Tag: Bashar al-Assad

President of Syria

Turkey Pushes for New Action on Syria
As Shelling Kills More Than 50 in Homs, Former Damascus Ally Seeks Summit to Press for Leader’s Ouster; Iran Backs Assad

By JOE PARKINSON, CHARLES LEVINSON and JAY SOLOMON

Associated Press

A Syrian rebel runs for cover amid fire from unseen pro-Assad forces on Wednesday in Idlib, northern Syria.

ISTANBUL—As Syrian forces pounded the city of Homs with tank shells and rockets, adding dozens of fatalities to the siege’s five-day toll, Turkey pushed to the lead of countries trying to halt President Bashar al-Assad’s crackdown on his enemies.

Turkey called for an international summit “as soon as possible” to coordinate Syria policy between Middle East and world powers and press Mr. Assad to step aside. “We won’t leave Syria to its own destiny,” Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said in an interview with Turkey’s NTV television. “We are determined to form a platform for broad international consensus.”

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov calls on countries with influence over the Syrian opposition to press them to enter a dialogue with embattled President Bashar al-Assad. (Video: Reuters/Photo: Getty Images)

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ReutersA Syrian living in Jordan protested Tuesday against Russia’s support of the Syrian regime, in front of Russian embassy in Amman.

The Turkish move comes after Russia and China vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution pressing Mr. Assad to step aside. On Sunday, the day after the veto, the U.S. raised a call for a “friends of democratic Syria” that would ramp up efforts to push Mr. Assad from power.

Such a coalition could provide a platform outside the U.N. to boost diplomatic pressure on Damascus. The U.N.’s latest stalemate came after efforts by the Arab League of nations also failed to stem Syria’s violence, which began nearly a year ago with harsh government clampdowns on predominantly peaceful protests and has since brought the country to the edge of civil war.

For Turkey, the moves cement a dramatic reversal during the past year in its alliance with Damascus. They also underline Ankara’s coalescence with Washington on regional policy, following a recent strain that saw Turkey moving closer to Iran and engaging in rhetorical sparring with a top U.S. ally in the region, Israel.

Turkey and the U.S. are likely to be joined by countries in Europe and the Arab world that have also called for Mr. Assad to step aside. Separately, senior European Union officials said Wednesday the body is considering new sanctions on Syria.

As international lines against Mr. Assad deepened, one of his allies stood firm. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad pledged Iran’s support following a meeting Wednesday with Syria’s top cleric.

Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian met with Syria’s foreign minister in Damascus and said afterward that Iran remained “confident that the Syrian leadership and people will be able to overcome the current events,” according to Syria’s state-run Sana news agency.

Opposition activists in Syria say dozens of civilians have been killed in Homs as the military offensive in the city advances. (Video: Reuters)

The Turkish bid to form an international platform is reminiscent of the Libya Contact Group, an informal group of countries that met several times, including in Istanbul, to harmonize policy during the uprising against Moammar Gadhafi. Mr. Davutoglu said that in recent days he had laid the groundwork for such a meeting, discussing Syria with his counterparts in Italy and Qatar.

Any Libya parallels are likely to be greeted coolly by Russia and China, which have characterized international efforts in Libya as cover for forcing regime change. Mr. Davutoglu didn’t say whether Russia and China would take part but said Turkey wanted the group to be “as wide as possible.”

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev took a flurry of telephone calls from world capitals over the veto, with French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan both conveying on Wednesday that Mr. Assad has lost legitimacy and must step aside, according to their offices.

Mr. Medvedev countered that foreign interference is “not an option,” the Kremlin said. Mr. Medvedev instead said that a search to end bloodshed in Syria should continue, including at the U.N. Security Council, according to the Kremlin.

Meanwhile, Syrian forces mounted their fifth consecutive day of attacks on Homs, a city north of Damascus along the Lebanese border, striking with artillery, tank shells, rockets and mortars.

The city, a melting pot of ethnicities that mirror Syria’s own ethnic and religious diversity, has been the heart of the 11-month uprising. It has also been a base for rebel fighters thanks in part to the smuggling routes from Lebanon through which activists and locals say opposition fighters are obtaining weapons.

WSJ’s Greg White checks in on Mean Street with the latest on pressure on Russia to help end violence in Syria. Photo: AP.
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Amateur videos shot by Homs residents and posted to YouTube by opposition activists showed what were characterized as Wednesday attacks, with shells striking residential buildings and by pillars of smoke rising into the sky. One video appeared to show a resident standing by the corpse of a child, holding a piece of rocket shrapnel that he said had struck the child’s home. “What is the U.N. waiting for?” he said in the video. “Are these animals that are dying?”

Another showed a column of Syrian army trucks, including tanks and armored vehicles, rolling along an otherwise deserted road. Activists said it was evidence of the Syrian army’s buildup in and around the city.

The images couldn’t be corroborated but broadly match accounts from residents reached by telephone throughout the week. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a U.K.-based opposition group, said between 53 and 60 people died in Homs on Wednesday. The group and other activists said late Tuesday night members of a pro-Assad militia known as the Shabiha had murdered 20 members of three entire opposition families. Elsewhere in Syria, activists reported an additional 17 people killed by pro-regime forces, while rebels killed four Syrian soldiers in Zabadani, a suburb of the capital Damascus. Another opposition group put the death toll in Zabadani and the nearby town of Madaya at 18 deaths, saying that phone and power had been cut to the towns, which “are facing a humanitarian crisis.”

The regime has blamed terrorist gangs and criminals for the violence in Homs. The state-controlled Syrian news agency on Wednesday reported that rebel-fired mortars struck a nearby oil refinery in Homs, setting two oil storage tanks ablaze.

Russia’s foreign minister met with Syrian President Assad and said his message of the need to step up efforts to end the violence in Syria “has been heard.” Jeff Grocott has details on The News Hub. Photo: AP

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Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin says the world faces a growing “cult of violence” and Moscow must not let events like those in Libya and Syria be repeated in Russia. (Video: Reuters/Photo: Getty Images)

Mr. Davutoglu’s comments came ahead of his departure Wednesday for Washington for previously scheduled bilateral meetings with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The senior diplomats are expected to explore ways to more quickly and effectively provide assistance to Syrian refugees who have sought haven in Turkey and other neighboring countries, U.S. officials said. But they will also discuss the tricky question of potentially providing aid to the victims of violence inside Syria.

The meetings are also expected to focus on Turkey’s ties with the Free Syrian Army, a loosely affiliated network of rebel fighting units and defected army regulars. Ibrahim Kalin, an adviser to Turkey’s Prime Minister, said in a column in pro-government daily Zaman on Wednesday that the “next stage in Syria will be to further empower the opposition.”

Turkey has quietly raised the idea of establishing a “buffer zone” inside Syria to protect civilians from Mr. Assad’s forces. But to do so, U.S. officials acknowledge, the international community would need to assemble some sort of outside military force to deter Syrian forces. They worry that without such firepower, Syrian forces could easily overwhelm any buffer zones or humanitarian corridors and potentially turn international monitors into hostages.

Mr. Davutoglu declined to discuss whether the government was considering a military-backed humanitarian intervention to help quell the violence.

Ankara and Damascus were close regional allies until this summer, when Turkish officials said President Assad’s refusal to end a bloody crackdown against opponents forced a shift. Ankara has repeatedly warned that Syria’s complex ethnic and sectarian mix could disintegrate, plunging the nation into chaos and potentially forcing neighboring nations to intervene.

Turkey has for months sheltered several thousand Syrian refugees, including members of the rebel Syrian Free Army. The opposition Syrian National Council in December opened an office in Istanbul.

“Turkey is beyond the point of no return; it has burned its bridges with Damascus and bet heavily on regime change. The failure at the U.N. means Ankara will further strengthen its cooperation with the U.S. on Syria, but they’ll want to avoid that perception by building a coalition,” said Sinan Ulgen, a former Turkish diplomat now with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

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Turkish analysts say Ankara is a reluctant hard-power player in the region, but the government’s fears of regional sectarian conflict are spurring a more activist policy.

Just a year ago, Mr. Assad was Exhibit A in Turkey’s “zero-problems-with-neighbors” foreign policy. Trade between the neighbors almost doubled to $2.3 billion in the two years to 2010 after Ankara cut visa requirements and eased tariffs. That policy was replicated across the region, boosting relations and trade with neighboring Muslim regimes, while downgrading ties with former ally Israel.

The Arab Spring, however, upended that policy as allies such as Libya’s Gadhafi were pushed aside and Shiite-Sunni tensions rose across the region.

The collapse of that doctrine has dovetailed with what analysts describe as an increasing symmetry of Washington and Ankara’s policies after a period of significant strain in 2009-2010, when Turkey moved closer to Iran and tensions with Israel were at boiling point over the killing of seven Turkish nationals by Israeli commandos on the Gaza-bound Mavi Marmara flotilla.

Analysts say the partnership has been bolstered in recent months by Turkey’s strong backing of pro-democracy movements during Arab Spring uprisings and its decision to host a NATO missile shield designed to contain Iran. Turkish and U.S. diplomats say they can’t remember a time when cooperation between Ankara and Washington was closer, citing that President Barack Obama called Turkey’s prime minister more than any other leader except Britain’s prime minister in 2011.

—Ayla Albayrak, Gregory L. White and William Horobin contributed to this article.

Write to Joe Parkinson at joe.parkinson@dowjones.com, Charles Levinson at charles.levinson@wsj.com and Jay Solomon at jay.solomon@wsj.com
February 10, 2012
Why Turkey is increasing pressure on Assad
By Fadi Hakura, Special to CNN

February 10, 2012 — Updated 1023 GMT (1823 HKT)

A member of the Free Syrian Army takes position in Al-Qsair, southwest of the flashpoint city Homs, on January 27.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Fadi Hakura says Turkey has abandoned its friendship with Syria in wake of violence

He says the change in position is unsurprising, given Turkey’s lack of strategic links to Syria

He says Turkey’s Prime Minister Erdogan lost no time in siding with Syria’s anti-Assad masses
Editor’s note: Fadi Hakura is the associate fellow and manager of the Turkey Project at the London-based think-tank Chatham House. He has written and lectured extensively on Turkey’s political, economic and foreign policy and the relationship between the European Union and Turkey.

(CNN) — Syria is heading to an “intolerable situation” according to Turkey’s hyperactive Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, whose country is at the forefront of global efforts to engineer the downfall of the Bashar Al-Assad leadership.

Less than two years ago, relations were diametrically different.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan considered Assad a close friend and paraded Syria as the epitome of its much vaunted but now defunct “zero problems with the neighbors” policy to encourage rapprochement with Middle Eastern nations. Trade across their 850-kilometer border blossomed tenfold, security cooperation against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party — a militant Kurdish group conducting a violent separatist campaign in Turkey — flourished and mutual visa restrictions were lifted.

Fadi Hakura

This transformation in ties should not be surprising in retrospect. For Turkey and Syria never enjoyed a strategic relationship as much as a convergence of interests triggered by the Iraq war in 2003 to stymie an independent Kurdistan in northern Iraq. Similarly, both leaderships found common cause against Israel. Their relationship was merely tactical and psychological bereft of common values.

Then the eruption of the Arab awakening upended the stability in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and eventually Syria thereby unleashing long simmering sectarian tensions to the surface. Assad’s security and intelligence forces dominated by fellow minority Alawites (a syncretic and mystical offshoot of Shia Islam) confronted a largely Sunni popular revolt.

Syria’s declining circle of friends

Men, women and children trapped in Syria

Syria’s accidental President al-Assad

Erdogan, a devout Sunni Muslim, did not hesitate to side with the anti-Assad masses. Gone are the days where Turkey defended Iranian nuclear endeavors and cooperated closely with it on Iraq. In its stead, Turkey patched once frosty relations with Washington jointly calling on Assad to resign, solidified the partnership with Gulf Arab countries and adopted a more muscular and robust approach towards Iran.

Washington’s cooperation with regional players such as Turkey is a good example of what U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton coined “smart power” in play to avoid committing scarce resources in money and soldiers as it disengages from Afghanistan and Iraq.

Turkey’s anti-Assad inclination stems from its sectarian sympathies with the Syrian protesters, its desire to project Turkish influence in the Middle East and to restrain the regional ambitions of rival Iran. On the other hand, the U.S. seeks to degrade the Iranian nuclear program and to guarantee the security of Israel and the Gulf Arab states.

Despite the toughening rhetoric against Damascus, there is no hiding the fact that Turkey’s choices are severely limited. Russia and China will thwart further U.N. initiatives, the Arab League looks exhausted, and the positions of the pro-Assad and anti-Assad alliances are entrenched.

At the heart of stalemate is the future of the Assad dynasty. Turkey and its friends strongly favor regime change while Assad and his allies demand regime stability. How to square this conundrum is testing the limits of Turkish diplomacy.

One possibility — which is most favored by Turkey — is a negotiated solution. Ankara proposed on Wednesday an international conference to end the violence in Syria. Yet, it seems highly unlikely that procedural fixes will paper over clashing objectives. Negotiations require an abundance of goodwill and a willingness to compromise, two commodities in short supply.

That leaves the most risky option of a slippery slope to further escalation on the ground. Turkey is already hosting the Syrian National Council and the Free Syrian Army of breakaway Syrian military personnel. Further measures could include unifying the hopelessly fragmented Syrian opposition and providing additional logistical and other support to Syrian armed groups.

Direct military intervention will pit Turkey against an angry Russia and a hostile Iran supplying collectively two-thirds of Turkey’s energy needs.
Fadi Hakura, Turkey analyst

Most perilous of all is Turkey unilaterally establishing a security zone or a safe haven on Syrian territory with the backing of the U.S., European powers and the Gulf Arabs but outside the U.N. purview. This would drag Turkey ever deeper into the Syrian quagmire that is descending into a sectarian civil war. After all, the turmoil in Syria can easily spill over into an ethnically and religiously diverse Turkey.

Direct military intervention will also pit Turkey against an angry Russia and a hostile Iran supplying collectively two-thirds of Turkey’s energy needs. Tehran is seething after Ankara agreed to host in September last year a sophisticated US early warning radar system under the NATO umbrella to neutralize the threat of long-range Iranian missiles.

Turkey is undoubtedly in a precarious and unenviable spot at the mercy of unpredictable and deteriorating regional circumstances. It is not in control of events but is being controlled by events. What the ultimate outcome will be is anyone’s guess.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Fadi Hakura
February 10, 2012
Turkey could offer Al Assad sanctuary if he decides to leave Syria

Abdullah Gul, Turkey’s president, said that his country would consider a request for asylum coming from Syria’s ruling Al Assad family.

In response to a question by Turkish reporters accompanying him on a trip to the UAE this week, Mr Gul said there had been no request for asylum by the family of Bashar Al Assad, the Syrian president.

The United States, European governments and Arab states have begun discussing the possibility of exile for Mr Al Assad despite scepticism the defiant Syrian leader would consider such an offer, western officials said on Wednesday.

While talks had not progressed far and there was no real sense that Mr Al Assad’s fall was imminent, one official said as many as three countries were willing to take him as a way to end to Syria’s 10-month crisis.

Talk of exile surfaced amid mounting international pressure on Mr Al Assad and a diplomatic showdown over a proposed Arab League resolution at the United Nations aimed at getting him to transfer power. He responded by stepping up assaults on opposition strongholds.

With the White House insisting for weeks that Mr Al Assad’s days in power were numbered, it was unclear whether this marked an attempt to persuade the Syrian leader and his family to grasp the chance of a safe exit instead of risking the fate of Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi, who was killed by rebels last year.

But with Mr Al Assad showing he remains in charge of a powerful security apparatus and the Syrian opposition fragmented militarily, it could also be an effort to step up psychological pressure and open new cracks in his inner circle.

The officials said neither the US nor the European Union had taken the lead on the idea, which has been advocated by Arab nations as a way to try to end the violence.

“We understand that some countries have offered to host him should he choose to leave Syria,” an Obama administration official said, without naming any of the countries.

Before that could happen, however, the question of whether Mr Al Assad would be granted some kind of immunity would have to be tackled – something the Syrian opposition as well as international human-rights groups would likely oppose.

“There are significant questions of accountability for the horrible abuses that have been committed against the Syrian people,” the US official said.

“Ultimately these issues will be deliberated by the Syrian people in concert with regional and international partners,” the US official said.

* With additional reporting by foreign correspondent Thomas Seibert in Istanbul

via Turkey could offer Al Assad sanctuary if he decides to leave Syria – The National.

February 5, 2012
Turkey and US ‘discuss no-fly zone’ for Syria

Zoi Constantine

Jan 13, 2012

BEIRUT // Nato members and some Gulf states are discussing possible military intervention in Syria, according to a senior Russian security official.

Nikolai Patrushev, head of the Security Council of Russia, said the United States and Turkey, both Nato members, were discussing the possibility of a no-fly zone.

“Working under the ‘Libyan scenario’, they intend to move from indirect intervention in Syria to direct military intervention,” said Mr Patrushev, former head of the FSB, the intelligence agency that succeeded the Soviet-era KGB.

There has been speculation that the crisis in Syria might follow a trajectory similar to the uprising in Libya, where a Nato-imposed no-fly zone and bombing campaign helped to topple Muammar Qaddafi.

Some Syrian opposition groups, including the Free Syrian Army, have been calling for a no-fly zone and buffer zones to assist the 10-month revolt against the regime of the Syrian president, Bashar Al Assad. Russia is expected to oppose any Nato role.

The Arab League has taken the lead in attempts to end the violence in which the United Nations estimates more than 5,000 people have died. The Syrian government says 2,000 soldiers and police have been killed since the uprising began in March.

An observer mission sent to Syria by the 22-member league to monitor its peace plan has been heavily criticised.

Anwar Malek, a league monitor from Algeria, quit on Wednesday and says three more of his colleagues have done the same. His claim could not be independently verified.

“We were giving them cover to carry out the most repugnant actions, worse than what was taking place before the monitors came,” Mr Malek said yesterday.

Mr Malek, who is now in Qatar, claims some monitors have been reporting to their own governments instead of to the Arab League.

An unnamed official at the Arab League dismissed the accusations, and said Mr Malek had been bedridden and was never in the field.

More than 400 people have been killed since the first monitors arrived on December 26, the UN says. At least 21 were killed yesterday, according to the Local Coordination Committees, a Syrian opposition group that documents the uprising and plans events on the ground.

Speaking in Abu Dhabi yesterday, Radwan Bin Khadra, an adviser to the Arab League secretary-general and head of its legal department, said he could not be sure no other observers would follow Mr Malek’s lead.

“We hope the mission continues and brings about results and that there is co-operation with them.”

He said the observers were scheduled to stay in the country until there was an end to the bloodshed, with political stability and a political solution. “The escalation of events is saddening,” he said.

Gerard Peytrignet, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross’s regional delegation in Kuwait, said ambulances were being prevented from reaching wounded civilians.

“We do not participate in fights, we have to be respected in all circumstances, we are not there to take sides, just help,” he said.

Meanwhile questions remain about who was behind a mortar attack in Homs on Wednesday that left at least eight people dead, including a French journalist, Gilles Jacquier, who was on a government-organised visit to the city.

The French government has called for an investigation into the bombing.

The state-run Syrian news agency, Sana, said the attack was carried out by an “armed terrorist group”. Some opposition groups have blamed the government.

The president, Mr Al Assad, has continued to maintain that foreign-backed extremist groups are behind the escalating violence.

zconstantine@thenational.ae

* With additional reporting by Ola Salem in Abu Dhabi, Bloomberg and Reuters

via Turkey and US ‘discuss no-fly zone’ for Syria – The National.

January 13, 2012
Assad: No one can harm ties between Syria and Turkey

Syrian President Bashar Assad, who has met in Damascus with members of the Turkish political party Saadet, said that “no one can influence” the ties between the two nations, the official Syrian Arab News Agency reported.

The head of the Turkish delegation, Mustafa Kamalak, stressed during the meeting that the “Turkish people stand by Syria” in its crisis. He expressed opposition to any foreign intervention in Syria’s internal affairs, and said he hoped the relations between Turkey and Syria are to be repaired. (Roi Kais)

via Assad: No one can harm ties between Syria and Turkey – Israel News, Ynetnews.

January 9, 2012
A Turkish Assad?

By GRAEME WOOD

ISTANBUL — Which is scarier: a government that hunts down and kills dozens in cold blood, or a government that hunts down and kills dozens by accident?

Left, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey; President Bashar al-Assad of Syria.Left, Reuters; Jamal Nasrallah/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesLeft, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey; President Bashar al-Assad of Syria.

On Thursday, Turkey admitted to being the second type of government, just as over the last few months Syria has demonstrated itself conclusively to be the first. Turkey’s mistake, which it acknowledged sheepishly, was to launch air-strikes on Wednesday against about 35 men hiking along unmarked trails between Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan. The Turkish military says it thought the men were terrorist members of the Kurdistan Workers Party (P.K.K.). But evidence found near the corpses suggested a more benign activity: the men were smugglers evading onerous Turkish and Iraqi customs duties on diesel and tobacco at the official crossing point of Habur. They carried Kools, not Kalashnikovs.

In the past, Turkey’s Kurds have responded to incidents like this one by protesting in the streets and public squares, with a little bit of armed struggle from actual terrorists on the side. Last night in Istanbul, Kurds and their allies went to the streets. On Istliklal Avenue, in Beyoglu district in central Istanbul, at street corners normally reserved for upper-class shoppers in winter chic, riot police stood huffing into their hands to chase away the cold, waiting for violence that never came. But news agencies reported that in the country’s predominantly Kurdish southeast, crowds threw stones and Molotov cocktails, and stores were shuttered for the day.

After violence in the southeast, recriminations and confrontations like these are common. But there’s a notable change of vocabulary this time. Whereas Kurds once looked to the West and patiently tried to master the human rights language of the European Union, now at least some of them are looking south, to the more urgent and concrete language of protest movements in the Arab world. And in adopting that rhetoric, the Kurdish leaders are making missteps.

“A leader who kills his own people has lost his legitimacy,” Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey said of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria in September. Now Selahattin Demirtas, the Kurdish member of parliament who heads the Peace and Democracy Party, finds Erdogan’s words delicious. “Now I say the same thing back to him,” Demirtas said. “This was no accident: it was a massacre.” Demirtas, whose party is the sole legal political voice of the Kurds in Turkey these days, said he considered the killing caused by Wednesday’s air strike to be an Assad-level crime.

It’s a preposterous and self-discrediting comparison: Erdogan and Assad resemble each other in little more than their mustaches. The first people to acknowledge the differences between the two should be the Kurds themselves: Erdogan’s government has in many ways improved upon the nationalist Turkish governments of yesteryear, and the Kurds of Syria have always suffered far more grievously than the Kurds of Turkey. In the P.K.K. camps of northern Iraq, Syrian Kurds are overrepresented — the result of especially zealous oppression by the Assad regime.

It’s hard to begrudge a movement as aggrieved as the Kurds’ this moment of hyperbole. But let’s hope that the Kurds will reconsider their annexation of Arab Spring analogies. A movement that has spent the last couple of decades mastering the art of patience shouldn’t now sideline its own cause with a faulty comparison to a more desperate one.

Graeme Wood is a contributing editor at The Atlantic. He has lived and traveled in the Middle East for most of the last 10 years.

via A Turkish Assad? – NYTimes.com.

January 3, 2012