties are huge,” said activist Ahmad Kassem. He said opposition fighters fired back, inflicting casualties on the soldiers and destroying five tanks. Houla is a cluster of four villages and towns north of Homs.

Also Friday, international peace mediator Kofi Annan announced he will visit Syria “soon” in what would be the former UN Secretary-General’s first visit since he presented his peace plan to Syria’s government in early March.

Ahmad Fawzi, Annan’s spokesman, declined to give details or specify the date, citing security reasons. Fawzi has repeatedly said that Annan, whose six-week-old ceasefire plan has failed to stop the violence in Syria, would travel to the country when the time was right.

UN envoys said on Thursday that Annan may travel to Syria before the end of the month.

Annan’s six-point peace plan called for a truce, withdrawal of troops and heavy weapons from cities, deployment of the monitoring force, and dialogue between the government and opposition aimed at a Syrian-led “political transition.”

“Clearly it’s an important part of this undertaking to have direct talks with the Syrian authorities and the Syrian opposition,” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s spokesman Martin Nesirky told reporters in New York on Friday.

“This is done in different ways at different times and it is coming to the time when it’s appropriate for the joint special envoy to engage directly and personally with the Syrian authorities and with the opposition in situ,” he said.

The United Nations is nearing full deployment of a 300-member unarmed UN observer force in Syria that is charged with monitoring any cease-fire resulting from the plan. The force has had close calls with recent bomb attacks but has not lost any observers.

The United Nations and Annan will report to the UN Security Council on Wednesday about the situation in Syria. The 90-day mandate for the UN observer force, known as UNSMIS, expires in July.

Nesirky said there was a fear that a third force or element was “at play in Syria and that this undoubtedly complicates the task for the monitors and the international community in seeking to ensure that the six-point plan is fully implemented.”

“There’s no hard evidence on specific groups,” he said. “It’s obvious that some of the attacks that have been seen are of the kind and nature that suggests that there is behind them a force or element with the organizational capacity and political intent to carry out violence on that scale.”

Ban has said he believes al-Qaida was responsible for two suicide car bombs that killed at least 55 people in Syria this month and that the death toll in the country’s 14-month conflict was now at least 10,000.

Syria has maintained all along that it is facing a “terrorist” conspiracy funded and directed from abroad, not least by resource-rich Gulf monarchies Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which have called for arming the fighters aiming to oust President Bashar Assad.

Syria this month sent the United Nations the names of 26 foreign nationals it said had been arrested after coming to fight in Syria. It described 20 of those as members of al-Qaida who had entered the country from Turkey.

Reuters

via Hillary Clinton’s Turkey visit: Iran, Syria top agenda | Firstpost.

May 28, 2012
Questions about Turkey as a democracy and military model

Questions about Turkey as a democracy and military model

When NATO meets in Chicago this weekend, intervention in Syria is sure to be discussed – perhaps by Syria’s neighbor, Turkey, which presents itself as a democratic model for the Middle East with a strong military. But questionable investigations of its military undermine those claims.

By Murat Onur / May 18, 2012

via Questions about Turkey as a democracy and military model – CSMonitor.com.

May 19, 2012
Turkish journalists missing in Syria finally phone home

By By Ivan Watson and Yesim Comert, CNN

May 7, 2012 — Updated 0201 GMT (1001 HKT)

Turkish journalist Adem Ozkose (left) and Hamit Coskun went missing while filming a documentary.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

One of two missing Turkish journalists calls home

Adem Ozkose said he was fine, his father tells CNN

Ozkose and camerman Hamit Coskun went missing March 9

They were filming a documentary when they disappeared

Editor’s note: Read this report in Arabic.

Istanbul, Turkey (CNN) — One of two Turkish journalists missing in Syria called home Saturday, ending nearly two months of speculation about their well-being but failing to clear up questions about who is holding them or when they might be freed.

“For two months we didn’t even know whether they were alive or dead so we had so many concerns and worries. Now at least that has lifted,” journalist Adem Ozkose’s father, Mustafa Ozkose, told CNN. “We are so happy that it is impossible to explain in words.”

Ozkose, a reporter for the Turkish publications Gercek Hayat and freelance camerman Hamit Coskun went missing while filming a documentary.

They were last heard from March 9, as they were traveling through Syria’s troubled Idlib province on their way back to neighboring Turkey, Mustafa Ozkese said.

Mustafa Ozkose said his son had less than three minutes Saturday to talk to his wife and ask about the welfare of his three children.

“He said he was fine. He said that he missed his children,” Mustafa Ozkose said.

Humanitarian Relief Foundation, a Turkish Islamist charity group widely known by its Turkish acronym IHH, said it mediated the call.

“As a result of negotiations that have been on going, an IHH diplomatic delegation was able to visit Adem Ozkose and Hamit Coskun where they were in Damascus and managed to have both Adem and Hamit make calls to their families,” said Serkan Nergis, an IHH spokesman.

“This was a very positive step,” he said.

A spokesman for the Turkish foreign ministry told CNN he had no official information about who is holding the men. Syrian officials have not answered formal requests by Turkey about whether the journalists were in government custody.

Turkey withdrew its ambassador and diplomats from Damascus last March, as relations drastically deteriorated between the countries.

IHH officials declined to give details about who is holding the two Turkish journalists in Damascus or what condition the men were in.

“This is a very sensitive process,” Nergis told CNN. “For now we cannot give further information about the two journalists’ whereabouts or the process itself.”

But Nergis did say that the negotiations have been conducted in conjunction with Iran, which is a close ally of the Syrian government.

In an April 23 statement, the group said it had worked with Iranian and Syrian counterparts to broker the release of two elderly Iranians who had been held by members of the Syrian opposition.

At the time, IHH publicly argued that the release of the Iranians would hopefully lead to the safe return of Ozkose and Coskun to Turkey.

Throughout the anti-government uprising and bloody regime crackdown that have left more than 9,000 people dead, the Syrian government has for the most part prevented foreign journalists from freely entering the country.

Turkish citizens do not need visas to travel to Syria. Nonetheless, the Syrian government has detained and deported a number of Turkish journalists who tried to work in the country. One group of reporters did not even make it past the airport before being sent back home.

The tight restrictions have prompted numerous news organizations, including CNN, to smuggle reporters into Syria.

According to a six-point peace plan brokered last month by the United Nations, Damascus pledged to allow foreign journalists into Syria. However, news organizations, including CNN, are still being denied visas into the country.

CNN’s Anna Ozbek contributed to this report.

via Turkish journalists missing in Syria finally phone home – CNN.com.

May 7, 2012
Border clashes raises fears that Turkey may call Nato into conflict

ISTANBUL // Syrian troops and rebel soldiers have again clashed close to the Turkish border, near where two deaths in a cross-border shooting incident last month prompted Turkish threats to draw Nato into the conflict.

“Fourteen soldiers and several officers deserted from the Syrian army and were attacked by government troops,” Omar Shawaf, a member of the opposition Syrian National Council, said yesterday.

“There was a small battle, and in the end the soldiers fled into Turkey,” he said.

A Turkish diplomat said: “Our border posts heard shooting and signs of fighting on the other side of the border.”

Besir Atalay, a Turkish deputy prime minister who visited the area yesterday, denied reports that bullets fired during the incident late on Monday at Oncupinar in the south-eastern province of Kilis landed on the Turkish side of the border. “Yesterday’s clash was not a thing that was directed to where we are,” he said.

“According to our intelligence, there was a lot of action along the border and inside Syria throughout the night. Unfortunately, incidents have been on the rise for two days. In the past two nights, action and the sound of weapons have been on the rise again.

“It is a country living through continued pressure and cruelty. Many people are dying.”

Mr Atalay said security measures to protect half a dozen refugee camps for Syrians in Turkey, two of which are only a few hundred metres from the border, would be increased if necessary but there was no danger now.

His commnents came on the same day that the United Nations peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous said Syrian security forces had kept heavy weapons in cities, and both government and opposition had committed violations of a UN-brokered ceasefire.

Mr Ladsous also said UN members had offered only 150 monitors for the 300 force it said it would provide and that Syria has already refused visas for three proposed monitors.

Mr Shawaf of the SNC denied reports that the fighting on Monday started because of an attempt by rebel soldiers to take control of a nearby border gate on the Syrian side. “They have only light weapons,” he said. “It would not be easy to take over a border post without more support.”

On April 9, Syrian troops opened fire on civilians fleeing towards the camp in Oncupinar, wounding several Syrians, two of whom later died of their injuries. Turkish officials accused the Syrian side of a deliberate attempt to shoot unarmed refugees.

“It was not just one guy shooting. They had a machine gun,” one official said.

The Turkish government informed Nato about the shooting, raising the possibility that the defence alliance, of which Turkey has been a member since 1952, would be asked to help.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, said last week that warning was still valid. “If border violations continue in a way that disturbs us, we, as a member of Nato, will take the necessary steps,” he said.

Mr Erdogan supports the peace plan of the UN-Arab League negotiator Kofi Annan, but says the regime in Damascus is continuing the violence. The prime minister said the number of UN ceasefire observers in Syria should be greatly increased to up to 3,000.

Mr Atalay also raised doubts about Mr Annan’s six-point plan. “Not even Annan and the United Nations themselves are very optimistic,” he said yesterday. “Maybe the fate of the Annan plan will make sure that the next plan is more realistic.”

On Monday, Turkey’s political and military leaders reviewed the situation in Syria. where repression of protesters by the regime of Bashar Al Assad has resulted in more than 9,000 deaths since March last year.

“All dimensions of the situation of Syrian nationals fleeing to our country and the latest developments on our border with Syria were discussed,” the National Security Council in Ankara said after the meeting.

It also called for an end to the violence in Syria and for “the start of a democratic transition period according to the legitimate demands of the people”.

In fighting yesterday, Syrian forces fired mortar shells at a farming village in the country’s north, killing at least seven people.

via Border clashes raises fears that Turkey may call Nato into conflict – The National.

May 2, 2012
Is Turkey preparing for an intervention in Syria?

Syrian refugees at the Reyhanli refugee camp in Turkey. (Photo: AFP)

The short answer is yes. Although it won’t happen tomorrow or without assistance especially from the United States, which is evidently first going to allow Kofi Annan to try his luck getting Iran to broker a peace deal. But Abdullah Bozkurt, a columnist at Turkey’s Today Zaman newspaper, outlines the legal case for intervention that wouldn’t require UN Security Council authorisation (read: the say-so of Russia and China). This strikes me as the most likely set of events to unfold:

What will happen if the UN cannot get its act together, and Russia and China end up using their veto powers for the third time? Ankara will probably invoke the 1998 Adana agreement with Syria to justify the military interference while calling on NATO members for the application of the Article 5 of the NATO Charter, which says that an attack on any member shall be considered to be an attack on all. The article was invoked by the US for the first time in October 2001, when NATO determined that the terrorist attacks on the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City were indeed eligible under the terms of the North Atlantic Treaty. Since the Assad regime allows the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and its affiliates to launch attacks on Turkish soil and harbors some 1,500 to 2,000 hard-core PKK militants in areas close to the Turkish border, Turkey can very well utilize the NATO security cover for assistance…

The Adana Agreement, which certified the beginning of more cordial ties between Ankara and Damascus, stipulated that Syria would not allow any activity from its territory that would threaten the “security and stability of Turkey.” It mainly referred to terrorist attacks from the Kurdish militant group PKK, which the Assad family has hosted in Syria for decades and with which Syrian military intelligence still enjoys a tactical co-operation. (For more on this, see the Henry Jackson Society report “The Decisive Minority: The Critical Role of Syria’s Kurds in the Anti-Assad Revolution”, written by Ilhan Tanir and Omar Hossino.)

The PKK, which are not represented in the main pro-revolutionary Kurdish National Council bloc of Syrian Kurdish parties, have said that if Turkey invades Syria they’ll launch counteroffensives. This has been a major disincentive for Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erodgan to impose a buffer zone. However, his threat assessment is now changing after Syrian security forces waged a cross-border raid into a Turkish refugee camp last Sunday, wounding two Turkish nationals, and also because the number of Syrian refugees pouring over the border has increased exponentially. Of the more than 24,000 currently housed in the Hatay province, a third arrived only in the last three weeks, according to Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.

Apart from how destabilising this refugee population is to Turkey’s own delicate sectarian balance is the fact that any human rights abuses committed against Syrians on Turkish soil fall within the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights. Anyone who has been following the British press in the last several months will know how Ankara must greet such a prospect.

Borzkurt highlights another interesting possibility. Because of yet another bilateral agreement between Turkey and Syria, signed in December 2010, both countries have the right to conduct joint operations in each other’s territory aimed at rooted out terrorists. Though Assad has labelled the whole opposition to his rule as “terrorist,” that term more aptly applies to the roving death-and-rape squads known as shabbiha that he has employed since the start of the uprising last year. It also applies to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and Hizbollah agents that have assisted in the regime’s crackdown. If Turkey were to recognise the Syrian National Council as a government-in-exile, then it could lawfully intervene in Syria with that government-in-exile’s express consent. And let’s not forget that the Free Syrian Army is still headquartered in Antakya.

However it all shakes out, Turkey’s forbearance isn’t going to last forever. Ironically, it may just be that Turkey’s “no trouble with the neighbours” foreign policy, which led to its rapprochement with Syria, becomes the ultimate platform for making trouble with the neighbour downstairs.

via Is Turkey preparing for an intervention in Syria? – Telegraph Blogs.

April 12, 2012
Supporters of Syria Take Significant Steps, but No Endgame in Sight

Supporters of Syria Take Significant Steps, but No Endgame in Sight

Publication: Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 9 Issue: 67

April 4, 2012

By: Saban Kardas

On April 1, Turkey hosted the second meeting of the Friends of Syria group, which produced mixed results as to the future of the Syrian uprisings. While the meeting lent some legitimacy to the opposition organized around the Syrian National Council (SNC) and warned President Bashar al-Assad not to miss a final chance for a political solution, it fell short of authorizing decisive actions that would coerce him to end the violent military campaign against the uprising and, more importantly, step down from power (Anadolu Ajansi, April 1).

Given its proximity and the close relationship it had forged with Damascus in the preceding years, Ankara has been actively involved in the resolution of the Syrian crisis since the beginning of the uprising. After the failure of its final efforts to reach out to Assad diplomatically in the summer of 2011, Turkey’s position changed drastically. Since then, Turkey, in coordination with the Arab League and its Western partners, has been at the forefront of the international initiatives to solve the crisis by removing Assad from power. It has extended shelter to both the Syrian refugees and the opposition groups and strived to push the UN Security Council to authorize stronger action to address the impending humanitarian catastrophe. The inability to involve the UN Security Council in the crisis due to the Russian and Chinese vetoes prompted Turkey to explore alternative avenues (EDM, February 7).

Although at one point the Turkish government came under growing international pressure to lead a military intervention into Syria, it resisted such calls and instead continued to explore other means to first alleviate the suffering of civilians and later to ensure Syrian regime change. In an effort to generate broader international momentum around these objectives, Turkey was instrumental in the formation of the Friends of Syria group, bringing together likeminded states, which held its first meeting in Tunis a month ago. However, as it facilitated this coalition acting in close concert with the Washington, Ankara also risked fundamental disagreements with the supporters of the Syrian regime, especially Tehran, which added one more element to the already complicated bilateral relations.

In the weeks preceding the meeting, Turkey also worked hard to ensure that it would produce substantial outcomes. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, attending the nuclear summit in South Korea, discussed this issue with US President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, hoping to change Moscow’s position by sending the message that Assad’s days are numbered and those who stand behind him will be doomed to lose (Hurriyet, March 28). On his way back home, Erdogan visited Iran and met with Iranian leaders, including the religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (www.haberturk.com, March 29). Erdogan’s appeal to his Iranian counterparts was hardly successful, as they gave no indications of a change in their position. Turkey also maintained its coordination with the Arab League, but the internal divisions among the Arab countries increasingly became apparent. While the Gulf states largely supported the Syrian opposition, Iraq has cautioned against overbearing action against Damascus and expressed its discomfort with Turkey’s activism by not inviting it to the Arab League meeting only days before the Friends of Syria conference in Istanbul (Haberturk, March 29).

The game changer ahead of the Friends’ meeting was the six-point plan prepared by the UN/ Arab League joint special envoy Kofi Annan. After his diplomatic tour, Annan submitted his plan to the UN Security Council. The Annan plan foresees a cessation of violence, delivery of humanitarian assistance, withdrawal of heavy weaponry out of civilian areas, and political dialogue, but falls short of meeting the opposition’s demand for outlining a program for the transfer of power. Following a Security Council presidential statement giving full support to the plan on March 21, the Syrian regime also agreed to accept it on March 27 (www.aljazeera.com, March 28). Though Annan emphasized that the implementation will be the key, Assad’s move right before the Istanbul conference apparently sought to open some cracks in the coalition and thwart a harsh response.

This development put Turkey in a difficult position, as it still operated under the assumption that changing the regime would be needed to solve the crisis. Erdogan raised concerns about Assad’s sincerity, arguing that he had failed to keep his earlier reform promises (Vatan, March 28). More importantly, Turkey questioned the six-point plan because it lacked a clear time table and enforcement mechanism in case of noncompliance (Sabah, March 31).

Turkey also took a major step in advance of the Friends conference by convening the Syrian opposition groups in Istanbul, which sought to consolidate the opposition under one structure. By then, the disunity of the opposition groups had prevented a more decisive international support to the SNC. Although they achieved major progress in the way of eliminating differences of opinion, outlining a plan of action for national unity and consolidating their leadership structure, the withdrawal of the Syrian Kurds indicated the remaining divisions (www.ntvmsnbc.com, March 28).

The Istanbul conference produced mixed results. The participation of over 70 countries and several international organizations, despite the absence of Russia and China, was in itself a major success. In a lukewarm development, the participants recognized the SNC as a legitimate, though not the sole, representative of the Syrian people, and decided to treat it as an interlocutor in the conflict. Though the lack of a clear decision to arm the opposition or establish humanitarian corridors also fell short of the SNC’s expectations, the references to supporting the Syrian people’s legitimate right to defend themselves might open such a loophole. The participants still agreed to establish a fund, to be provided largely by the Gulf countries as well as some Western nations, to extend financial assistance to the Free Syrian Army and supply it with some communications equipment. Also important was a decision to establish a working group to monitor the arms embargo as well as to document violations of human rights, which might increase pressure on Assad and his backers. Though the meeting supported Annan’s plan, it also called on him to set a timeline for its implementation. Although Turkey and the Friends group assume that Assad’s end is inevitable, their progress in compelling Assad and his supporters to change their behavior has been far from impressive. It might be too early to tell the endgame in Syria.

https://jamestown.org/program/supporters-of-syria-take-significant-steps-but-no-endgame-in-sight/

April 6, 2012