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Tag: Bashar al-Assad

President of Syria
  • Turkey sends terrorists into Syria: President Assad

    Turkey sends terrorists into Syria: President Assad

    Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has accused Turkey of harboring terrorists and transferring them into his country.

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    “Turkey’s government officially harbors terrorists and sends them into Syria. They’re also crossing over from Jordan,” Assad said during an interview with Turkish TV station Ulusal Kanal, which was aired on Friday.

    Damascus says Ankara has been playing a key role in fueling the unrest in Syria by financing, training, and arming the militants since violence erupted in the Arab country in March 2011.

    The Syrian president also warned that if his country “is partitioned, or if terrorist forces take control of the country, there will be direct contagion of the surrounding countries.”

    Assad also referred to the infiltration of terrorists from some other neighbors of Syria and said, “Of course, not necessarily all these countries are doing it on purpose. Iraq, for example, is against the infiltration of terrorists, but it has special circumstances, and cannot control its borders. In Lebanon, there are some different factions that help people who want to infiltrate Syria.”

    Assad also slammed the Arab League for its recent decision to give Syria’s seat to its foreign-backed opposition coalition.

    “The Arab League lacks legitimacy. It’s a league that represents the Arab states, not the Arab people, so it can’t grant or retract legitimacy,” Assad said.

    On March 26, the Arab League handed Syria’s seat to the so-called National Coalition during a two-day summit held in the Qatari capital, Doha.

    The Arab League also authorized its member states to send all means of what it called self-defense, including weapons, to the foreign-sponsored terrorists inside Syria.

    Many people, including large numbers of army and security personnel, have been killed in the violence in Syria.

    The Syrian government has said that the chaos is being orchestrated from outside the country, and that a very large number of the militants operating in the country are foreign nationals.

    Several international human rights organizations have accused the foreign-sponsored militants of committing war crimes.

    DB/HN/HJL

    via PressTV – Turkey sends terrorists into Syria: President Assad.

  • Syria Lashes Out at Jordan and Turkey

    Syria Lashes Out at Jordan and Turkey

    By RICK GLADSTONE

    Syria lashed out at Turkey and Jordan on Thursday for what it called their duplicitous work in fomenting the Syrian rebellion, accusing the Turkish prime minister of chronic lies and telling the Jordanians they were “playing with fire” in letting insurgents arm and train on their soil — a possible hint of retaliation.

    The criticisms in the state news media appeared to be part of an intensified propaganda response to new rebel gains in the two-year-old conflict and President Bashar al-Assad’s further isolation.

    It included snippets of an interview that Mr. Assad had given to a Turkish television station, in which he also denounced the Arab League for granting Syria’s seat to the opposition coalition bent on overthrowing him.

    Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who was once close to Mr. Assad, has turned into an ardent enemy and repeatedly called for his departure. Turkey is also housing more than 250,000 Syrian refugees and is helping the Free Syrian Army insurgent group, although the Turks insist they are not providing weapons. Syria, which shares a 550-mile border with Turkey, has frequently accused Turkey of arming the rebels.

    “Erdogan has not said a single word of truth since the beginning of the crisis in Syria,” Mr. Assad said in the interview with the Ulusal Kanal television channel in Turkey that is to be broadcast on Friday. A brief preview was posted on YouTube.

    Mr. Assad appeared to reserve special criticism for the Arab League, which suspended Syria’s membership in November 2011 and awarded the vacant seat to the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people, in a formal ceremony on March 26.

    “Real legitimacy is not accorded by organizations or foreign officials,” he said. “All these theatrics have no value in our eyes.”

    Syria state television, citing reports in The New York Times and other Western news media about Jordan’s role in helping the rebels, said they showed Jordan had “a hand in training terrorists and then facilitating their entry into Syria,” according to a translation by The Associated Press. It quoted state radio as saying Jordan was “playing with fire.”

    The Syrian newspaper Al Thawra, also citing those Western news reports, said in a front-page editorial that the Jordanian government could not claim neutrality while actively supporting the insurgents and collaborating with the United States, Saudi Arabia and others hostile to Mr. Assad. “Their attempts to put out the flame that the leaked information caused will fail in allowing them to continue their game of ambiguity because they have gotten really close to the volcanic crater,” the editorial said.

    In what appeared to be a veiled threat of retaliation, the editorial also said “it is difficult to prevent sparks from crossing the border.”

    There was no comment from Jordan’s government on the warnings, which have come as insurgent activity in southern Syria near the Jordanian border has escalated and posed a new threat to Assad loyalists there. In the past few weeks, rebels have seized territory near the southern city of Dara’a, where the uprising against Mr. Assad first began.

    At the same time, Jordan is facing an acute refugee crisis caused by the Syrian conflict. There are at least 320,000 registered refugees in the country, according to the United Nations, and many more who entered Jordan without registering.

    United Nations officials have been warning that the refugee crisis could overwhelm Syria’s neighbors, who have collectively absorbed more than 1.3 million Syrians since the conflict began.

    On Thursday in Lebanon, home to about 500,000 Syrian refugees, the commissioner general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, Filippo Grandi, said the refugee flows caused by the conflict were becoming “unmanageable and dangerous.”

    Mr. Grandi’s agency is responsible for Palestinian refugees, a legacy of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Lebanon, which has a population of four million, is already home to about 460,000 Palestinian refugees, and the Lebanese are increasingly concerned that Syria’s Palestinian refugee population of 530,000 could surge into Lebanon if fighting intensifies in the Damascus area, where many of them live. So far, however, Mr. Grandi said, more than 90 percent have stayed in Syria.

    Hala Droubi contributed reporting from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Thanassis Cambanis from Beirut, Lebanon.

    A version of this article appeared in print on April 5, 2013, on page A8 of the New York edition with the headline: Jordanians And Turks Are Focus Of Syria’s Ire.

    via Syria Lashes Out at Jordan and Turkey – NYTimes.com.

  • People of Turkey oppose war in Syria

    People of Turkey oppose war in Syria

    A political analyst says the people of Turkey are against war in Syria and oppose the involvement of the Turkish government in the ongoing crisis in their neighboring state, Press TV reports.

    “The Turkish people know what it is like for their country to be invaded. Back in the time of Mustafa Kemal [Ataturk], the Greeks and the Russians and everyone attacked their country trying to dismember it like what is [currently] happening to Syria,” Randy Short said in an interview with Press TV on Friday.

    He added that the Turkish people as well as intellectuals and human rights activists have realized that the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government is violating international principles by aiding the militants in Syria.

    “Right now their head of state as well as Saudi Arabia and Qatar — which are attacking the people in Syria — are war criminals and they need to be treated as such and so the people of Turkey are to be commended that they are showing solidarity with the heroic people of Syria who do not want to be a proxy state under the thumb of the imperialist powers,” the analyst noted.

    Short further pointed out that the Turkish prime minister is willing to destroy his country’s relationship with its Muslim brothers in Syria in order to be “an honorary toady to the people in the European Union.”

    “Turkey had just come out of a lot of economic problems that was in before, but it has plunged itself into the possibility of re-igniting a civil war as well as to become hostile with a country that would be made a failed state if these Jihadist [and] Salafist killers somehow take state power in Syria, that would destroy Turkey,” Short concluded.

    The Syria crisis began in mid-March 2011, and many people, including large numbers of army and security personnel, have been killed in the violence.

    Damascus says that the chaos is being orchestrated from outside the country, and there are reports that a large number of militants are foreign nationals.

    TNP/SS

    via PressTV – People of Turkey oppose war in Syria: Analyst.

  • Erdogan Angered After Opposition In Turkey Meets With Assad

    Erdogan Angered After Opposition In Turkey Meets With Assad

    Turkish PM Erdogan shakes hands with main opposition leader Kilicdaroglu in Ankara

     

    Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan shakes hands with main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu (R) as they meet in Ankara, June 24, 2012. (photo by REUTERS)

    The visit of four parliamentarians of the main opposition Republican People’s Party [CHP] to Damascus on Thursday and their meeting with Syrian President Bashar Assad has once again exposed an important weakness of the ruling Justice and Development Party [AKP] government.

    By: Kadri Gursel for Al-Monitor Turkey Pulse.

    About This Article

    Summary :

    Syrian President Bashar Assad’s meeting in Damascus with members of the opposition Republican People’s Party has exposed the weakness of Turkey’s Syria policy, writes Kadri Gursel.

    Original Title:
    Erdogan Angered by Turkish Opposition Meeting with Assad
    Author: Kadri Gursel
    Translated by: Timur Goksel

    As I wrote previously, the Turkish public doesn’t strongly support Ankara’s goal of toppling Bashar Assad and the Baath regime and replacing them with a new rule dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood. But this capacity gap Ankara is facing in its Syria policy is not confined only to lack of adequate public approval and support. More crucial is the antagonism and polarization caused in segments of the society and national politics by the Syria policy.

    The visit of the CHP delegation to Damascus and their meeting with Assad is an outcome  of this antagonism.

    The AKP rule couldn’t transform its policy for regime change in Syria to a “national cause” by persuading the majority of the public. It simply could not goad the public to get excited by its policy. If they had been successful, the CHP delegation could not have gone to Damascus. They would have been worried about public reaction to such a visit.

    That AKP couldn’t fully convince its own constituency of the legitimacy and validity of its Syria policy is a fact. But roots of the polarization between the main opposition and the ruling party on Syria case go deeper.

    Their antagonism arises from the Alevi-Sunni polarization in Turkey. Although the Alevi minority in Turkey diverges from Arab Alewites in their beliefs and rituals and have indigenous features peculiar to Anatolia, they don’t regard the Syrian regime with sentiments of confrontation and hostility as does the Sunni mainstream Islamic current that prevails in Turkey.

    Turkish Alevis are majority secularists. When you add their fears of Sunni Islamism, it is inevitable that they feel an affinity to the secularist regime in Syria.

    And, also to be noted is that the Turkish Alevis heavily vote for the secularist CHP.

    The same goes for Arab Alewites of Hatay and Mersin regions who had elected three of the parliamentarians that were in the delegation that visited Assad. The sympathy for the Assad regime openly voiced in these two provinces is a cause of distress for the ruling party circles.

    You have to look at the photos printed in Friday’s Turkish papers showing Safak Pavey, the deputy chairman of the CHP and member of Parliament from Istanbul, and the three other parliamentarians, Aytug Akici [Mersin], Hasan Akgol [Hatay] and Mevlut Dudu [Hatay], in the light of these facts.

    According to reports in the Turkish press, the CHP delegation asked Assad for the release of journalists — American Austin Tice and Palestinian Bashar Khaddumi —known to be detained by the regime. Four months ago, a CHP delegation that also included Mevlut Dudu and Hasan Akgol went to Syria and took delivery of Turkish cameraman Cuneyt Unal who had been in a regime prison for more than three months.

    The ‘’humanitarian mission’’ label affixed to this meeting must not have convinced Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. His harsh reaction was headlined by mainstream daily Haberturk: “Why Did You Send Them to That Brute?”

    The “brute” that the prime minister was referring to is Syrian President Bashar Assad.

    It was the CHP chairman, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, that Erdogan was taking to task with the question that he asked at an Ankara press conference: “Why did the main opposition of this country send its parliamentarian to that brute? What did they achieve there?”

    It is possible to understand the anger of the prime minister. At issue is the political support by Turkey’s main opposition party to a regime and its leader that has been demonized by the prime minister of Turkey and his government. “Humanitarian mission” pretext is not convincing to the government.

    It was hardly surprising that Bashar Assad in a statement issued in Damascus saluted the CHP delegation and the Turkish opposition. The statement said Assad told the CHP delegation: “Syria has to distinguish between the attitudes of the Turkish people, who support stability in Syria, and the Erdogan government that supports terrorism, extremism and destabilization in the region.”

    The statement also said that the delegation led by parliamentarian Hassan Akgul conveyed the “Turkish people’s rejection of interference in internal affairs of Syria and their wish for good relations with their southern neighbor.” The Damascus meeting thus provided a vehicle to transmit Assad’s views explained to the CHP delegation to the Turkish public as well.

    According to a news report by Utku Cakirozer, the Ankara representative of daily Cumhuriyet, when asked in the meeting, “Is a regime without Assad feasible?,” Assad replied:

    ‘”I can’t leave even if I wanted to. I will not abandon ship until we get to a calm port in this storm. My people are behind me. If the storm ends one day, if there are elections, democracy comes and people tell to me leave, then I will. I mean I will go if I have to, but my people have to tell me that.’’

    It was possible to understand from these words that Assad has no intention of leaving Damascus until the 2014 elections. Assad’s remarks about Erdogan constituted a challenge:

    ‘’The Syrian crisis has become an existential struggle for Erdogan and Emir of Qatar. If Syria wins, they will lose in their country. There is also an ideological dimension of this affair. They want to see political Islam dominate Syria. We want t preserve secularism.’’

    Assad reportedly said, “Turkey has the most influence on the situation in my country. Most weapons and terrorists come via Turkey. Twenty-five percent of our land border with Turkey is under the control of the PKK, and 75 % of it is under Al Qaeda.”

    Assad also appealed to the Turkish nationalist public by saying: “There is an increased opportunity for the Kurds to set up a state in the region. Kurds in Northern Syria have linked with Iraqi Kurds. It is a matter of time for a Kurdish state.”

    It appears that the visit of the CHP delegation to Damascus has become a serious headache for AKP’s Syria policy.

    Kadri Gürsel is a contributing writer for Al-Monitor’s Turkey Pulse and has written a column for the Turkish daily Milliyet since 2007. He was also a correspondent for Agence France-Presse between 1993 and 1997, and in 1995 was kidnapped by the PKK, an experience recounted in his book Dağdakiler(Those of the Mountains), published in 1996.

    Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/03/turkey-opposition-damascus-visit-against-ankara-syria-policy.html#ixzz2N2Clpsay

  • Syria’s Assad hails Turkey anti-Erdogan opposition

    Syria’s Assad hails Turkey anti-Erdogan opposition

    display_imageDAMASCUS: President Bashar al-Assad on Thursday hailed Turkish opposition to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s backing for the revolt that began in Syria nearly two years ago, in a statement seen by AFP.

    The statement comes after Assad met a Turkish opposition delegation, which prompted Erdogan to issue a stinging criticism of the politicians, asking why they were meeting with “such a dictator.”

    Assad told the Republican People’s Party delegation there was “a need to distinguish between the stance of the Turkish people, who support stability in Syria, and the positions of Erdogan’s government, which supports terrorism, extremism and destabilisation in the region,” it said.

    “The Syrian people appreciates the position adopted by forces and parties in Turkey that reject the Erdogan government’s negative impact on our societies, which are multi-religious and multi-ethnic,” Assad said.

    The Turkish delegation, headed by Hassan Akgul, stressed “the Turkish people’s refusal to interfere in Syrian affairs, and a commitment to good neighbourly relations,” the statement said.

    The visitors also “warned of the risks of the Syrian crisis’s impact on Turkey and other countries in the region,” it added.

    Speaking on television, Erdogan asked: “Why is this country’s main opposition party sending its three lawmakers to meet with this dictator, this tyrant? What do they want to achieve?”

    Damascus, meanwhile, called on the international community in letters to the United Nations to condemn Ankara’s role in the Syrian conflict, which has left some 70,000 people dead.

    “Syria hopes that the international community… will fulfil its responsibilities clearly and sincerely, and denounce the role of the Turkish government and other states that fund the Al-Qaeda-linked terrorist groups, while bearing them responsible for what is happening in Syria,” the letters said.

    Assad’s government has systematically blamed the violence in Syria on a foreign-backed plot, and has frequently accused Turkey of channelling funds and weapons to the armed opposition.

    Reacting to the letters, Erdogan asked if Assad would “complain about Turkey to the United Nations just because we are accommodating 250,000 Syrians on our soil? This person is committing a kind of genocide there… Will he complain about us because of this?”

    Ankara broke off relations with Damascus soon after the outbreak of Syria’s uprising, which morphed into an armed insurgency after the regime unleashed a brutal crackdown against dissent that began in mid-March 2011.

    Turkey hosts some 200,000 Syrians who fled the violence, and earlier this month it hosted a Syrian opposition election for Aleppo’s provincial council.

    – AFP/jc

    via Syria’s Assad hails Turkey anti-Erdogan opposition – Channel NewsAsia.

  • France, Turkey plot to assasinate Assad: Report

    France, Turkey plot to assasinate Assad: Report

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    A handout picture released by the official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) shows Syrians carrying an injured man after a powerful car bomb exploded near the headquarters of Syria’s ruling Baath party in the center of Damascus.

    Sun Mar 3, 2013 8:28AM GMT

    A Lebanese news website says it has obtained a documentary movie revealing a plot hatched by French and Turkish spy agencies to assassinate Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

    Lebanese Asianews website says the movie, which has been produced by the well-known Syrian media activist Khedar Awarake, shows confessions by those who were on a joint mission to kill top Syrian officials.

    According to the report, Syrian security organizations have recently defused assassination attempts by Turkey and France’s intelligence agencies on the lives of Assad and Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem.

    The report added that Turkish and French spy agencies have set up a joint operation room aimed at accomplishing the assassination mission. It added that their mission had overlapped with operations of security services of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the US on many times.

    The report said that they also had tried to recruit high-ranking officials in Syrian governmental offices, including the office of Muallem and the presidential palace in Damascus.

    Syria accuses Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey as well as some Western countries of fanning the flames of violence that have erupted in the country since March 2011.

    The Syrian government says the chaos is being orchestrated from outside the country, and there are reports that a very large number of the militants are foreign nationals.

    DB/MA

    via PressTV – France, Turkey plot to assasinate Assad: Report.