Turkey On Point in US-Israeli War Against Syria

Turkey Ramps Up War Threats Against Syria
Contributed by blackandred – By Chris Marsden; 11 September 2012 – WSWS

Turkey has dramatically escalated its war-rhetoric against Syria, placing itself at the forefront of any military intervention to depose the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

On September 4, at a meeting of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Ankara, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan described Syria as a “terrorist state.”

He complained that the “massacres in Syria” had gained strength “from the international community’s indifference… The regime in Syria has now become a terrorist state. We do not have the luxury to be indifferent to what is happening there.”

Erdogan’s comments target Russia and China, which oppose measures against Syria they correctly understand to be aimed at weakening their influence in the oil-rich region and consolidating US hegemony by isolating Iran. But he has also made clear his frustration with the Obama administration in the United States, which has expressed reluctance to support Turkey’s demand for a “no-fly” or “buffer” zone on the Syrian side of the Turkish border.

Justified as a means of both protecting and stemming the tide of refugees fleeing Syria, such a move would be tantamount to a declaration of war.

Turkey has said that should the number of refugees, now estimated at 80,000, top 100,000, this could be a tipping point for action against Syria. Turkey has also accused both Syria and Iran of allowing border areas to be used as a base for separatist forces allied to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) to attack its troops in the southeast.

Erdogan called the PKK and Syria’s Democratic Union Party (PYD), an affiliated group, a “sub-contractor organization”, “directly supported abroad by enemy countries.”

“In the north, [the Assad regime] has allotted five provinces to the Kurds, to the terrorist organization,” he told a Turkish television station in July.

“It’s known that the PKK works arm in arm with Syria’s intelligence organisation,” said Huseyin Celik, the deputy chairman of the AKP.

Turkish tanks conducted attack-drill exercises along the border with Syria on Wednesday last week. The next day, September 6, Reuters reported that more than 2,000 Turkish soldiers, together with fighter jets and helicopters, attacked PKK positions in both southeast Turkey and northern Iraq.

After having stated that Assad is not a real Muslim, Erdogan last weekend provocatively compared what is happening in Syria with the battle of Karbala–which has central significance for Shi’ites, who regard those killed by Caliph Yazid I as martyrs. “What happened in Karbala 1,332 years ago is what happens in Syria today,” Erdogan said at a conference in Istanbul.

It was in this context that Erdogan complained to Christiane Amanpour on CNN September 5 that US reluctance to back a no-fly zone was probably “because of the pre-election situation,” given the deep unpopularity in the US of any open move to war against Syria. …more