Al-Assad And Putin Strike Turkish Invader, Erdogan

Sheri Laizer | Exclusive to iKurd.net

Not democracy seeking ‘Rebels’ but Islamists and opportunists aiming to control Syria

It is long past the hour when the West should also stop licking the Turkish dictator’s boots and sanction his domestic and foreign aggression in Syria, Iraq and the Kurdish region.

From the first weeks of the Syrian rebellion, Bashar al-Assad had announced that ‘foreigners were trying to take over the country.’

This was fundamentally correct – and has remained so. Anyone examining the news footage emerging from Syria could see that this was true. The pictures coming from the conflict revealed the so-called ‘rebels’ as mainly long-haired and bearded jihadist fighters crying ‘Allah-u Akbar’ as they launched mortars at Syrian government military and civilian targets.

Numerous of these fighters had trained in Afghanistan, and more recently in Iraq after regime change in 2003. There they became seasoned combatants and were joined by militants from Al Qaeda in Iraq. Together they metamorphosed into the Al-Nusra Front and ISIS after streaming into Syria.

Other recruits to jihad were freely gathering together in Turkey where they received training, military equipment and an all areas pass from the Turkish border: their aims were generally compatible with those of the Turkish leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who aimed to topple al-Assad and establish a Sunni caliphate with himself at its summit – with or without the help of ISIS.

Regrettably for the mounting civilian fatalities inside Syria, the mainstream Western media has never accurately reported what was actually going on inside the country; the media kept close to Western policy in focusing on the removal of Bashar al-Assad and backed a plethora of armed groups of dubious intent so as to concentrate strength against the government.

The lessons of Iraq and Libya had not been absorbed by the West in their policy on Syria. Instead, weak arguments stressing human rights abuses tended to dominate reporting, just as in the build up to the US-led invasion of Iraq.

Looking back at the so-called “Arab Spring” by the time the wave of mass discontent broke on the Syrian shore in March 2011, evolving from the Friday prayer demonstrations, genuine pro-democracy impulses were being infected by Islamic extremism – both Sunni Salafist extremism and Tehran branded Shi’a fundamentalism.

While the West – driven by its own interests and policies in the Middle East – continued to attribute the civil disobedience to a democratic opposition, (such as to the Kurds that had expressed demands for rights and freedoms throughout the rule of General Hafez al-Assad turned President, the greater drive to overthrow his son came directly from Al Qaeda and a plethora of Salafist groups that had long been active in the country. These groups had by this time already gained a foothold in Iraq, Jordan, Turkey, Saudi and the UAE and were focusing their efforts, as now, further afield in Africa, Malaysia and wherever there was a Muslim population vulnerable to being indoctrinated by the fundamentalist rhetoric.

In this endeavor, jihadist groups in competition with ISIS were also erroneously backed and financed by the US, the UK and some other Western countries.

A Turkish army US-made M60 tank drives in the town of Sarmin, about 12 kilometres southeast of the city of Idlib in the northwestern Syria, February 20, 2020. Photo: AFP

Russia took a firm stand beside Bashar al-Assad, having been a long-term partner of Syria. Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, correctly maintained that the majority of armed groups causing death and destruction in Syria were not Syrians seeking democracy but domestic and international jihadists bent on creating a caliphate whose ideology and methods were ultimately little different to those of ISIS. ‘Foreign-backed militancy’ is the term most often used.1

“The Arab awakening reached Syria in March 2011 with demonstrations to replace the regime taking place mainly after Friday prayers, thus originally being dubbed the ‘Friday Revolution’ expressing various demands ranging from calling for the resignation of the government to toppling the regime. The government adopted several democratic changes in response, annulling the State of Emergency and strict controls over the media as well as several key laws on political parties. In the winter that followed, the world media signaled that the US no longer considered Bashar al-Assad to be the head of Syria, counting on the armed opposition and the Syrian National Council to unseat him. Thereafter insurgents of every kind sought to overthrow the state. From January 2012 onwards the Syrian branch of the Al Qaeda terror network, the Al Nusra Front, participated in the anti-government campaign. From April 2013 onwards, ISIL, breaking with Al Qaeda, passed from Iraq into Syria and joined the struggle against al-Assad as an independent force. The two deadly jihadist groups saw a rapid expansion in Syria, attaining a force of more than 150,000 armed fighters and attracting extremists from around the world. Former ideological warriors opposed to the Assad regime were also absorbed. After the incursion by ISIL militants, the next largest opposition group, the FSA, became divided into factions, some of its members joining the terrorists, others preferring to await the redistribution of power in one of the border ‘security zones’. They had the enduring support of Turkey, the Gulf States, the US and France.” 2

Russian commentator, Vladimir Slavotich went on to observe how “on 3 June 2014, elections for the Syrian head of state were held for the first time since the Ba’ath Party had taken power in 1963. Bashar al-Assad was elected for a third term. The jihadists then became the dominant armed force of the opposition cruelly countering all those that didn’t support them across the country. Anywhere they took control was devastated. At the height of the crisis al-Assad turned to Russia – a historically strategic ally – for military assistance.

The attempts of the USA to act on two different fronts – to topple al-Assad and to fight against ISIL – led Washington into an impasse. The forces of the pro-US Coalition did not prevent the jihadists from mounting pressure on the government forces. The US brought in heavy support from the UK, France, Germany and Turkey and ultimately came to comprise a force from some 60 countries, the majority of which limited their support to the stated aim of defeating ISIS.

The US and its allies also continued to support and lead the forces they backed to represent a political alternative to the government of Bashar al-Assad, relying principally on the SNC that had been recognized since 2011 by more than 17 NATO member countries, and on the National Coalition of Opposition Forces and of the Syrian Revolution that had emerged in 2012 and which had also received the recognition of the Arab League.

Conditions for a framework of understanding were set in the Geneva Communique of 2012 but the matter saw little positive progress owing to contradictions at the heart of the opposition leading to an impasse. Consensus could not be reached as to the means of bringing peace to Syria at the same time as large part of the country came under the sway of ISIL and the challenge posed by the Russian alliance in the Syrian military action.

Russia viewed itself as threatened in equal fashion by the jihadist menace and supported the Syrian regime because its collapse would have seen Damascus taken by Daesh.

Jean-Pierre Chevènement writing in October 2015, in the weekly ‘Obs’, saw it as an error to reject the proposition of Putin for an alliance with the West, because Russia like the West was threatened by jihadist terrorism with forces converging from the Caucasus, central Asia, and some also being present in Moscow.3

Turkey’s mercenary Syrian Islamist fighters in Aleppo province, Syria, December 29, 2018. Photo: AFPp

Turkey seizes its opportunity

The so-called Free Syrian Army formed in August 2011 was originally led by Brigadier General Salim Idris and backed by a number of former Syrian military officers that had recently based themselves in Turkey, presided over by Colonel Riad al-Assad.

Several other groups that emerged then announced that they also belonged to the FSA but the formal FSA leadership had no real control over them or their actions. Turkey and the Gulf States, sympathetic to the opponents of the Syrian government, financially supported the FSA. This support developed into direct training and deployment of mainly Islamist forces into Syria, including those militants directly supporting ISIS and al-Nusra.

In December 2012, the Supreme Military Council (SMC) was created. General Idris publicly presented the SWC as an alternative to the jihadist groups in Syria. The NY Times observed:

“Under intense pressure from Western and Arab backers, hundreds of Free Syrian Army commanders gathered in Turkey last December (2012) to select a 30-member Supreme Military Council, which in turn chose General Idris as chief of staff. They unified, grudgingly, because they were promised heavy weapons, they said, in particular antiaircraft and antitank weapons, and other, nonlethal aid…4

However, many combatants ‘unified’ under the FSA were cooperating with Islamic hardline groups like Ahrar al-Sham, linked with Al-Qaeda, and with the jihadists of the Nusra Front and ISIL.

General Idris had warned as early as March 2013: “I would like to say to the decision makers in these countries, you cannot only listen to the news about Syria and watch the TV, to see the massacres and the destruction and wait,” he said. “If you still delay the decision to support Syria, you might take the decision when it is too late. Then Syria will be like Somalia.”5

Without the direct physical support provided to the motley opposition by Turkey, Syria could not have become “like Somalia.” Recep Tayyip Erdoğan pugnaciously exploited the Syrian conflict for his own interests – interests that have frequently paralleled those of ISIS.6

Turkey’s red hands

The successive Turkish invasions of Kurdish majority areas of Syria went largely unchecked by the West. France was among the most outspoken against the October 2019 incursion and occupation of NW Syria and deployment of jihadist forces in Idlib. Erdoğan sought to establish a permanent Turkish zone, ironically dubbed ‘safe’.

This self-interested policy last night led directly to the deaths of an estimated 33 Turkish soldiers and a Turkish supply convoy in a Syrian government strike mounted by Russian-backed forces against increasing Turkish military aggression. The Russian media claimed Turkish military operators had targeted regime planes with shoulder-fired missiles known as MANPADS.

Erdoğan remains belligerent – he has never yet been compelled to back down. Ahrar al-Sham militants were also seen in the Turkish combat zone of Saraqeb but Russia denied that the city has been taken by Turkey and its allies. Russia also enjoys air control in the skies above Idlib. Meanwhile a further refugee crisis threatens because of the escalation. Four million Syrians are still present in Turkey. Thousands of others could stream towards the border.

As al-Monitor observed in an anonymous citation today: “Since becoming president, Erdoğan has surrounded himself with people who don’t dare to tell him, ‘You are making a mistake.’ Now he’s left with a circle of bootlickers who are mostly so ignorant they can’t even tell that he is making mistakes,” said an Ankara-based source with close knowledge of Erdoğan ’s inner circle…”7

It is long past the hour when the West should also stop licking the Turkish dictator’s boots and instead sanction his domestic and foreign aggression.

Putin is apparently prepared to stand firm and has cancelled his 5 March meeting with Erdoğan in a summit planned to include Russian, German and French leaders in Istanbul with its Turkish hosts.

The Moscow Times also reported that two warships with Kalibr cruise missiles were being sent to the Mediterranean Sea coast of Syria. A third frigate has been present there since December 2019. It claimed also that the first deputy head of the Russian upper house of parliament’s international affairs committee, Vladimir Dzhabarov, was cited in Interfax warning that any full-scale Turkish military operation in Idlib would end badly for Ankara itself.

1 https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2019/09/13/606051/War-in-Syria-has-come-to-end,-long-lasting-settlement-of-crisis-needed:-Russian-FM
2 Translated originally from Russian into French, Syria – Civilisation in Danger by Valdimir Slavoutich, 2016 and from French to English by Sheri Laizer.
3 Translated from Slavotich, 2016.
4 https://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/02/world/middleeast/syrian-rebel-leader-deals-with-old-ties-to-other-side.html
5 Ibid.
6 See https://wordpress-1318350-4815544.cloudwaysapps.com/turkey-natos-islamic-state-member-2019-02-21
7 https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2020/02/erdogan-bluster-war-russia-backed-syrian-forces.html#ixzz6FEbyiVxL

Sheri Laizer, a Middle East and North African expert specialist and well known commentator on the Kurdish issue. She is a senior contributing writer for iKurd.net. More about Sheri Laizer see below.

The opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of iKurd.net or its editors.