Category: Syria

Turkey’s double-standard policy on Syria

The Turkish military’s recent massive attacks on Kurdish separatists have raised the question of why Turkey is criticizing the Syrian government for its crackdown on armed terrorists.

In response to PKK terrorist attacks in which several militants were killed, the Turkish armed forces have conducted extensive operations against PKK bases in southern Turkey and northern Iraq over the past month.

Over twelve PKK commanders have been captured during 24 operations conducted in the Kurdish regions.

According to the Turkish security forces and Turkey’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, a number of people have been killed and many others injured in the recent operations.

Hundreds of tons of ammunition and bombs have been used by the Turkish military in the recent crackdown on the Kurds.

So how can Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan criticize the Syrian government for attacking armed terrorist groups while Turkey is conducting such massive operations in response to a few attacks by some PKK insurgents?

No one can deny that the Turkish government has the right to protect its territorial integrity. However, the Turkish government does not seem to recognize such a right for other neighboring countries like Syria.

Erdogan and his government should show more respect for others, and it would be better for them if they made a more precise analysis of the current situation in Syria, especially in regard to the U.S. and Israeli meddling in the country.

The recent incidents in Turkey and Syria have similar root causes. In other words, the hands of the U.S. and Israel are quite obvious behind the developments in both countries.

In recent years, the promotion of unity among Muslim countries has been one of the main priorities of Turkish foreign policy. Thus, Turkish officials are expected to adopt a more vigilant approach in dealing with the situation in Syria.

via Turkey’s double-standard policy on Syria – Tehran Times.

August 27, 2011
Cheney tried to persuade President Bush to bomb Syria

Combative vice-president’s memoirs detail his battles with his colleagues

By Rupert Cornwell in Washington

Dick Cheney looks on as President George Bush gives a speech in 2007

In a combative and score-settling new book, former vice-president Dick Cheney reveals how he unsuccessfully tried to persuade his boss George W Bush to bomb a suspected Syrian nuclear site, and takes sharp aim at his “moderate” rivals of the time, Condoleezza Rice and in particular her predecessor as Secretary of State, Colin Powell.

In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir, to be published next week, has long been keenly awaited, and the man regarded as the arch-conservative in the Bush inner circle does not disappoint. “There will be heads exploding all over Washington,” Mr Cheney told NBC in an interview of which excerpts were released yesterday. For once, the hype may not be far off the mark.

For the most part the book confirms the public perception of Mr Cheney when he held office between 2001 and 2009 – of one of the most influential vice-presidents in US history, secretive and sibylline, whose already conservative views were only hardened by the trauma of 9/11.

But the Syrian episode also bears out the widespread evidence that his sway diminished in Mr Bush’s second term, as the administration adopted a more multilateral approach to global issues, and the problems left by the 2003 Iraq invasion, of which Mr Cheney was arguably the most fervent advocate in the administration, became all but intractable.

“I again made the case for US military action against the reactor,”Mr Cheney writes of a June 2007 White House meeting on the issue. “But I was a lone voice. After I finished, the President asked, ‘Does anyone here agree with the Vice-President?’ Not a single hand went up around the room.” In the event, the site was destroyed three months later by Israeli warplanes. In the book, of which leaked extracts appeared in The New York Times yesterday, Mr Cheney does not hide his disagreements with Mr Bush. He also confirms that, well aware of his unpopularity, he offered his resignation on several occasions before the 2004 election. But each time the President rejected them.

In the NBC interview, Mr Cheney denies that his frankness will upset the former president – not least by the credence it might lend to claims that in the first Bush term at least he, rather than his titular boss, called the shots. “I didn’t set out to embarrass the President or not embarrass the President,” Mr Cheney insisted; there were “many places [in the book] where I say some very fine things about George Bush. And believe every word of it.”

The same however cannot be said of his remarks about Ms Rice and General Powell. The former he castigates for her naivety in dealing with North Korea. Indeed in a chapter entitled “Setback”, Mr Cheney is scathing about the State Department and the “utterly misleading” advice it gave on some foreign policy issues, especially in the second Bush term. But the fiercest barbs are reserved for Colin Powell, whose State Department was often in undeclared war with Donald Rumsfeld’s Pentagon and the Vice-President’s office during the run-up to the Iraq war.

In Mr Cheney’s eyes, General Powell’s biggest sin was disloyalty, writing that “it was as though he thought the proper way to express his views was by criticising administration policy to people outside the government”. Mr Powell’s forced resignation in December 2004, the book drily notes, “was for the best”.

Since leaving office Mr Cheney has popped up intermittently, mainly on the right-wing speaking circuit, and usually with trenchant criticism of President Barack Obama. His long history of heart disease has also continued. He has become noticeably gaunter and thinner, and in 2010 suffered congestive heart failure that forced him to be fitted with a special pump.

In his memoir, Mr Cheney reveals that he wrote a letter of resignation dated 28 March 2001, instructing an aide to give it to Mr Bush should he ever be incapacitated by a stroke or heart attack while in office.

www.independent.co.uk, 26 August 2011

August 26, 2011
If Syria falls, Turkey falls!

Banu AVAR

The Syria‑Turkey Friendship Committee is a non‑governmental civilian organization formed by the Turkish and Syrian citizens living in Syria to halt the latest imperialist attack. Working with the Syrian business and with official consent they have invited a group from Turkey to visit Syria. I was among the invitees. The head of the committee Prof. Dr. Mehmet Yuva said that in establishing this group, he had extended invitations to several members of the parliament and politicians from TBMM (Turkish National Assembly), several people from AKP (Justice and Development Party), CHP (Republican People’s Party), MHP (Nationalist Movement Party), Saadet Partisi (Felicity Party) and journalists with diverse views. I helped him to reach some people he had difficulty with. Because I believed it was essential that a visit of this kind between neighbors and next of kin took place. Without prejudice, members from all news and television organizations, like Nazlı Ilıcak, Reha Muhtar, Fatih Altaylı, Salih Tuna, İbrahim Karagül, Balçiçek İlter, and Ahmet Hakan have been invited. I have directly contacted some of these names.

Several academicians, experts, and leaders of unions like Kamu‑Sen (Public Servants Union) were invited. It turned out that most did not even bother to respond. It was understood, in‑between the lines that the worry of “what the superiors would say” was the prevailing reason.

Living under the imperialist menace, western activist and armed gangs ruling the streets, with terrorist activities boiling out everywhere, Syria is another link in the chain of “Arab Spring” operation that is aimed to disintegrate the region. Different western intelligence gangs have been trying to explode bombs in Dara, Deir Ez Zor, Latakia, and Damascus. Government has placed army under state of alarm to counteract these terrorist activities.

Established for years the outside the country, the ‘opposition’ in concert with western intelligence elements started their attacks. Inside, the ‘peaceful (!)’ demonstrators have laced streets with blood, burned public buildings, and threw down corpses of the people they killed from bridges…In Syria, terrorist armies and intelligence agents are running loose. But in the global media the news is summarized in one sentence: ‘The dictator with blood on his hands against democratic demands of the Syrian people!’

The question is: Why those who are making threats now never spoke of oppression, cruelty, and antidemocratic measures for tens of years until 2011?

The answer in their lexicon is ‘conjuncture’!

We know the reason: It is time for the Middle East! It is time to move and divvy up from Iraq onwards. The energy sources, waterways, strategic regions will be divided among the mobs in proportion to their competitive forces!

‘We have decided that you are guilty and you will be punished even though we know you are innocent’ is the verdict by the mob. In this game, they want Turkey to become the executioner. When this verdict permeated in the news a silent scream went up everywhere.

Turkish nation will ‘RESIST’ an intervention ‘AGAINST’ Syria, their neighbor and their next of kin.

Perhaps, those who hear this message best are the men of the West inside us, their representatives, and collaborators.

Those struggling inside the West’s straitjacket failed to place the nation in a straitjacket… And, their future is uncertain as well…

It is not known who will prevail in the global gang wars. In this mayhem, two brotherly nations, regardless what the rulers say will help each other. With that, during the last century, just as the entire region was about to change hands they were able to redirect the history.

In this region, getting Muslims to kill Muslims, and by inciting ethnic wars to divide and conquer for reaching the energy sources in Asia are both old games!

Eurasia has powerful trumps against this game. And at the right time, at the sharpest turn of this heinous game, that is on the Turkey‑ Iran‑Syria link the West’s game will be spoiled one more time.

That is why we trust our people and peoples of other friendly countries that are next of kin. We are going to hold hands against the dirty terrorist games, discuss our problems among ourselves without the intervention of Western hyenas. Imperialism was applauding when they were trying to commingle Turkish delegations with those of Armenia, Georgia, Greece, and Israel, when they were declaring journalist as buddies… Now, they started a smear campaign when intellectuals of these two neighboring and next of kin countries are coming together against a West imposed adventure.

Only by mutual assistance of the countries of the region the games of the global gangs can be spoiled. This is why a rapprochement by Iran, Syria, Turkey, and Russia scares hell out of the Westerners and their collaborators. Provocations, assassinations, and terrorist acts are staged. A wedge is inserted between the nations of the region. The voices of those running these smear campaigns are spread from the TV screens: ‘They are Syrian agents! Ergenekon’s[1] Syrian branch!’ An old Turkish saying, ‘ne Arap’ın yüzü ne Şam’ın şekeri!’ literally translated, ‘neither Arab’s face nor sweets of Damascus’ is used to describe a situation where efforts to gain something is not worth the trouble comes with it.

Yes, we will make the effort, and we will face the trouble! They are our next of kin… Our mission is neither supporting Bashar Al-Assad nor defending the actions of the Baas party…Neither is pristine white…But with the Syrian people, our friends and brothers, we can get out of the trap set in the region. A conflict between the nations, upsetting all balances, will result in an instability that will reign for centuries in the region. Several more impasses in the Middle East like the Israeli one will be created. And an intervention like this will annihilate Turkey… This is why we are saying that:

If Syria falls Lebanon falls, if Syria falls Iran falls, if Syria falls Turkey falls…The key to Eurasia disintegrates…Those entering through that door will destroy Eurasia.

And without Turkey’s involvement West can not bring its bloody wishes to life.

This is why the Turkish and Syrian wise man, intellectuals, journalists, politicians, artists under the auspices of Syria‑Turkey Friendship movement will call a HALT to this going.

They will not permit our region turn into a bloodbath for imperialist aims.

Those in power in Turkey know very well who is behind the losses of the nation’s sons every day. The head of the snake coming out of Northern Iraq is in Pentagon, in NATO, and in European Union agencies.

If we have to engage in war these are the opponents… Not the nations of the region living under same threat.

__________
[1] Ergenekon is the name given to an alleged clandestine, Kemalist ultra-nationalist organization in Turkey with possible ties to members of the country’s military and security forces.

The real goal of the Ergenekon investigation was not to go after the deep state but to intimidate and silence opponents of Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), particularly critics of the vast network of Gülen’s supporters known as the Gülen Movement.

17 August 2011

Turkish version

August 22, 2011
Turkey and Syria: One problem with a neighbour

Turkey’s tough talk on Syria is unlikely to be matched by action

Aug 20th 2011

Erdogan and Assad in happier days

IN A small café outside Istanbul’s Fatih mosque, a slight bearded man lifts his shirt to reveal two deep bullet wounds. “Assad’s soldiers did this to me,” says Motee Albatee, who served as an imam at a Sunni mosque in the besieged Syrian town of Deraa until he fled the country several weeks ago. Mr Albatee is among a growing number of Syrian dissidents who have found sanctuary in Turkey, many of them in refugee camps near the border. Some are angry over the reluctance of Turkey’s government to get tougher with Bashar Assad, Syria’s president. “Turkey must set up a buffer zone [inside Syria]” to protect more refugees from the fighting, insists Yayha Bedir, a member of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood. Like many seated around the table, he believes only drastic action will force the Syrian army to defect en masse, bringing down Mr Assad’s brutal regime.

Such talk is particularly loud online, where Syrian tweeters have voiced disdain for Turkey’s attempts to get Mr Assad to end the bloodshed. Their fury grew earlier this month when Turkey’s foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, flew to Damascus to deliver what Turkish officials tautologically called a final ultimatum. “We are at the end of our tether,” roared Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s prime minister.

Mr Assad’s response was to intensify his assaults against unarmed civilians, notably in the Mediterranean port of Latakia (see article). This prompted Mr Davutoglu to issue yet another warning: Turkey would not, he said, “remain indifferent” to continuing massacres. Yet he also ruled out intervening to create a buffer zone. So what leverage does Turkey actually have over its erstwhile Ottoman dominion?

None whatsoever, say critics of Mr Davutoglu’s much-vaunted “zero problems with the neighbours” policy. That is unfair. But as Soli Ozel, a political scientist, puts it, the Syrian crisis has revealed that “Turkey isn’t as influential as it thought.”

The last time Turkey got tough with its southern neighbour was in 1998, when it threatened to invade unless Syria booted out Abdullah Ocalan, leader of Turkey’s outlawed rebel Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The Syrians caved in, and relations between the two countries have flourished since. Trade has more than tripled in the eight years of Mr Erdogan’s Justice and Development (AK) government, visas have been abolished and ministerial meetings have been held amid much fanfare. (Mr Davutoglu says he has made over 60 visits to Syria.) Crucially, Syria has ended its patronage of the PKK.

Rapprochement with Syria has also allowed Turkey to play a bigger regional role. The government came close to brokering a peace deal between Syria and Israel before the plan was scuppered by Israel’s attack on Gaza. Some Turks hoped that engagement with Syria would eventually yank Mr Assad out of the orbit of Iran, his biggest patron, and set him on a path towards reform. (His alleged involvement in the 2005 car-bomb assassination of Rafik Hariri, the Lebanese president, was quietly ignored.) All the more reason for Turkey’s feelings of betrayal.

Turkey’s Western allies are not about to mount an invasion of Syria. But they are turning the diplomatic screws, and are eager for AK to sever political and trade links with Mr Assad. But a bigger prize would be to drive a wedge between Turkey and Iran. Turkey’s mollycoddling of the mullahs has angered America, most recently when Mr Erdogan’s government voted against imposing further sanctions on Iran at the United Nations last year. Turkey has since sought to make amends. It has agreed to NATO plans for a nuclear-defence missile shield that is clearly aimed at Iran. And after some dithering, it is co-operating with the alliance’s military operations in Libya.

Yet Turkey is understandably wary of openly confronting Iran, one of its main sources of natural gas and the primary transit route for Turkish exports to Central Asia. Iran has also helped Turkey in its battle against the PKK—though it continues to flirt with hardliners who oppose any deal with the Turkish government. Lately the PKK has been stepping up the fight—some 30 Turkish soldiers have been killed in the past month. On August 17th, in a bid to quell mounting public anger, Mr Erdogan authorised the bombing of hundreds of PKK targets inside Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq. But such actions have failed in the past and the last thing Turkey needs is a hostile Iran.

Besides, many of AK’s pious constituents see the unrest in Syria as yet another America-backed Zionist plot to pit Turkey against Iran. The ultimate goal, their thinking goes, is to cut Turkey down to size. Disappointingly, the same line is parroted by the main opposition Republican People’s Party, for all its claims of change under its new leader, Kemal Kilicdaroglu.

So what are Turkey’s options? It can withdraw its ambassador from Damascus, continue to intercept the flow of weapons to Syria and impose economic sanctions. Other than that, as Mr Ozel suggests, it should desist from promising any more than it can deliver.

www.economist.com, Aug 20th 2011

August 20, 2011
Syria Blocks Turkey’s Ascent

Ariel Cohen

Turkey finds its “zero-problems-with-neighbors” foreign policy severely compromised by upheavals in the Arab world. Relations with some of its closest friends, such as Syria, appear to be irrevocably damaged.

Last Tuesday, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu held marathon talks in Damascus. He called on President Bashar Assad and his socialist-nationalist, Alawi-minority regime to stop the bloodshed. Yet still the blood flows.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Davutoglu face a complex regional and international environment. Their nine-year investment in friendship with the Assad regime is backfiring. In 2009, Turkey and Syria signed a strategic partnership agreement, conducted joint military maneuvers and were so close that their cabinets held joint meetings. Expanding influence in what used to be the Ottoman Eastern Mediterranean province of Shams, Turkey introduced visa-free travel with Syria, Lebanon and Jordan while inundating Syria with its goods, from foodstuffs to appliances.

What a difference an Arab Spring makes. Now Turkey is flooded with over 12,000 Syrian refugees. Hundreds of thousands may flee if the Assad crackdown escalates to a civil war.

Ankara is attempting to synchronize its foreign policy with Sunni Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, which pulled their ambassadors from Damascus. Turkey is hosting Syrian opposition conferences, while Davutoglu and Erdogan are demanding that Damascus stop the killing of civilians. Syria, they say, should implement the reforms “in 10-14 days.”

Fat chance. President Assad responded to Davutoglu’s mission by saying that Syria will continue “relentlessly fighting armed groups,” the regime’s term for protesters. Assad also offended Davutoglu by sending tanks to crush protesters near the Turkish border on the day of Davutoglu’s mision, while sending “only” a deputy foreign minister, not the Turkish Minister’s counterpart, to greet him at the airport.

Much of this entanglement is Turkey’s own handiwork. It attempted to position itself as a new regional superpower, supported Hamas and abandoned a strategic relationship with Israel. Erdogan played to the Arab “street,” enthusiastically calling for Egyptian president’s Housni Mubarak’s resignation. However, today, the Sunni “street”—which is 80 percent of Syria’s population—wants the secular and minority-Alawi Assad gone, and so do the members of the Arab League.

Yet if Turkey abandons the pro-Iranian Assad, which it is in the process of doing, it will face another strategic headache: a confrontation with Tehran. Until now Turkey played a sophisticated game of rapprochement with Syria’s Shi’a patron, increasing trade and lobbying for Iran in the international arena. However, the demise of the Assad clan may open a new avenue for the Sunni Turkish Islamic AK Party, which is also close to the Muslim Brotherhood, the largest opposition force in Syria and in Egypt.

And herein lies the rub. The Middle East historically has five power centers: three Arab (Cairo, Damascus, and Baghdad) and two non-Arab: Iran and Turkey. As one of these (Damascus) undergoes a meltdown, and two others (Cairo and Baghdad) are very weak, the remaining two non-Arab centers are doomed by history and geography to compete.

Recently Turkey stopped two shipments of Iranian weapons to Hezbollah of Lebanon, which were illegal under the UN sanctions. The Iranian media are now badmouthing Ankara as a “Western agent.”

Past hugs and kisses between Erdogan and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad notwithstanding, competition between Ankara and Tehran over Damascus and Beirut is on the rise.

Ankara’s “zero-problems-with-neighbors” policy is crumbling, fast—with Syria, Cyprus, Armenia, Israel and with the Kurds.

Fasten your seatbelts, Middle East observers. It’s going to be a rocky ride.

nationalinterest.org/commentary, August 17, 2011

August 17, 2011
NATO and Turkey Support Armed Rebels in Syria. Campaign to Recruit Muslim “Freedom Fighters”

by Michel Chossudovsky

The Western media has played a central role in obfuscating the nature of foreign interference in Syria including outside support to armed insurgents. In chorus they have described recent events in Syria as a “peaceful protest movement” directed against the government of Bashar Al Assad.

Recent developments in Syria point to a full-fledged armed insurgency, integrated by Islamist “freedom fighters”, supported, trained and equipped by NATO and Turkey’s High Command.

According to Israeli intelligence sources:

NATO headquarters in Brussels and the Turkish high command are meanwhile drawing up plans for their first military step in Syria, which is to arm the rebels with weapons for combating the tanks and helicopters spearheading the Assad regime’s crackdown on dissent. Instead of repeating the Libyan model of air strikes, NATO strategists are thinking more in terms of pouring large quantities of anti-tank and anti-air rockets, mortars and heavy machine guns into the protest centers for beating back the government armored forces. (DEBKAfile, NATO to give rebels anti-tank weapons, August 14, 2011)

The delivery of weapons to the rebels is to be implemented “overland, namely through Turkey and under Turkish army protection….Alternatively, the arms would be trucked into Syria under Turkish military guard and transferred to rebel leaders at pre-arranged rendez-vous.” (Ibid, emphasis added)

NATO and the Turkish High command, also contemplate the development of a jihad involving the recruitment of thousands of freedom fighters, reminiscent of the enlistment of Mujahideen to wage the CIA’s jihad (holy war) in the heyday of the Soviet-Afghan war:

Also discussed in Brussels and Ankara, our sources report, is a campaign to enlist thousands of Muslim volunteers in Middle East countries and the Muslim world to fight alongside the Syrian rebels. The Turkish army would house these volunteers, train them and secure their passage into Syria. (Ibid, emphasis added)

These various developments point towards the possible involvement of Turkish troops inside Syria, which could potentially lead to a broader military confrontation between the two countries, as well as a full-fledged “humanitarian” military intervention by NATO, which would be carried out in coordination with the Alliance’s support to the insurgency.

A detailed report on developments in Syria will be published shortly by Global Research

Global Research, August 15, 2011

August 16, 2011