DAMASCUS, (SANA)- President Bashar al-Assad on Friday received a phone call from Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey expressing Turkey’s keenness on the strategic relationship between the two friendly countries and people and preserving the level of this relationship and developing it in the future.
President al-Assad and Erdogan discussed the situation in the region and in Syria, with Premier Erdogan stressing Turkey’s standing by Syria and keenness on its security, stability and unity.
Both sides reiterated determination to continue the warm and transparent relationship between their countries and upgrading it in the interest of both countries and people and the region as a whole.
Last March, President al-Assad received a phone call from Erdogan.
During the call, Erdogan affirmed the solid Syrian-Turkish relations, lauding the reformative decisions taken by the Syrian leadership and stressing Turkey’s support to Syria.
H. Said / Ghossoun
via President al-Assad Receives Call from Erdogan Expressing Turkey’s Keenness on Strategic Relationship with Syria- SANA, Syria.
On Oct. 13, 2009, the Oncupinar border gate between Turkey and Syria played a starring role in a diplomatic photo op. Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and his Syrian counterpart, Walid al-Moualem, shook hands, smiled for the cameras and — en route to signing an agreement to end visa requirements between the two countries later that day — lifted the border barrier. The symbolism was lost on no one. Only 11 years earlier, thousands of Turkish troops had massed along the same border, awaiting orders to deploy. Throughout the 1990s, the Syrian government had sheltered Turkey’s public enemy No. 1, Abdullah Ocalan, leader of the PKK, the Kurdish terrorist group. If Syria refused to expel him, the Turkish leadership made clear in 1998, then the Turks would march on Damascus. The Syrians flinched. Ocalan was sent packing.
Syrian President Bashar Assad, right, listens as Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan speaks during a joint press conference in Damascus on Oct. 11, 2010 Read more:
In the years that followed the standoff, Syria and Turkey became close allies. Long-running land and water disputes were either settled or shelved. Trade boomed, from $773 million in 2002 to $2.5 billion in 2010. In April 2009, the two countries held joint military exercises. Just last year, together with Jordan and Lebanon, they signed a free-trade agreement that many Turkish commentators hailed as the dawn of a Middle East Union. (See pictures of the protests in Syria.)
In reaching out to the Syrian regime, Turkey managed to inspire its confidence, says Khaled Khoja, a Turkish-based member of the Damascus Declaration committee, a Syrian opposition group. In 2005, Khoja recalls, Syrian President Bashar Assad, whose government had been accused of orchestrating the assassination of Lebanese President Rafiq Hariri, found himself in a major bind. But Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan refused calls by the U.S. and others to isolate the Syrian regime. Instead, says Khoja, he helped bring Assad’s regime in from the cold: “He made Turkey a bridge to Syria.” What Turkey got out of all this, more than anything else, says Khoja, was Syria’s trust — the kind of trust that allowed it to mediate between Syria and Israel in 2008. This, says Khoja, “was a very good approach.”
But, he adds, it was not enough. “Turkey should have pushed Bashar to make reforms in past years,” says Khoja. “You cannot have an attitude, an active role, unless you are brave enough to step behind the reforms. You have to say this strongly.” Turkey did not. Over the past few years, in the face of Syria’s dismal human-rights record and its legacy of authoritarian rule, the government in Ankara has remained silent. If autocrats like Assad were to be prodded into changing course, Turkish officials argued, it would be through diplomacy, not pressure. “We tell our counterparts the importance of being respectful of human rights,” Davutoglu once said. “But we don’t do it in public.” (See “How Syria and Libya Got to Be Turkey’s Headaches.”)
Turkish officials were wrong to assume that a policy of behind-the-scenes prodding could yield tangible results in Syria, says Walid Saffour, president of the London-based Syrian Human Rights Committee. “All the time they were hearing that the Syrians were going to do so and so,” he says. “The Turkish government believed what Bashar and his advisers told [them]. That was a game of deception on the part of the Syrian government.”
In recent weeks, with the turmoil across its southern border showing no signs of coming to an end — threatening not only its rapprochement with Syria but also the stability of the entire region — Turkey has gone into emergency mode, with Erdogan regularly on the phone with Assad and top officials, including Davutoglu and an intelligence chief, Hakan Fidan, who was dispatched to Damascus. As a senior Western diplomat in Damascus tells TIME, Turkey’s backdoor diplomacy might now be the outside world’s last remaining chance to persuade Assad to introduce new reforms and avoid more bloodshed. “The Turkish approach allows the Syrians to listen to the outside world’s concerns without feeling as if they are being lectured,” the diplomat tells TIME, speaking on condition of anonymity. “It allows them to make changes without giving the impression that someone is forcing their hand.” (See pictures of tempers flaring across the Middle East.)
Oppositionists like Saffour would prefer for the Turks to align themselves squarely with the demonstrators. “Today Erdogan condemns the killing, the detentions and the repeated massacres,” says Saffour, “but he is not blaming Bashar for this.” As much as the Turkish leader might want to ensure Assad’s survival, he adds, he will soon have to choose between the leadership and the protesters. “The people inside Syria are now calling for a change of regime altogether,” says Saffour. “The Turkish stand shouldn’t be [opposed to] the stand of the people. If they want to do something, they should support the people, not the regime.”
Reached by phone during a visit to Turkey, Riad al-Shaqfa, secretary general of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, says he believes Assad can step back from the brink. “The doors of reform always remain open if Bashar is serious in this matter and if the people feel that he is serious about it,” al-Shaqfa says through a translator. “To make the reforms does not take much. It took them 15 minutes to amend the constitution so that Bashar could inherit the country from his father. They can issue orders to withdraw the security forces and the tanks from the streets and to the stop bombardment of the people in a matter of hours.” However, the outlook is getting bleaker by the day, says al-Shaqfa, who adds, “There can be many initiatives and the Turks are demanding this, but nobody is listening.” Khoja sees no room for optimism. “If Bashar is not listening to Turkey,” he says, “then he is not listening to anyone.”
Piotr Zalewski is the Turkey correspondent for the Polish newsmagazine Polityka. He has contributed to Foreign Policy, the Atlantic.com and the National.
NICOSIA — Syrian opposition leaders are to hold a conference in Turkey next week in support of two-month-old protests against the rule of President Bashar al-Assad, one of the organisers told AFP on Tuesday.
“The Syrian opposition will organise a conference in Antalya from May 31 to June 2 in support of the revolt in Syria and claims of the Syrian people,” Ammar Qurabi, president of the Egypt-based National Organisation of Human Rights, told AFP.
The conference will be open to all supporters of the opposition, independent personalities and representatives of all faiths, he said, referring to a group of reformers who called for democratic changes in 2005 under a statement known as the Damascus Declaration.
Since the outbreak of anti-government protests in mid-March, at least 1,062 people have been killed by Syrian security forces, according to Qurabi.
“We have a list of names of 1,062 people killed, along with information about the places where they died.”
He said 10,000 people were arrested during the protests against the autocratic regime of Assad, who succeeded his father Hafez in 2000.
In April, the president lifted the state of emergency in force for decades — one of the main demands of protesters — but he also regulated the right to demonstrate.
His opponents are demanding an end to the domination of the ruling Baath party, free elections and the release of political prisoners.
via Syria opposition to meet in Turkey – The Egyptian Gazette.
KONYA, Turkey — The foreign minister of Turkey said Wednesday that President Bashar al-Assad of Syria must deliver reforms that would constitute “shock therapy” to his country if he had any hope of ending a nine-week crisis that was roiling the region.
The comments by the foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, amounted to a plea by Turkey, which views Syria as its main foreign policy concern and the fulcrum in its ambitious strategy to integrate parts of the Middle East with its booming economy.
Just months ago, Mr. Davutoglu and other Turkish officials had described the warming ties with Syria, a country Turkey almost went to war with in 1998, as perhaps the government’s greatest foreign policy success. Turkish officials now express growing concerns that strife in Syria may inundate their 550-mile border with refugees, and some officials privately worry that Syria may try to exacerbate tensions with Kurds inside Turkey.
Like others, Turkish officials remain unsure whether Mr. Assad is willing — or able — to carry out the reforms that would effectively end the grip of a ruling elite knit by clan, sectarian and personal ties. After speaking with Mr. Assad, some Turkish and Arab officials have questioned whether he even truly appreciates the extent and nature of the determined protests that have posed the gravest challenge to his 11 years in power.
“Now what he needs is shock therapy to gain the heart of his people,” Mr. Davutoglu said in an interview as he campaigned in his hometown, Konya, for a Parliament seat in next month’s elections. “As early as possible.”
via Turkey Calls for Syrian Reforms on Order of ‘Shock Therapy’ – NYTimes.com.
Turkey has stepped on the toes of its best friend, Bashar al-Assad. And now, it is trying to figure out what it will do if Bashar should fall.
But what annoyed the Syrians was Erdogan’s remarks in Turkey against the use of force and the fear of “a new Halabja and Hama,” referring to the use of chemical weapons by Iraq against the Kurds, and the massacre of 10,000 residents of Hama in 1982 by Assad’s father, Hafez Assad.
The Syrian newspaper Al-Wattan, which is owned by Rami Makhlouf, Bashar Assad’s cousin and the richest man in the country, launched an unprecedented attack against the Turkish declarations.
“Since the start of the recent events in Syria, the official Turkish echelon has demonstrated haste and improvisation,” the paper wrote. “It seems that the preaching in favor of reforms that is being manifested vociferously by Erdogan on every possible stage in Europe, and that of the new Ottoman engineer, the foreign minister Davutoglo, do not provide any special means of bringing about solutions to the invented difficulties so as to deal openly and clearly with these events.”
Makhlouf’s paper didn’t stop there. “If the political and economic prosperity that Turkey enjoys must be attributed to its secular history and to the strategic corrections made by Davutoglo, then the way it is being conducted in the face of the Syrian question is likely to cause it to take a step back,” it continued.
Erdogan, who attributes Turkey’s economic prosperity to himself – and justly so – was surely not happy to read the translation of these remarks, especially since the volume of Turkish trade with Syria stands at some $2 billion.
Last week a representative of the Muslim Brotherhood from Syria, Mohammed Riad Shafeka, visited Istanbul and told the Turkish media that his movement was indeed the moving force behind the protests in Syria. By doing so, he actually played straight into the hands of Assad’s regime, which has claimed all along that the disturbances were being caused by Islamic extremists and separatists.
Syria does not understand why Ankara allowed Shafeka to go to Istanbul from his exile in Yemen and why its media were allowed to interview him. And indeed Erdogan hastened to declare through his foreign ministry spokesman, that “Turkey will not allow any initiative on the part of the Muslim Brotherhood to harm the execution of reforms in Syria.”
According to reports from Turkey, Syria has sent information to the head of Turkish Intelligence, Hakan Fidan, showing that the Muslim Brotherhood was involved in shooting at Syrian security forces during the protests, so as to counter the declarations by Erdogan that “there are no armed gangs in Syria,” contrary to what the Syrian regime claimed.
Erdogan explained that what is happening in Syria cannot merely be considered an internal Syrian affair, or merely a matter for Turkish foreign policy.
Turkey is concerned both by the possibility that the Assad regime will fall and by the fact that it does not see who could possibly replace it. Meanwhile it seems that Erdogan and his regime are mainly worried that the all-embracing foreign policy started by his government could crash and have an effect on the results of the elections to be held on June 12.
This policy, which has the slogan “Zero problems with all neighbors,” is now coming up against the unexpected reality in which Turkey, despite all its efforts, finds itself floating on stormy waters, without being able to influence the course of events, and being seen as a supporter of the Assad dictatorship.
One day the Turks might even come to regret befriending Iran and shunning Israel. One day. But not now.
via Israel Matzav: Turkey fears losing its best friend.
The increasingly violent crackdown on democracy protesters in Syria has become a test for neighbouring Turkey and its ties to the West.
As a member of NATO and the only democracy in the Muslim Middle East, Turkey has boasted about “zero problems” on its borders. It actively sought to better ties with its neighbours, no matter their political persuasion. This approach has collected a string of successes, most notable Syria, with which Turkey almost went to war in 1998.
Since then, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has developed a warm friendship with Syria’s autocratic leader, President Bashar al-Asad. The two governments held joint cabinet meetings and military exercises. Trade surged.
But the limits of Turkey’s influence as a regional peace broker are now becoming clear. Despite Erdogan’s personal pressuring of Assad to reform, Syria’s forcible put-down and mass killing of hundreds of peaceful demonstrators has escalated to an alarming degree.
Similarly, after the democratic revolt began in Libya, Erdogan talked with Colonel Muammar Qaddafi, offering him a plan to quit power and call elections. Qaddafi ignored him, though Turkey was instrumental in negotiations to free four New York Times journalists who had been detained by Libyan authorities.
The reasons for Turkey’s limited success are multiple. Cornered dictators are not so easy to remove. Turkey also has tremendous stakes in preserving the status quo. Turkey is also keenly aware of the threat of refugees pouring over its border if Syria collapses.
Erdogan was ahead of the curve in calling for Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak to step down. But he has been slow to do the same for Qaddafi, and slow in his public condemnations of the Assad government.
Turkey has an opportunity in Syria to stand more firmly on the side of democratic protesters. There is only so much it can do, but it’s also not doing as much as it could.
What it really needs is to reassess its “zero problems” policy. That worked at a time of one-on-one crises with countries, and when the aim was to avoid conflict and improve business ties.
There is an ideological sea change under way in the Middle East. That requires a democracy like Turkey to choose sides and stand squarely behind freedom advocates.
Zero problems can no longer mean zero principles.
Turkey has a historic chance to swing solidly behind the democratic movement in the Middle East and North Africa. Hesitancy works to its detriment. It besmirches its credibility among protesters (Libyan rebels burned the Turkish flag because Ankara did not back the no-fly zone). Worse, its lack of definitive support makes it harder for democracy advocates to succeed.
As Turkey’s own president, Abdullah Gul, has written, “sooner or later the Middle East will become democratic.” Turkey, and its allies, must now make a strategic decision to back this movement — even when it’s inconvenient for them. And even at the risk of creating other problems.
