Category: Syria

Turkey Mulls Kosovo-Like Plan for Syria

Turkey is entertaining the possibility of working with the international community to establish a humanitarian corridor into Syria without a U.N. Security Council directive as it did in Kosovo in 1999.

Establishing corridors needs a United Nations Security Council mandate, but Russia and China, who both have veto power, have said they would not allow the passage of any resolution they see as unbalanced.

If Russia and China keep blocking attempts for U.N. Security Council measures against the Syrian regime, the international community could seek alternative legitimate ways to create a humanitarian corridor into Syria, a Turkish official told Hürriyet Daily News.

The international community may enforce a humanitarian aid corridor into Syria without a U.N. Security Council resolution, as was implemented in Kosovo over a decade ago, if the country’s humanitarian problems reach unbearable dimensions, according to a Turkish official.

In the case of Kosovo, the international community, including the United States and NATO, established humanitarian corridors into the region in 1999 ahead of a U.N. Security Council decision after ethnic conflict erupted in the former Yugoslavia.

According to assessments in Ankara, Moscow may change its position after upcoming elections in Russia and follow a path closer to the majority of the international community on the Syrian crisis.

Arab countries should do more, Çiçek says

Meanwhile, Turkish Parliamentary Speaker Cemil Çiçek has criticized those who have been pushing Turkey to find a solution to the Syrian crisis. “Don’t egg us on this issue,” he said during a visit to Riyadh. “Some ruse circles just follow what is happening [in Syria] as if they were watching a football game and then say, ‘Turkey should handle this.’”

Turkey has pulled its weight on the Syrian crisis, Çiçek said, adding that everyone had a responsibility in disputes in the Middle East and that Turkey was following a realistic policy.

“Those who do not have borders with Syria should not be content with mere remarks. I hope Muslim countries with Arab roots will do more than they have done up until now. They haven’t done enough,” he said.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said Turkey would host a meeting on Syria. Addressing his deputies, Erdoğan said Turkey had been part of every step in the Friends of Syria meeting.

‘Cannot remain indifferent’

Elsewhere, the National Security Council (MGK) gathered Feb. 27 and said in a written statement that the international community should not remain indifferent to the violence and “mass massacres” in Syria. The council highlighted the importance of protecting Syrian people and extending humanitarian aid to those people.

Turkey denied claims that it had turned a blind eye to Syria’s usage of Turkish territory as a route to obtain weapons. Britain’s The Times had reported that Syria was using Turkey as a route to bypass sanctions and obtain materiel and equipment for its weapons industry and that Turkey was turning a blind eye.

The claims are groundless, Foreign Ministry spokesman Selçuk Ünal told Anatolia news agency.

Wednesday, 29 February 2012

via Turkey Mulls Kosovo-Like Plan for Syria, 29 February 2012 Wednesday 11:28.

March 1, 2012
Amanpour: we need people like Marie Colvin & Arwa Damon to humanize what’s happening in Syria

Amanpour: we need people like Marie Colvin & Arwa Damon to humanize what’s happening in Syria

CNN chief international correspondent and ABC global affairs anchor Christiane Amanpour and Hoover Institution Fouad Ajami, discuss the increasing humanitarian crisis in Syria with CNN’s Anderson Cooper. Amanpour stresses how critical independent reporting is to the mobilization of humanitarian aid for civilians during crises like the on-going struggle inside Syria, and the earlier war inside the former Yugoslavia.

ANDERSON COOPER 360° airs weeknights at 8:00pm and 10:00pm ET on CNN and CNN International.

via Amanpour: we need people like Marie Colvin & Arwa Damon to humanize what’s happening in Syria – CNN Press Room – CNN.com Blogs.

February 24, 2012
China, Turkey Sidestep Syria Issue to Sign Business Pacts

By BRIAN SPEGELE And JOE PARKINSON

ISTANBUL—China and Turkey set aside differences on how to quell escalating violence in Syria on Tuesday, as Vice President Xi Jinping began the final leg of a diplomatic tour seen as a dress rehearsal for Chinese leadership by overseeing a series of bilateral business deals, including a central bank swap deal to boost trade in local currencies.

Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Turkey’s President Abdullah Gul, left, and China’s Vice President Xi Jinping during a welcoming ceremony in Ankara

Mr. Xi, widely presumed to be China’s next top leader, signed the three-year currency-swap pact between Turkey’s central bank and the People’s Bank of China alongside Turkey’s President Abdullah Gul in Ankara on Tuesday.

The two leaders, who signed five other business agreements, didn’t make any public statements before the Chinese vice president headed to Istanbul to meet Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, but Turkish officials were expected to relay their growing concerns over the gathering violence in neighboring Syria.

Ankara has repeatedly said the world can’t remain silent in the face of an 11-month revolt against President Bashar al-Assad, which appears to be degenerating into civil war. China, along with Russia, has vetoed two United Nations Security Council resolutions backing Arab League plans seeking an end to the conflict and condemning a crackdown on protests that killed 5,400 in 2011 alone, according to the U.N.

Ankara reacted furiously when Beijing, along with Moscow, vetoed the second resolution earlier this month, proposing a summit on Syria to help coordinate policy outside the Security Council.

As activists reported that Syrian government troops continued to shell restive districts in the opposition stronghold of Homs, killing at least 16 people, official communication from Mr. Xi’s diplomatic visit made no mention of Syria, or the stalling diplomatic attempts to halt the violence.

China’s state-run Xinhua news agency reported that Mr. Xi and the Turkish President discussed “regional and international affairs of common concerns,” though neither side initially offered details.

Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency reported that China was interested in investing in Turkish economic projects and that Prime Minister Erdogan had accepted Mr. Xi’s offer to visit Beijing.

The conspicuous silence on developments across the border in Syria disappointed Turkish analysts, who had hoped the meeting of two rising powers with expanding interests in the Middle East, could offer some clue on whether Beijing would soften its objection to intervention to quell the violence amid growing fears that the revolt against the Assad regime is degenerating into civil war.

China in recent weeks has given little indication it would support Western intervention, despite heightened criticism in Turkey, Europe and the U.S. that it was serving as an obstructionist to restoring peace there. Rather, senior Chinese leaders and state-run media have delivered unusually direct defenses of China’s position. China has a strict foreign policy of noninterference in other countries’ internal affairs, which in recent years it has used to block international intervention on humanitarian grounds alone. Additionally, China fears unrest toward authoritarian regimes in the Arab world could spread to Beijing if aided by the West, analysts say.

“Our position hasn’t changed,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei at a news briefing Tuesday. He said China was willing to work with the international community to resolve the crisis in Syria, but said China didn’t welcome external arms or interference in the conflict.

Mr. Hong confirmed China had received an invitation to a “Friends of Syria” meeting backed by Western powers and the Arab League set for Friday in Tunis, but didn’t say whether China would participate. Russia confirmed on Tuesday that it wouldn’t participate in the meeting because the Syrian government wouldn’t be represented, stoking fears that the group would struggle to gain legitimacy.

Mr. Xi, who will become China’s Communist Party chief in a once-a-decade leadership transition that begins late this year, will have to forge a consensus on sensitive foreign-policy issues among powerful political forces in China, including state-owned enterprises and the military.

Many questions remain about his approach to policy, though he is viewed by U.S. officials and other political analysts as a business-friendly politician, perhaps less driven by communist ideology than his predecessors.

Nonetheless, analysts said Mr. Xi wouldn’t be able stray significantly from the prevailing party line on Syria and other Middle East issues, lest he risk upstaging China’s current leadership, including President Hu Jintao.

Chinese leaders, including Premier Wen Jiabao, have said China isn’t defending the Assad regime. They argue the U.N. Security Council resolution calling for Mr. Assad’s resignation ran afoul with the U.N. charter. In addition to vetoing the Security Council’s resolution, China last week was one among just 12 U.N. member states to oppose a nonbinding resolution condemning the Syrian government.

Earlier on Turkey on Tuesday Mr. Xi was confronted with one sensitive domestic issue, as a group of protesters gathered outside his Ankara hotel to demonstrate against Beijing’s crackdown against Turkic-speaking Uighurs in China’s northwestern Xinjiang province, according to Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency. Violence between Muslim Uighurs and Han Chinese, China’s dominant ethnic group, left nearly 200 dead in western China in 2009 in the worst riots in the country’s far west in more than a decade.

Turkey’s Parliament Speaker Cemil Cicek earlier said that Ankara respects China’s “sovereignty and territorial unity” in an apparent reference to the issue.

via China, Turkey Sidestep Syria Issue to Sign Business Pacts – WSJ.com.

February 22, 2012
U.S. – Turkey United On Syria

Photo: AP

This image from amateur video made available by Shaam News Network, purports to show black smoke rising in the air in Homs, Syria, Thursday, Feb. 16, 2012.

The on-going violence in Syria and how best to end it were primary topics of discussion between U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu. “It is deplorable,” said Secretary Clinton, “that the [Syrian] regime has escalated violence in cities across the country, including using artillery and tank fire against innocent civilians. We stand with the Syrian people and we are looking for a peaceful resolution.” Since March 2011, the regime of President Bashar al-Assad has killed well over 5,000 people.

The United States and Turkey continue to call on the Assad regime to heed the Arab League’s latest efforts to end the killing immediately, withdraw military forces from residential areas, allow in monitors and journalists, release political prisoners, and begin a genuine, sincere democratic transition that starts with a serious dialogue with the opposition.

The Arab League called on Syrian opposition groups to unite ahead of a February 24th meeting in Tunisia of the “Friends of Syria” group, which includes the United States, its European allies and Arab nations working to end the uprising against Assad’s authoritarian rule.

Turkey and the United States, said Secretary Clinton, will intensify their diplomatic pressure on the Assad regime by strengthening targeted sanctions and increasing outreach to opposition both inside and outside of Syria. At the same time, both countries are exploring ways to address the growing humanitarian crisis within Syria. The U.S. and Turkey have increased funding to international humanitarian partners providing medical assistance to Syrians, and are working directly with Syrian organizations to help families who have no electricity, food, or clean water.

The United States and Turkey will work together with like-minded partners to promote a peaceful political process in Syria. “This is essential,” Secretary Clinton said, “and the Syrian people deserve no less than a democratic future free of government oppression, terrorism, and violent extremism.”

via U.S. – Turkey United On Syria | Editorials | Editorial.

February 20, 2012
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