Category: Syria

By AYLA ALBAYRAK

ISTANBUL—Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said Wednesday that his country would push ahead with planned sanctions on Syria, despite the veto of a United Nations Security Council condemning the regime in Damascus a day earlier.

Mr. Erdoğan’s comments, made while on a visit to South Africa, came as Turkey’s military said it was beginning a routine military exercise close to Syria’s border that would run from Wednesday until Oct. 13.

“The veto of (the draft) will not prevent our sanctions, just as it does not prevent the steps of some or all EU countries,” Mr. Erdoğan said, according to Anadolu Ajansi, Turkey’s state news agency.

Russia and China vetoed the Security Council resolution, which would have condemned the actions of the Syrian regime in killing an estimated 3,000 protesters since the Spring. Russia said it feared the resolution could push Syria towards all-out civil war.

“We will now inevitably apply our sanction package … We have a 910-kilometer long border. Moreover, we have cross-border family ties, which increase our responsibility,” he said.

Mr. Erdoğan didn’t give details of what the sanctions package would entail. He had said Tuesday that he would reveal those when he visits camps for some 7,500 Syrian refugees who have fled violence in the country, just on the Turkish side of the border, either this weekend or next week.

Mr. Erdogan also lashed out at Israel in his speech, repeating previous claims that it a threat to peace in the Middle East. “At the moment I see Israel also a threat to its region and its environment, because it has an atomic bomb,” Mr. Erdogan said, according to Anadolu Ajansi.

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Turkish officials feel under pressure to act, given the lack of further options available to governments in the U.S. and Europe. Ankara is enforcing an arms embargo, but has been reluctant to impose economic sanctions that might harm primarily Turkish and Syrian businessmen, rather than the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. Turkey exported $1 billion of goods to Syria in the first six months of the year, slightly up from the year-earlier period despite the turmoil, according to figures from the Turkish Exporters’ Assembly.

Turkey’s government had exceptionally warm relations with the Assad regime—the Erdoğan and Assad families even went on vacation together in 2008—but relations turned sour this year when Mr. Assad ignored Turkish pressure to end the crackdown on opponents and institute changes.

The moves came as Col. Riad al As’ad, a former Syrian military officer, reported to have been detained by Turkey and handed over to Damascus, surfaced in Turkey and denied the reports.

Col. As’ad, who defected and fled to Turkey about three months ago, leads Syria’s main military defectors group, the Free Syrian Army, after merging it with another dissident army group last month, said Omar Idlibi, a spokesperson for the Local Coordination Committees, an activist network.

Col. As’ad combined his group with the Free Officers Movement, led by Col. Hussein Harmoush and based in Turkey along the Syrian border. That group was dealt a serious setback in September when Col. Harmoush appeared on Syrian state television, appearing to confess that his movement didn’t actually exist.

Activists say they believe he was either tricked back into Syria by covert intelligence officers, where he was captured by forces there, or handed over by Turkish authorities.

“We did not hand over anyone,” said a spokesman for the Turkish foreign ministry. He said the rumors had begun in the Syrian press when Col. As’ad became ill and was taken by ambulance from his refugee camp to a hospital, accompanied by Turkish health officials.

Col. As’ad said Tuesday that he was living unmolested in Turkey, Anadolu reported. “Turkish authorities have not applied any pressure or violence on us,” he said.

Army defectors have multiplied in recent weeks and are increasingly claiming responsibility for attacks on security forces. Last week, activists said defectors in al-Rastan, a town north of Homs, destroyed about a dozen tanks. Dissident soldiers, mostly low-ranking Sunni conscripts, say they are keeping their light weapons with them and urging other soldiers to defect to protect civilians. There haven’t yet been any announced defections from higher-ranking Alawite soldiers, who form the military’s backbone and are Assad loyalists.

—Nour Malas in Dubai and Marc Champion in Istanbul contributed to this article.

via Turkey to Place Sanctions on Syria – WSJ.com.

Posted by Tony Karon

Nobody ought to be surprised by the Russian and Chinese vetoes of a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Syria’s brutal crackdown on its citizenry and hinting that sanctions could be invoked if repression continues. That sanctions threat had been watered down in the hope of winning Russian and Chinese consent, but to no avail — Moscow and Beijing see themselves as having been burned by the Western powers on Libya, making them view authorization of any action against Syria as opening the way to yet another military intervention. While the Russian and Chinese position was backed by other important Security Council members who shared their view on Libya, a crucial exception was Turkey — which not only supported the resolution, but vowed to impose its own sanctions on Syria despite the U.N. vote.

“During this season of change, the people of the Middle East can now see clearly which nations have chosen to ignore their calls for democracy and instead prop up desperate, cruel dictators,” huffed U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice — perhaps oblivious to the irony that the people of the Middle East have also taken note of which nations are supporting and which are opposing the Palestinians’ efforts to claim their rights at the U.N.

Rice suggested that Russia’s veto was motivated by its desire to continue selling arms to the Assad regime, but China, Brazil, India and South Africa all joined Moscow in opposing the resolution, and none of them does a significant arms trade with Syria. Instead, like Russia, they made clear that their own votes were based on the Libya experience, where the Security Council’s authorization of a mission to protect civilians had been used as cover for a military campaign for regime change: As those countries see it, Libya was an object lesson in Western powers abusing U.N. authorization for action, and exceeding its limits, in order to pursue their own agenda. Hence their folded arms in the face of Syria’s ongoing brutality.

Western leaders accuse the opponents of the resolution of supporting the Assad regime, which may well be true to a greater or lesser extent for some of them. They’re certainly more inclined to share the Assad regime’s view that the conflict unfolding in Syria — like the one in Libya — is a civil war. That may have become a self-fulfilling prophecy as the repression meted out by the regime against non-violent protestors amplifies calls for an armed struggle against Assad. The regime is casting the conflict as a sectarian Islamist insurgency, and doing its best to provoke such, in the hope of shoring up its support among the Alawite and Christian minorities. Seven months into the rebellion, the city of Homs has seen opposition elements arm themselves, in clashes that have indeed taken on a sectarian character, pitting Sunni opposition groups against Alawites. That helps Assad cast the opposition as a mortal threat to Alawites and Christians, and also helps the likes of Russia present the situation as a civil war rather than a people vs. dictatorship scenario.

Libya notwithstanding, however, the Russians, Chinese and their allies have little reason to fear Western military intervention in Syria. Tiny Libya was low-hanging fruit, with prized oil assets and a danger of refugees flooding into southern Europe, and little potential spillover in its immediate neighborhood. Syria is altogether more substantial, with the regime maintaining a solid base of support, and a mortal assault on it raising potentially cataclysmic consequences for Israel, Lebanon and Iraq (even Turkey, to a lesser extent). And then there’s the fact that the U.S. and its NATO allies are all tapped out when it comes to expeditionary warfare, looking to end their entanglements in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya amid a growing economic crisis that trims their strategic ambitions. All along, the U.S. and its allies have tried to send the Syrian opposition the message that they shouldn’t, in fact, operate on the assumption that they can expect a military intervention to save them.

One bright spot for the U.S. — and for the Syrian opposition — is the position of Turkey, Syria’s most powerful neighbor and one of its largest trading partners. Underscoring its increasingly assertive and independent regional role — which has vexed Washington on issues such as Israel and Iran, where Ankara has challenged U.S. policy — Turkey is taking a lead in moves to pressure the Assad regime to halt its repression. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan broke with his BRIC allies (Russia, China, India and South Africa) to strongly support the Security Council resolution, and chided those who opposed it.

“The Syrian administration should have received a warning,” Erdogan said Wednesday of the vote, during a visit to South Africa (which abstained in the Security Council. “The people of that country do not need to endure a merciless, shameless, tyrannical regime that bombs its own country from the sea. My heart remains with those struggling for freedom. South Africans have been in that position.”

And such scolding will carry more weight in Pretoria coming from Turkey, given its positions on the Palestinian vote, Iran and even the Libya intervention, than it does coming from Washington. Nor was the Turkish leader ready to accept the Security Council’s verdict as the last word. Instead, he promised, Turkey will immediately impose new sanctions of its own, in concert with European Union countries.

via Syria Escapes U.N. Sanctions, But Not Turkey’s – Global Spin – TIME.com.