Turkey and Syria: The War of Two Men against One

Turkey and Syria: The War of Two Men against One

By Jeremy Salt

June 03, 2015 "Information Clearing House" - "PalestineChronicle" - The next time Recep Tayyip Erdogan talks to the media perhaps he should be asked precisely where the Turkish national interest lies in the destruction of Syria.

In the name of bringing down the government in Damascus, Syria is being torn to pieces by groups armed, trained and financed by foreign governments. There is no real distinction between any of them. Jabhat al Nusra – Al Qaida in Syria – has the same ideological roots as the so-called Islamic State and is just as bloodthirsty and vicious. The so-called Free Syrian Army (FSA) is a collection of freebooters sucking up money and weapons from outside and crossing over to Jabhat al Nusra or the Islamic State or other groups with their weapons when it suits them. Jaish al Fatah (Army of Conquest) is a collective of takfiri groups that includes Jabhat al Nusra but alliances are fluid and subject to change. Sooner rather than later these groups could be expected to merge with the Islamic State, turning the central lands of the Middle East into one of the cruelest states the world has ever known.

The role played by Turkey in supporting this massive assault on a neighboring country is pivotal. The story begins with Libya. After hesitating, and declaring that outside military intervention anywhere in the Middle East would be disastrous, Recep Tayyip Erdogan threw his support behind the attack on Libya by the US, Britain and France. How support by an avowedly Muslim government for an attack on another Muslim country by western states squares with Islamic law and conventions is something for the scholars to explain. The overthrow of the Libyan government seems to have convinced Mr Erdogan and his then Foreign Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu that ‘reform’ was the wave of the future and they had better ride it: even better, position themselves on the crest of the wave towards the end of taking the lead in shaping the ‘new’ Middle East.

The next target on the agenda of the US-led collective which destroyed Libya was Syria. In 2012 Mr Erdogan and Mr Davutoglu positioned themselves at the forefront of the attack on the Syrian government, claiming that President Bashar al Assad had refused to listen to their pleas that he introduce ‘reforms.’ In fact, what they wanted, according to Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallim, was to bring the Muslim Brotherhood, a banned organization, into the ranks of government. Having failed to bring Bashar around to their way of thinking, Mr Erdogan and Mr Davutoglu decided to back the Syrian National Council (SNC) and its armed extension, the FSA. The SNC, a group of exiles with no known support in Syria, was provided with money and offices in Istanbul and the FSA with a base of operations in the southeast.

All doors were opened to the attack. Thousands of foreign takfiris streamed into Syria through Turkey while hundreds of thousands of Syrians trying to escape the fighting streamed into Turkey. Their numbers have now swelled to about 1.7 million, of whom about 300,000 live in refugee camps while the rest fend for themselves as best as they can in the southeast and across the country, begging in the streets, sleeping rough and being exploited as cheap labor. The camps are also host to Syrian takfiris, crossing the border during the past four years to fight and returning to the relative comforts of accommodation, food and heating provided by domestic and international aid agencies.

Apaydin is a ‘refugee’ camp only in name as it was set up solely for the senior figures in FSA. The attacks inside Syria directed by the FSA leadership inside Turkey include the assassination of senior figures in government offices in Damascus, with responsibility being claimed by the then head of the FSA, Riad al Assad, speaking from his base in Turkey.

In May 2014, bands of takfiris crossed the border to attack the Syrian Armenian town of Kassab. The people were driven out and their churches desecrated before the Syrian army drove them back across the border. While attacking takfiri positions a Syrian fighter jet was brought down by a Turkish missile attack. Turkey claims the jet crossed into Turkish air space but the fact is the pilot ejected and landed seven kilometers on the other side of the Syrian border. Like so much else about this war, the conflicting versions were not reconciled and soon fell out of the headlines.

Kassab was a minor public relations disaster for the Turkish government because of the connection immediately made around the world with the fate of the Armenians in 1915 but in no way did it persuade Mr Erdogan and Mr Davutoglu to back off after all the destruction and seek a peaceful solution to the crisis in Syria. Turkey is now said to have been closely involved in the recent takfiri seizure of the city of Idlib and the town of Jisr al Shughur, a hotbed of religious reaction for decades. In its complaint to the UN Security Council, the Syrian government alleges that the attack on the town was launched with intelligence support from Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar and says the takfiris were provided with weapons and training by Turkey. Thousands of men, many of them not ‘rebels’ at all but foreign fighters, including Chechens and Saudis, were involved in these attacks. The capture of Jisr al Shughur, in particular, was marked by trademark massacres in the town and nearby villages.

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