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Turkey’s Syria Policy: The Challenge of Coalition Building

Turkey’s Syria Policy: The Challenge of Coalition Building

February 17, 2012 / Saban Kardas

Turkey is in the international spotlight over the Syrian uprising. So far, it has focused largely on the humanitarian situation taking a moral high ground on the civilians trapped by the conflict. Either due to its own ambitious rhetoric or the preferences of other regional and international actors, Turkey is expected in some circles to lead international efforts to end the actions perpetrated by the Baath regime. If necessary, this includes the use of force. Following the failure of the Arab League’s peace plan at the UN Security Council, Turkey has vowed to mobilize a coalition of like-minded states to address the unfolding humanitarian crisis. This effort epitomizes the limited but crucial role Turkey could play here: facilitating a coalition at the regional-global nexus, so that a coercive diplomatic solution short of military intervention is forged.

February 18, 2012
Times Correspondent Dies in Syria

NEW YORK—New York Times correspondent Anthony Shadid, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner who strove to capture untold stories in Middle East conflicts from Libya to Iraq, died Thursday in eastern Syria after slipping into the country to report on the uprising against its president.

Associated PressAnthony Shadid in April

Mr. Shadid, shot in the West Bank in 2002 and kidnapped for six days in Libya last year, apparently died of an asthma attack, the Times said. Times photographer Tyler Hicks was with him and carried his body to Turkey, the newspaper said.

“Anthony was one of our generation’s finest reporters,” Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger said in a statement. “He was also an exceptionally kind and generous human being. He brought to his readers an up-close look at the globe’s many war-torn regions, often at great personal risk. We were fortunate to have Anthony as a colleague, and we mourn his death.”

Mr. Shadid’s father, Buddy Shadid, told The Associated Press on Thursday his son had asthma all his life and had medication with him.

“(But) he was walking to the border because it was too dangerous to ride in the car,” the father said. “He was walking behind some horses—he’s more allergic to those than anything else—and he had an asthma attack.”

The Times reported that Messrs. Shadid and Hicks recently were helped by smugglers through the border area in Turkey adjoining Syria’s Idlib Province and were met by guides on horseback.

Mr. Hicks told the newspaper that Mr. Shadid suffered one bout of asthma the first night, followed by a more severe attack a week later on the way out.

“I stood next to him and asked if he was OK, and then he collapsed,” Mr. Hicks told the Times.

Mr. Hicks said that Mr. Shadid was unconscious and that his breathing was “very faint” and “very shallow.” He said that after a few minutes he could see that Mr. Shadid “was no longer breathing.”

Mr. Shadid, a 43-year-old American of Lebanese descent, had a wife, Nada Bakri, and a son and a daughter. He had worked previously for the AP, The Washington Post and The Boston Globe. He won Pulitzer Prizes for international reporting in 2004 and 2010 when he was with the Post.

In 2004, the Pulitzer Board praised “his extraordinary ability to capture, at personal peril, the voices and emotions of Iraqis as their country was invaded, their leader toppled and their way of life upended.”

Mr. Shadid also was the author of three books, including “House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East,” in which he wrote about restoring his family’s home in Lebanon, forthcoming next month from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Mr. Shadid was a native of Oklahoma City and graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He joined the AP in Milwaukee in 1990, worked on the International Desk in New York and served as the AP’s news editor in Los Angeles. He was transferred to Cairo in 1995, covering stories in several countries.

AP Senior Managing Editor John Daniszewski, who worked with Mr. Shadid in Baghdad during the U.S. invasion in 2003, called him “a brilliant colleague who stood out both for his elegant writing and for his deep and nuanced understanding of the region.”

“He was calm under fire and quietly daring, the most admired of his generation of foreign correspondents,” Mr. Daniszewski said.

Ralph Nader, the former third-party presidential candidate, called Mr. Shadid “a great, great reporter.”

“His courage, stamina, intellect and extraordinary powers of observation respected his readers’ intelligence while elevating his profession’s standards,” the longtime consumer advocate said in a statement.

Mr. Nader added in a phone call to the AP that he knew Mr. Shadid from his time at The Washington Post and had met his family.

“What a loss,” he said.

Mr. Shadid had been reporting in Syria for a week, gathering information on the resistance to the Syrian government and calls for Syrian President Bashar Assad to step down, the Times said. The exact circumstances and location of his death were unclear, it said.

Times Executive Editor Jill Abramson sent a note to the newsroom Thursday evening, relaying the news of Mr. Shadid’s death and remembering him.

“Anthony died as he lived—determined to bear witness to the transformation sweeping the Middle East and to testify to the suffering of people caught between government oppression and opposition forces,” she wrote.

Mr. Shadid, long known for covering wars and other conflicts in the Middle East, was among four reporters detained for six days by Libyan forces loyal to Moammar Gadhafi last March.

Speaking to an audience in Oklahoma City about a month after his release, he said he had a conversation with his father the night before he was detained.

“Maybe a little bit arrogantly, perhaps with a little bit of conceit, I said, ‘It’s OK, Dad. I know what I’m doing. I’ve been in this situation before,’” Mr. Shadid told the crowd of several dozen people. “I guess on some level I felt that if I wasn’t there to tell the story, the story wouldn’t be told.”

When Mr. Shadid’s wife was asked at the time whether she worried about him returning to writing about conflicts, she said as a journalist she understood that he might need to.

“At the end of the day, he’s my husband, and the thought of going through life without him and raising our children alone is terrible,” she said afterward.

Mr. Shadid’s father, who lives in Oklahoma City, said a colleague tried to revive his son after he was stricken Thursday but couldn’t.

“They were in an isolated place. There was no doctor around,” Buddy Shadid said. “It took a couple of hours to get him to a hospital in Turkey.”

February 18, 2012
Turkey Has One Big Problem in Neighbor Syria

The popular uprisings that toppled decade old dictatorships in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya last year forced the Turks to reconsider their famed “zero problems with neighbors” policy and take sides. They welcomed the winds of change and proved quite willing to cut their ties with Middle Eastern despots after years of engagement in order to promote their own model of Islamist democracy and maintain an influence.

Ahmet Davutoğlu, Turkey's foreign minister, answers questions from reporters at NATO headquarters in Brussels, January 18, 2011

Regime change in Egypt and Libya was brokered by Western powers, alleviating Turkey of the burden of balancing their rhetorical support for anti-government protests with a realist imperative to compromise with (military) caretakers.

In Syria, where President Bashar al-Assad is refusing to listen to the rest of the world and continues to crush the revolt against his regime, the Turks have finally to come to terms with the situation and decide how serious they are about supporting the Arab cause.

For now, Ankara doesn’t appear willing to do more than let the Syrian opposition organize on its soil and refugees pour in from the south despite demands from Damascus that it seal the border. Turkish diplomacy appears to have little effect. Writes Leon Hadar in National Interest, “Turks certainly seem to have made very little impression on the Machiavellian rulers in Damascus, who rejected Erdoğan’s pleadings to play nice.” The Turkish leader urged his Syrian counterpart as early as March of last year to “respond positively” to the demands of his people. Instead, Assad sent tanks into rebel cities. “So much for Turkish soft power,” concludes Hadar.

The Arab spring, he believes, has taught Turkey that reshaping the Middle East in its image “involves more than just sending trade missions to the Arab world, producing captivating television soap operas or pledging a commitment to promote the Palestinian cause.”

Indeed, while Americans may be from Mars and Europeans from Venus, the Middle East is now experiencing an explosive big bang, and Turkey is finding that being pulled into the developments in the region is like being drawn into a political black hole—and that getting out of it requires more than just soft power.

Hoping that the next generation of Arab leaders copying the Turkish model will put an end to the unrest is naive, he adds.

After all, the evolution of Turkey into a more or less functioning democracy was a century long drama involving larger than life players like Atatürk, social instability, political crises, ethnic warfare, military coups, the emancipation of women and the rise of a new middle class and business elite.

Even today, there is a very real tension between Turkey’s secularists and conservative Muslim majority represented by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s party. Similar tension is apparent in the new Egypt where the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood secured nearly a majority of seats in the nation’s freely elected parliament this year. In Egypt as well as Tunisia, religious minorities and secular Muslims fear an Islamist revival that could crush their freedoms and those of women.

In Syria, it seems that minority Alawites, Christians and Druze as well as the inhabitants of cities in the coastal areas are far less in favor of regime change than people in the Sunni dominated south and southwest of the country where the uprising is strongest. They are afraid that the revolt, if successful, will make life harder for them in the short term.

Hadar nevertheless recommends that the Turks work with the Arab League to negotiate Assad’s exile even if the aim of the Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia, is probably to see the Sunnis take power and move Syria away from its alliances with Hezbollah and Iran. Arab and Turkish peacekeepers should then move in to restore order.

It may not bring about the sort of multiethnic democracy that Western observers are hoping for overnight. But it would be a chance for the Turks to prove that they are prepared to assume the responsibility that comes with being a regional power.

Ahmet Davutoğlu, Turkey’s foreign minister, told France24 that he was “ready to do everything for [the] Syrian people” last month but stopped short of endorsing calls for military intervention at the time. The Turks hesitate to go it alone and for good reason but the United States will probably not make the choice for them this time.

via Turkey Has One Big Problem in Neighbor Syria | Atlantic Sentinel.

February 12, 2012
Turkey Pushes for New Action on Syria
As Shelling Kills More Than 50 in Homs, Former Damascus Ally Seeks Summit to Press for Leader’s Ouster; Iran Backs Assad

By JOE PARKINSON, CHARLES LEVINSON and JAY SOLOMON

Associated Press

A Syrian rebel runs for cover amid fire from unseen pro-Assad forces on Wednesday in Idlib, northern Syria.

ISTANBUL—As Syrian forces pounded the city of Homs with tank shells and rockets, adding dozens of fatalities to the siege’s five-day toll, Turkey pushed to the lead of countries trying to halt President Bashar al-Assad’s crackdown on his enemies.

Turkey called for an international summit “as soon as possible” to coordinate Syria policy between Middle East and world powers and press Mr. Assad to step aside. “We won’t leave Syria to its own destiny,” Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said in an interview with Turkey’s NTV television. “We are determined to form a platform for broad international consensus.”

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov calls on countries with influence over the Syrian opposition to press them to enter a dialogue with embattled President Bashar al-Assad. (Video: Reuters/Photo: Getty Images)

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ReutersA Syrian living in Jordan protested Tuesday against Russia’s support of the Syrian regime, in front of Russian embassy in Amman.

The Turkish move comes after Russia and China vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution pressing Mr. Assad to step aside. On Sunday, the day after the veto, the U.S. raised a call for a “friends of democratic Syria” that would ramp up efforts to push Mr. Assad from power.

Such a coalition could provide a platform outside the U.N. to boost diplomatic pressure on Damascus. The U.N.’s latest stalemate came after efforts by the Arab League of nations also failed to stem Syria’s violence, which began nearly a year ago with harsh government clampdowns on predominantly peaceful protests and has since brought the country to the edge of civil war.

For Turkey, the moves cement a dramatic reversal during the past year in its alliance with Damascus. They also underline Ankara’s coalescence with Washington on regional policy, following a recent strain that saw Turkey moving closer to Iran and engaging in rhetorical sparring with a top U.S. ally in the region, Israel.

Turkey and the U.S. are likely to be joined by countries in Europe and the Arab world that have also called for Mr. Assad to step aside. Separately, senior European Union officials said Wednesday the body is considering new sanctions on Syria.

As international lines against Mr. Assad deepened, one of his allies stood firm. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad pledged Iran’s support following a meeting Wednesday with Syria’s top cleric.

Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian met with Syria’s foreign minister in Damascus and said afterward that Iran remained “confident that the Syrian leadership and people will be able to overcome the current events,” according to Syria’s state-run Sana news agency.

Opposition activists in Syria say dozens of civilians have been killed in Homs as the military offensive in the city advances. (Video: Reuters)

The Turkish bid to form an international platform is reminiscent of the Libya Contact Group, an informal group of countries that met several times, including in Istanbul, to harmonize policy during the uprising against Moammar Gadhafi. Mr. Davutoglu said that in recent days he had laid the groundwork for such a meeting, discussing Syria with his counterparts in Italy and Qatar.

Any Libya parallels are likely to be greeted coolly by Russia and China, which have characterized international efforts in Libya as cover for forcing regime change. Mr. Davutoglu didn’t say whether Russia and China would take part but said Turkey wanted the group to be “as wide as possible.”

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev took a flurry of telephone calls from world capitals over the veto, with French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan both conveying on Wednesday that Mr. Assad has lost legitimacy and must step aside, according to their offices.

Mr. Medvedev countered that foreign interference is “not an option,” the Kremlin said. Mr. Medvedev instead said that a search to end bloodshed in Syria should continue, including at the U.N. Security Council, according to the Kremlin.

Meanwhile, Syrian forces mounted their fifth consecutive day of attacks on Homs, a city north of Damascus along the Lebanese border, striking with artillery, tank shells, rockets and mortars.

The city, a melting pot of ethnicities that mirror Syria’s own ethnic and religious diversity, has been the heart of the 11-month uprising. It has also been a base for rebel fighters thanks in part to the smuggling routes from Lebanon through which activists and locals say opposition fighters are obtaining weapons.

WSJ’s Greg White checks in on Mean Street with the latest on pressure on Russia to help end violence in Syria. Photo: AP.
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Facing Criticism, China Hints at Syria Action

America Exits Syria as Russia Makes Push

U.S. Steps Up Pressure to Oust Assad

China Defends Veto in Vote on Syria
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Amateur videos shot by Homs residents and posted to YouTube by opposition activists showed what were characterized as Wednesday attacks, with shells striking residential buildings and by pillars of smoke rising into the sky. One video appeared to show a resident standing by the corpse of a child, holding a piece of rocket shrapnel that he said had struck the child’s home. “What is the U.N. waiting for?” he said in the video. “Are these animals that are dying?”

Another showed a column of Syrian army trucks, including tanks and armored vehicles, rolling along an otherwise deserted road. Activists said it was evidence of the Syrian army’s buildup in and around the city.

The images couldn’t be corroborated but broadly match accounts from residents reached by telephone throughout the week. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a U.K.-based opposition group, said between 53 and 60 people died in Homs on Wednesday. The group and other activists said late Tuesday night members of a pro-Assad militia known as the Shabiha had murdered 20 members of three entire opposition families. Elsewhere in Syria, activists reported an additional 17 people killed by pro-regime forces, while rebels killed four Syrian soldiers in Zabadani, a suburb of the capital Damascus. Another opposition group put the death toll in Zabadani and the nearby town of Madaya at 18 deaths, saying that phone and power had been cut to the towns, which “are facing a humanitarian crisis.”

The regime has blamed terrorist gangs and criminals for the violence in Homs. The state-controlled Syrian news agency on Wednesday reported that rebel-fired mortars struck a nearby oil refinery in Homs, setting two oil storage tanks ablaze.

Russia’s foreign minister met with Syrian President Assad and said his message of the need to step up efforts to end the violence in Syria “has been heard.” Jeff Grocott has details on The News Hub. Photo: AP

Related Video

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin says the world faces a growing “cult of violence” and Moscow must not let events like those in Libya and Syria be repeated in Russia. (Video: Reuters/Photo: Getty Images)

Mr. Davutoglu’s comments came ahead of his departure Wednesday for Washington for previously scheduled bilateral meetings with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The senior diplomats are expected to explore ways to more quickly and effectively provide assistance to Syrian refugees who have sought haven in Turkey and other neighboring countries, U.S. officials said. But they will also discuss the tricky question of potentially providing aid to the victims of violence inside Syria.

The meetings are also expected to focus on Turkey’s ties with the Free Syrian Army, a loosely affiliated network of rebel fighting units and defected army regulars. Ibrahim Kalin, an adviser to Turkey’s Prime Minister, said in a column in pro-government daily Zaman on Wednesday that the “next stage in Syria will be to further empower the opposition.”

Turkey has quietly raised the idea of establishing a “buffer zone” inside Syria to protect civilians from Mr. Assad’s forces. But to do so, U.S. officials acknowledge, the international community would need to assemble some sort of outside military force to deter Syrian forces. They worry that without such firepower, Syrian forces could easily overwhelm any buffer zones or humanitarian corridors and potentially turn international monitors into hostages.

Mr. Davutoglu declined to discuss whether the government was considering a military-backed humanitarian intervention to help quell the violence.

Ankara and Damascus were close regional allies until this summer, when Turkish officials said President Assad’s refusal to end a bloody crackdown against opponents forced a shift. Ankara has repeatedly warned that Syria’s complex ethnic and sectarian mix could disintegrate, plunging the nation into chaos and potentially forcing neighboring nations to intervene.

Turkey has for months sheltered several thousand Syrian refugees, including members of the rebel Syrian Free Army. The opposition Syrian National Council in December opened an office in Istanbul.

“Turkey is beyond the point of no return; it has burned its bridges with Damascus and bet heavily on regime change. The failure at the U.N. means Ankara will further strengthen its cooperation with the U.S. on Syria, but they’ll want to avoid that perception by building a coalition,” said Sinan Ulgen, a former Turkish diplomat now with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

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Turkish analysts say Ankara is a reluctant hard-power player in the region, but the government’s fears of regional sectarian conflict are spurring a more activist policy.

Just a year ago, Mr. Assad was Exhibit A in Turkey’s “zero-problems-with-neighbors” foreign policy. Trade between the neighbors almost doubled to $2.3 billion in the two years to 2010 after Ankara cut visa requirements and eased tariffs. That policy was replicated across the region, boosting relations and trade with neighboring Muslim regimes, while downgrading ties with former ally Israel.

The Arab Spring, however, upended that policy as allies such as Libya’s Gadhafi were pushed aside and Shiite-Sunni tensions rose across the region.

The collapse of that doctrine has dovetailed with what analysts describe as an increasing symmetry of Washington and Ankara’s policies after a period of significant strain in 2009-2010, when Turkey moved closer to Iran and tensions with Israel were at boiling point over the killing of seven Turkish nationals by Israeli commandos on the Gaza-bound Mavi Marmara flotilla.

Analysts say the partnership has been bolstered in recent months by Turkey’s strong backing of pro-democracy movements during Arab Spring uprisings and its decision to host a NATO missile shield designed to contain Iran. Turkish and U.S. diplomats say they can’t remember a time when cooperation between Ankara and Washington was closer, citing that President Barack Obama called Turkey’s prime minister more than any other leader except Britain’s prime minister in 2011.

—Ayla Albayrak, Gregory L. White and William Horobin contributed to this article.

Write to Joe Parkinson at joe.parkinson@dowjones.com, Charles Levinson at charles.levinson@wsj.com and Jay Solomon at jay.solomon@wsj.com
February 10, 2012
Why Turkey is increasing pressure on Assad
By Fadi Hakura, Special to CNN

February 10, 2012 — Updated 1023 GMT (1823 HKT)

A member of the Free Syrian Army takes position in Al-Qsair, southwest of the flashpoint city Homs, on January 27.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Fadi Hakura says Turkey has abandoned its friendship with Syria in wake of violence

He says the change in position is unsurprising, given Turkey’s lack of strategic links to Syria

He says Turkey’s Prime Minister Erdogan lost no time in siding with Syria’s anti-Assad masses
Editor’s note: Fadi Hakura is the associate fellow and manager of the Turkey Project at the London-based think-tank Chatham House. He has written and lectured extensively on Turkey’s political, economic and foreign policy and the relationship between the European Union and Turkey.

(CNN) — Syria is heading to an “intolerable situation” according to Turkey’s hyperactive Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, whose country is at the forefront of global efforts to engineer the downfall of the Bashar Al-Assad leadership.

Less than two years ago, relations were diametrically different.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan considered Assad a close friend and paraded Syria as the epitome of its much vaunted but now defunct “zero problems with the neighbors” policy to encourage rapprochement with Middle Eastern nations. Trade across their 850-kilometer border blossomed tenfold, security cooperation against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party — a militant Kurdish group conducting a violent separatist campaign in Turkey — flourished and mutual visa restrictions were lifted.

Fadi Hakura

This transformation in ties should not be surprising in retrospect. For Turkey and Syria never enjoyed a strategic relationship as much as a convergence of interests triggered by the Iraq war in 2003 to stymie an independent Kurdistan in northern Iraq. Similarly, both leaderships found common cause against Israel. Their relationship was merely tactical and psychological bereft of common values.

Then the eruption of the Arab awakening upended the stability in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and eventually Syria thereby unleashing long simmering sectarian tensions to the surface. Assad’s security and intelligence forces dominated by fellow minority Alawites (a syncretic and mystical offshoot of Shia Islam) confronted a largely Sunni popular revolt.

Syria’s declining circle of friends

Men, women and children trapped in Syria

Syria’s accidental President al-Assad

Erdogan, a devout Sunni Muslim, did not hesitate to side with the anti-Assad masses. Gone are the days where Turkey defended Iranian nuclear endeavors and cooperated closely with it on Iraq. In its stead, Turkey patched once frosty relations with Washington jointly calling on Assad to resign, solidified the partnership with Gulf Arab countries and adopted a more muscular and robust approach towards Iran.

Washington’s cooperation with regional players such as Turkey is a good example of what U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton coined “smart power” in play to avoid committing scarce resources in money and soldiers as it disengages from Afghanistan and Iraq.

Turkey’s anti-Assad inclination stems from its sectarian sympathies with the Syrian protesters, its desire to project Turkish influence in the Middle East and to restrain the regional ambitions of rival Iran. On the other hand, the U.S. seeks to degrade the Iranian nuclear program and to guarantee the security of Israel and the Gulf Arab states.

Despite the toughening rhetoric against Damascus, there is no hiding the fact that Turkey’s choices are severely limited. Russia and China will thwart further U.N. initiatives, the Arab League looks exhausted, and the positions of the pro-Assad and anti-Assad alliances are entrenched.

At the heart of stalemate is the future of the Assad dynasty. Turkey and its friends strongly favor regime change while Assad and his allies demand regime stability. How to square this conundrum is testing the limits of Turkish diplomacy.

One possibility — which is most favored by Turkey — is a negotiated solution. Ankara proposed on Wednesday an international conference to end the violence in Syria. Yet, it seems highly unlikely that procedural fixes will paper over clashing objectives. Negotiations require an abundance of goodwill and a willingness to compromise, two commodities in short supply.

That leaves the most risky option of a slippery slope to further escalation on the ground. Turkey is already hosting the Syrian National Council and the Free Syrian Army of breakaway Syrian military personnel. Further measures could include unifying the hopelessly fragmented Syrian opposition and providing additional logistical and other support to Syrian armed groups.

Direct military intervention will pit Turkey against an angry Russia and a hostile Iran supplying collectively two-thirds of Turkey’s energy needs.
Fadi Hakura, Turkey analyst

Most perilous of all is Turkey unilaterally establishing a security zone or a safe haven on Syrian territory with the backing of the U.S., European powers and the Gulf Arabs but outside the U.N. purview. This would drag Turkey ever deeper into the Syrian quagmire that is descending into a sectarian civil war. After all, the turmoil in Syria can easily spill over into an ethnically and religiously diverse Turkey.

Direct military intervention will also pit Turkey against an angry Russia and a hostile Iran supplying collectively two-thirds of Turkey’s energy needs. Tehran is seething after Ankara agreed to host in September last year a sophisticated US early warning radar system under the NATO umbrella to neutralize the threat of long-range Iranian missiles.

Turkey is undoubtedly in a precarious and unenviable spot at the mercy of unpredictable and deteriorating regional circumstances. It is not in control of events but is being controlled by events. What the ultimate outcome will be is anyone’s guess.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Fadi Hakura
February 10, 2012
Pentagon plans US-backed war against Syria

By Chris Marsden
10 February 2012

The Pentagon has drawn up plans for military intervention in Syria.

A military strike would be coordinated with Turkey, the Gulf States and the NATO powers, according to reports that acknowledge such plans officially for the first time. The plan is described as an “internal review” by Pentagon Central Command, to allow President Barack Obama to maintain the pretense that the White House is still seeking a diplomatic solution.

This is considered vital, as military intervention would most likely be conducted through various Middle East proxies, which the US and NATO could then back with airpower. Turkey and the Arab League states, led by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, do not want to be seen for what they are: stooges of the US. Deniability for them therefore requires the US to conceal the full extent of its involvement.

In the February 6 Financial Times, Anne-Marie Slaughter, a former director of policy planning for the US State Department, argued for “A little time… for continued diplomatic efforts aimed at shifting the allegiances of the Sunni merchant class in Damascus and Aleppo.”

As with the war against Libya last year, military intervention would again be justified citing the “responsibility to protect” civilians. But its real aim is regime change to install a Sunni government beholden to Washington, allied with the Gulf States, and hostile to Iran.

A State Department official told the UK’s Daily Telegraph that “the international community may be forced to ‘militarise’ the crisis in Syria” and that “the debate in Washington has shifted away from diplomacy.”

Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, said, “We are, of course, looking at humanitarian assistance to the Syrian people, and we have for some time.”

The Telegraph noted, “Any plan to supply aid or set up a buffer zone would involve a military dimension to protect aid convoys or vulnerable civilians.”

Leading US political figures have also been calling publicly for the arming of the Free Syrian Army, an exclusively Sunni force stationed in Turkey and backed and funded by Ankara, Riyadh and Doha. They include Joe Lieberman, John McCain and Lindsey Graham.

The issue was discussed this week in Washington directly with the FSA, whose logistical coordinator, Sheikh Zuheir Abassi, took part in a video conference call Wednesday with a US national security think tank.

The US, France, Britain and Arab League are already operating outside the framework of the United Nations as a “Friends of Syria” coalition, in order to bypass the opposition of Russia and China to a Libya-style intervention.

Qatar and Saudi Arabia are known to be arming the FSA and to have their own brigades and advisers on the ground, as they did in Libya.

According to the Israeli intelligence website Debka-File, both British and Qatari special operations units are already “operating with rebel forces under cover in the Syrian city of Homs just 162 kilometers from Damascus… Our sources report the two foreign contingents have set up four centers of operation—in the northern Homs district of Khaldiya, Bab Amro in the east, and Bab Derib and Rastan in the north. Each district is home to about a quarter of a million people.”

But the Gulf States do not have the firepower required to overthrow the Assad regime. For that Turkey is the key player. Debka-File notes in the report that the presence of the British and Qatari troops “was seized on by Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan for the new plan he unveiled to parliament in Ankara Tuesday, Feb. 7. Treating the British-Qatari contingents as the first foreign foot wedged through the Syrian door, his plan hinges on consigning a new Turkish-Arab force to Homs through that door and under the protection of those contingents. Later, they would go to additional flashpoint cities.”

Turkey is publicly debating military intervention based on establishing “safe havens” and “humanitarian aid corridors,” with Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu visiting Washington this week after stating that Turkey’s doors are open to Syrian refugees.

Writing in the February 9 New Republic, Soner Cagaptay argues, “Washington’s reluctance to lead an operation may prove a blessing, leaving space for Turkey to take the reins… Turkey would support an air-based intervention to protect UN designated safe havens—as long as the mission is led by a ‘regional force,’ composed of both Turkish and Arab militaries. Qatar and Saudi Arabia, who are funding the opposition, should be happy to work with their new ally in Ankara to protect the safe havens; Washington and European powers could then remotely back the operation, facilitating its success.”

The aim of isolating Iran has become the stated aim of US and Israeli officials, backed by a media campaign prominently involving the liberal press, mixing anti-Iranian sentiment with humanitarian hyperbole professing concern with the fate of Syria’s people.

Efraim Halevy, a former Israeli national security adviser and director of the security service Mossad from 1998 to 2002, wrote in the February 7 New York Times describing Syria as “Iran’s Achilles’ Heel.”

He writes, “Iran’s foothold in Syria enables the mullahs in Tehran to pursue their reckless and violent regional policies—and its presence there must be ended … Once this is achieved, the entire balance of forces in the region would undergo a sea change.”

The New York Times’ British counterpart, The Guardian, entrusts Simon Tisdall with the task of endorsing such anti-Iranian sentiment. He cites favourably Hillary Clinton’s ridiculing of Assad’s claims of foreign intervention in support of the opposition as being “Sadly… fully justified.” Rather, he insists, “The foreign power most actively involved inside Syria is not the US or Britain, France or Turkey. Neither is it Russia, Saudi Arabia nor its Gulf allies. It is Iran—and it is fighting fiercely to maintain the status quo.”

The appalling consequences of an American war against Syria would dwarf those of its Libyan adventure. Syria is only the ante-chamber of a campaign for regime change in Iran and its targeting poses ever more clearly conflict with Russia and possibly China.

Moscow last month sent three warships, including an aircraft carrier, to its only Mediterranean naval base, the Syrian port of Tartus. This followed its blocking of the US, France and UK-backed Arab-League resolution, meant to pave the way for intervention, with the dispatch of Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to Damascus for talks with Assad, Tuesday, in a further show of solidarity. Lavrov was accompanied by Mikhail Fradkov, the head of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Office.

Of greater significance still were comments made the following day by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, linking efforts to overthrow Assad with a direct Western threat to the stability of Russia through its support for opposition protests there. “A cult of violence has been coming to the fore in international affairs in the past decade,” he said. “This cannot fail to cause concern… and we must not allow anything like this in our country.”

February 10, 2012