Turkey – Page 3

Iran and Turkey back political solution to Yemen crisis

April 8, 2015 by Nasheman

Iranian president tells his visiting Turkish counterpart ceasefire in Yemen “must be established” and strikes halted.

Turkey and Iran agree on the need for a political solution to end Yemen’s war, which has raised tensions between them, Iran’s president has said after talks with his visiting Turkish counterpart.

“We talked about Iraq, Syria, Palestine … We had a long discussion about Yemen. We both think war and bloodshed must stop in this area immediately and a complete ceasefire must be established and the strikes must stop” in Yemen, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani said during a joint news conference broadcast by state television.

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan made no remarks about Yemen, where Houthi rebels and their allies – widely believed to be supported by Tehran – are battling forces loyal to embattled President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, while a Saudi-led coalition is bombing the rebels’ positions.

Erdogan, however, talked at length about bilateral relations with Iran, which has condemned the strikes. Turkey supports the aerial bombardment, which began on March 26.

Rouhani said he hoped the two countries, “with the help of other countries in the region” would contribute to “peace, stability, a broader government and dialogue” between Yemenis.

“We agree on the fact that instability, insecurity and war must cease throughout the region,” he said.

Erdogan denounced at the end of March what he called Iran’s will for “domination” in Yemen, calling on Tehran to “withdraw all its forces from Yemen, Syria and Iraq”.

Mohammad Javad Zarif, the Iranian foreign minister, reacted by accusing Turkey of causing instability in the Middle East.

Erdogan, a former close ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, supported the uprising in Syria and backed rebels fighting Assad’s government. Iran supports the Syrian government.

Several ministers accompanied Erdogan, who also met Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, during his one-day visit.

‘Expensive gas’

Despite the tensions, the neighbouring countries want to strengthen trade to $30bn in 2015.

Erdogan pointed out that the balance of trade was unfavourable to Turkey, since “Iran exports $10bn and imports only $4bn in Turkish products”.

“The gas we buy from Iran is the most expensive. If the price drops we can buy more,” Erdogan said. “That’s what a friendly country is.”

During the visit, eight documents – particularly in the areas of transport, customs, industry and health – were signed.

Al Jazeera’s Bernard Smith, reporting from Istanbul, said that Erdogan focused on trade relations during his visit and asked Iran to bring the natural gas price for Turkey down.

Smith said: “Before Erdogan arrived in Tehran, he had a meeting with the Saudi interior minister. Turkey has suggested it might offer logistical support to Saudis in their campaign in Yemen. But in Tehran, he made no concrete reference to the conflict in Yemen publicly.”

Turkey says spy suspected of helping British school girls is Syrian

March 13, 2015 by Nasheman

British teenage girls Shamima Begun, Amira Abase and Kadiza Sultana (L-R) walk through security at Gatwick airport before they boarded a flight to Turkey on February 17, 2015, in this combination picture made from handout still images taken from CCTV and released by the Metropolitan Police on February 22, 2015.

British teenage girls Shamima Begum, Amira Abase and Kadiza Sultana (L-R) walk through security at Gatwick airport before they boarded a flight to Turkey on February 17, 2015, in this combination picture made from handout still images taken from CCTV and released by the Metropolitan Police on February 22, 2015.

Ankara/Reuters: An alleged spy detained in Turkey for helping three British girls cross into Syria is a Syrian national working for a country in the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State, the Turkish foreign minister said on Friday.

Mevlut Cavusoglu announced on Thursday that a spy who had assisted the three London school girls, now believed to be on territory controlled by Islamic State, had been caught, but did not give the suspect’s nationality.

Islamic State seized swathes of land last June, cementing their rule with a militant interpretation of Islamic law, and is drawing sympathisers from many countries to support their fight. The U.S.-led coalition is using mostly air power in an attempt to push the Sunni militant group back.

“The person who helped the three British girls into Syria is a Syrian national working for another country within the coalition. The situation is so complicated,” Cavusoglu told reporters in Ankara.

He did not say which country the spy was working for, although on Thursday he had said it was not the European Union or the United States. The coalition also includes countries such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, Bahrain, Australia and Canada.

The three girls, two aged 15 and one 16, flew to Istanbul from London on Feb. 17 and then onwards to Syria, where more than 200,000 have been killed in a civil war. Their families have appealed to them to return.

(Reporting by Tulay Karadeniz; Writing by Ece Toksabay; editing by Ralph Boulton)

UN: Turkey hosts largest number of refugees in the world

February 27, 2015 by Nasheman

A Group of Syrian Kurds, who were sheltering in Turkey as a result of ongoing clashes between ISIS and Kurdish armed groups, return to their hometown Kobane from Sanliurfa, Turkey on February 25, 2015. Anadolu/Halil Fidan

Turkey hosts the largest number of refugees in the world amid a “staggering” growth in displacement from Syria, the UN high commissioner for refugees said Thursday.

In a briefing to the United Nations Security Council on the humanitarian situation in Syria, the high commissioner, Antonio Guterres, said the Syrian refugee crisis overwhelmed existing response capacities, with 3.8 million refugees registered in neighboring countries.

“Lebanon and Jordan have seen their populations grow, in the space of a few years, to a point they were prepared to reach only in several decades,” said Guterres. “Meanwhile, Turkey has now become the biggest refugee-hosting country in the world.”

According to the UN refugee agency, Turkey is hosting over 1.6 million Syrian refugees, who have fled a war that has paved the way for extremist groups such as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) to gain a foothold in the region.

Syria has been gripped by almost constant fighting since peaceful protests against the government of President Bashar al-Assad in March 2011 turned into an armed insurgency.

Urging the international community to share the burden, Guterres said the refugee influx had severely damaged the economies of Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq.

“The nature of the refugee crisis is changing” and called for “massive international support” for countries that have opened their borders to fleeing civilians,” he explained.

“As the level of despair rises, and the available protection space shrinks, we are approaching a dangerous turning point,” he added.

Lebanon’s population has grown by nearly 25 percent since the war in Syria began in 2011, with over 1.5 million Syrian refugees sheltered in a country with a population of 4 million, making it the highest per capita concentration of refugees in the world.

The refugee influx has put huge pressure on the country’s already scarce resources and poor infrastructure, education and health systems, and has also contributed to rising tensions in a nation vulnerable to security breaches and instability.

Meanwhile, Guterres warned that almost two million Syrian refugees under the age of 18, many without access to education or jobs, “risk becoming a lost generation” and over 100,000 children born in exile could become stateless.

“If this is not addressed properly, this crisis-in-making will have huge consequences not only for the future of Syria but for the whole region,” he said.

Moreover, Guterres commended a temporary protection decree issued by Turkey last year to provide Syrians with access to the country’s labor market, as well as free education and health care.

“But despite this positive development in Turkey, it is no surprise that growing desperation is forcing more and more Syrian refugees to move further afield,” he said.

He said Syrians accounted for a third of the nearly 220,000 migrants who arrived in boats to European shores last year.

“Since the start of 2015, over 370 people have died trying to cross the Mediterranean — that’s one person drowning for every twenty who made it,” he said.

He warned that thousands more could face death unless Europe decides to “step up its capacity to save lives, with a robust search and rescue operation in the Central Mediterranean.”

According to a December report by Amnesty International, wealthy nations have only taken in a “pitiful” 1.7 percent of the millions of refugees uprooted by Syria’s conflict, placing the burden on the country’s ill-equipped neighbors.

At the time, the London-based rights group blasted as shocking the failure of rich nations to host more refugees.

Amnesty said it was calling for the resettlement of five percent of Syria’s refugees by the end of 2015, and another five percent the following year.

In addition to those who fled the war-ravaged country to become refugees, the UN says more than seven million Syrians are internally displaced.

The refugees face poverty, illness and growing tensions with host communities in their already-impoverished temporary homes.

As the conflict rages, there is little prospect that the more than three million Syrians who have fled to neighboring countries and beyond will be able to return home any time soon.

(Anadolu, AFP, Al-Akhbar)

Turkish government deports 9 Indian allegedly wanted to join ISIS; freed after questioning

February 2, 2015 by Nasheman

Bangalore City Police Commissioner, M N Reddi. File Photo

Bengaluru: Nine persons, who had reached Istanbul on tourist visas from Bengaluru, were detained by Turkish authorities while they were trying to cross over to Syria, and deported to India.

These individuals had reached Istanbul on tourist visas on December 24 last from here and were sent back to India on January 30, by Turkish authorities, Bengaluru City Police Commissioner M N Redi said.

“On their arrival at BIAL, they (nine individuals) were questioned by the Bengaluru City Police along with central agencies regarding the circumstances of their visit to Turkey,” Reddi said in a statement.

Turkish authorities had detained these individuals at the Turkish border while they were trying to cross over to Syria, Reddi said. They have been identified as Muhammed Abdul Ahad (46) and his family consisting of his wife and five children, natives of Chennai, Javeed Baba (24) native of Khammam district, Telangana, and Ibrahim Nowfal (24) of Hassan, Karnataka, he said.

Ahad has a Masters in Computer Science from Kennedy-Western University, California, USA, and has worked in the US for more than ten years, Reddi said. Javeed and Nowfal are also engineers by qualification, he added.

Freed

The nine people who were picked up from the Kempegowda International Airport here late on Friday after being deported from Turkey for allegedly trying to enter Syria to join terror outfit ISIS, were released on Sunday.

The Bengaluru city police, Andhra Pradesh police and intelligence agencies interrogated them for over 30 hours before letting them off. The city police also questioned the family members of Nowfal. They said the group intended to join ISIS, but was not involved with the outfit in any way.

(With PTI inputs)

UN: Syrians largest refugee group after Palestinians

January 7, 2015 by Nasheman

Syrian refugee children sit outside their tent near the hills of Ersal. Al-Akhbar/Marwan Tahtah

by Al-Akhbar

Syrians have overtaken Afghans as the largest refugee population aside from Palestinians, fleeing to more than 100 countries to escape war in their homeland, the United Nations said on Wednesday.

At more than 3 million as of mid-2014, Syrians accounted for nearly one in four of the 13 million refugees worldwide being assisted by the UN refugee agency, the highest figure since 1996, it said in a report. Some 5 million Palestinians refugees are cared for by a separate agency, UNRWA.

“As long as the international community continues to fail to find political solutions to existing conflicts and to prevent new ones from starting, we will continue to have to deal with the dramatic humanitarian consequences,” UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said in a statement.

At least 200,000 people have died and half the Syrian population has been displaced since the conflict began in March 2011 with protests that spiraled into violent clashes between extremist groups and the Syrian army.

Worldwide, an estimated 5.5 million people were forcibly uprooted during the first six months of last year, 1.4 million of them fleeing abroad, the UNHCR said.

The Middle East and North Africa has become the main region of origin of refugees, overtaking the Asia and Pacific region that held the top spot for more than a decade.

Afghan refugees, the biggest group for three decades, have fallen to second place, with 2.6 million hosted by Pakistan and Iran at mid-year, it said. Somalis ranked as the third largest refugee group at 1.1 million.

Syria’s neighbors — Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan and Turkey — continue to bear the brunt of the crisis.

“With 257 refugees per 1,000 inhabitants, Lebanon remains the country with the highest refugee density at mid-2014,” UNHCR said, noting that Jordan ranked second.

The refugee influx has put huge pressure on Lebanon’s already scarce resources and poor infrastructure, education and health systems, and has also contributed to rising tensions in a nation vulnerable to security breaches and instability.

Overwhelmed by a massive influx of desperate refugees, Lebanon began imposing unprecedented visa restrictions on Syrians on Monday.

The new rule is the latest in a series of measures taken by Lebanon to stem the influx of Syrians.

In October, Social Affairs Minister Rashid Derbas said Lebanon was effectively no longer receiving Syrian refugees, with limited exceptions for “humanitarian reasons.”

Meanwhile, Sweden, with 12 refugees per 1,000 inhabitants, is the only industrialized country among major hosts, ranking 10th, it said.

Syrians also formed the largest group of asylum-seekers worldwide during the first half of 2014, lodging 59,600 applications, it said. Germany and Sweden together received 40 percent of these claims, it added.

According to a report by Amnesty in December, wealthy nations have only taken in a “pitiful” number of the millions of refugees uprooted by Syria’s conflict, placing the burden on the country’s ill-equipped neighbors.

“Around 3.8 million refugees from Syria are being hosted in five main countries within the region: Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt,” said Amnesty.

“Only 1.7 percent of this number have been offered sanctuary by the rest of the world,” the rights group added.

Excluding Germany, the European Union as a whole has pledged to take in only 0.17 percent of the refugees now housed in the main host countries around Syria.

“The shortfall… is truly shocking,” said Sherif Elsayed-Ali, Amnesty’s head of refugee and migrants’ rights.

“The complete absence of resettlement pledges from the Gulf is particularly shameful,” he said, adding, “linguistic and religious ties should place the Gulf states at the forefront of those offering safe shelter.”

Iraqis fleeing conflict were the second largest group of asylum-seekers during the period, at 28,900, the report said.

Last year nearly 3,500 migrants perished while trying to cross the Mediterranean to reach Europe, the UNHCR says.

(Reuters, Al-Akhbar)

UNHCR: Aid cuts, cold weather to have “devastating impact” on Syrian refugees

December 5, 2014 by Nasheman

Syrian refugees in the northeastern town of Ersal, Lebanon. Photo / Marwan Tahtah

by Al Akhbar

Aid workers fear a major humanitarian crisis for millions of Syrian refugees in the Middle East, especially in Lebanon, after funding gaps forced the United Nations to cut food assistance for 1.7 million people.

Meanwhile, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said on Tuesday that the number of internally displaced Iraqis had surpassed two million in 2014.

The UN’s World Food Program said Monday it needed $64 million (51 million euros) to fund its food voucher program for December alone, and that “many donor commitments remain unfulfilled.”

The announcement came as aid groups struggle to prepare millions of refugees for the impending winter, particularly those living in informal camps in cold, mountainous areas.

“It’s going to be a devastating impact. This couldn’t come at a worse time,” said Ron Redman, regional spokesman for the UN refugee agency UNHCR, “but we’re trying to get everyone prepared for winter and if you look at the conditions particularly in Lebanon in some of these informal settlements, the conditions are already very bad.”

“We’re doing everything we can… to keep their shelters at least warm and as dry as possible. But you can be warm and dry, but if you don’t have food, you’re in big trouble.”

WFP’s food vouchers were helping nearly two million refugees scattered in countries around the Middle East as each registered refugee receives a card that is topped up with money each month.

The amount differs from country to country, but is intended to allow each refugee to buy food equivalent to 2,100 calories per day, but for most of the agency’s recipients, December’s top-up has not arrived.

A nightmare for refugees

Worst-hit in the region is Lebanon, where more than 800,000 of the 1.1 million Syrian refugees in the country were receiving WFP food voucher support.

Lebanon hosts the largest number of refugees from neighboring Syria and has this been the biggest challenge among recipient countries.

From 2011, beginning of the war in Syria, till 2015, the UNHCR budget allocated for the country has increased drastically from $13.7 million to a planned 556.8.

In Jordan, some 450,000 refugees will not benefit from food vouchers this month, though around 90,000 living in the UN’s Zaatari and Azraq camps will continue to receive assistance.

In Turkey and Egypt, there are sufficient funds to provide aid until December 13 but not beyond, said WFP’s Regional Emergency Coordinator Muhannad Hadi.

“It’s going to be a nightmare for refugees,” Hadi told AFP.

“Those people are depending on the WFP to feed them, most of them are totally dependent on us. They have no income.”

Many refugees struggle to make ends meet even with international aid, and in Lebanon and elsewhere they often live in squalid informal camps, exposed to the heat of summer and cold of winter.

Across the region, they also face increasing tension with host communities angry about the strain that the refugee influx has put on sparse local resources.

The lack of food will “potentially cause further tensions, instability and insecurity in the neighboring host countries,” WFP Executive Director Ertharin Cousin said in a statement.

“We are suffering more-and-more, day-by-day. The world is ignoring our misery,” Abu Yaman, a Syrian refugee living in Ramtha in north Jordan, told AFP.

“The Jordanian government helps us, but Jordan is already a poor country and we can’t expect a lot from a country that was already suffering a financial crisis before hosting hundreds of thousands of Syrians,” added the 30-year-old, from the southern Syrian province of Daraa.

Latest in string of cuts

The announcement from WFP is the latest in a series of cuts made by agencies and NGOs assisting more than three million Syrian refugees.

They say funding pledges have not materialized, and “donor fatigue” is beginning to set in, nearly four years after the conflict in Syria began with anti-government protests in March 2011.

Early October, WFP announced it will no longer be able to provide humanitarian aid for those stuck in Syria as well as Syrian refugees bordering the war-torn country.

Last year, UNHCR announced it was cutting some of its aid to more than a quarter of refugees in Lebanon, partly due to funding shortfalls.

The diminishing humanitarian assistance has created bitterness and disappointment among many refugees.

“They want us to go back and die in Syria,” 21-year-old Khaldun Kaddah, who lives in Jordan, said of WFP’s announcement.

“Shame on them… Western countries talk too much about human rights and the truth is that they do not care for our basic rights.”

A UN refugee agency (UNHCR) report published mid November shows that about 13.6 million people, equivalent to the population of London, have been displaced by conflicts in Syria and Iraq, many without food or shelter as winter starts.

The 13.6 million include 7.2 million displaced within Syria – an increase from a long-held UN estimate of 6.5 million, as well as 3.3 million Syrian refugees abroad, 1.9 million displaced in Iraq and 190,000 who have left to seek safety.

The case for Iraqi refugees

According to UNHCR, developments in Iraq have led to a significant increase in registration requests in Lebanon since June 2014.

Although Syrian refugees are the main concern in the country, an estimate of 6,100 Iraqi refugees are also present, forming an 87% of the 8,000 non-Syrian, non-Palestinian refugees.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) said on Tuesday that the number of Iraqis internally displaced nationwide to over 2 million in 2014.

Nineveh in northern Iraq has suffered the greatest population loss with more than 940,000 people fleeing the town due to clashes between the Iraqi army and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) group, IOM spokesperson Joel Millman told reporters in Geneva.

Iraq’s western province of Anbar has suffered the second largest displacement with more than 540,000 people, Millman said.

ISIS swept through Iraq’s heartland in June .

The Kurdish Regional Government is hosting the majority of the displaced, while the central region of Iraq is hosting around 45 percent of the displaced, he added.

The United States, backed by some Western and Arab allies, launched airstrikes against the group in Iraq in August, expanding operations to targets in Syria a month later.

However, the air campaign, which Washington says aims to degrade ISIS’ military capability, remains the subject of debate, with critics pointing to ISIS’ advances and battlefield successes despite the raids.

(AFP, Anadolu, Al-Akhbar)

Putin, blocked by Europe, turns to Turkey for Gas Pipeline

December 2, 2014 by Nasheman

President of Russia Vladimir Putin.(RIA Novosti / Alexey Druzhinin)

by Juan Cole

The Russian annexation of Crimea and heavy interference in the Ukraine has had a significant consequence for its hydrocarbon industry. President Vladimir Putin has been forced to cancel a planned natural gas pipeline that would bring the fuel to southern Europe, because of European Union pressure for boycotting Russia. Moscow will not suffer very much economically, however, since it can sell as much natural gas to Turkey as it had been planning to sell to southern Europe, though perhaps at a bigger discount (Turkey has 75 people and is the world’s 17th largest economy. Greece has 11 million people and a small economy.)

The Ukraine crisis was in some ways provoked by aggressive expansionism by the EU and NATO into former Russian spheres of influence, in contradiction to promises made by the West to Premier Mikhail Gorbachev in the early 1990s. But be that as it may, Russia’s unilateral annexation of the Crimea and heavy interference in eastern Ukraine is inconsistent with international law.

Turkey plans to grow its economy substantially in the coming decade and is energy hungry, lacking much in the way of gas or oil itself, though it has coal. Slightly discounted Russian natural gas seems a good deal to Ankara. Moreover, Turkey has been rudely rebuffed in its bid to join the European Union, and this deal with Russia is a way for the Turks to remind the Europeans that if the EU had wanted Turkey to join its consensus, it could have admitted Turkey. As things now stand, Ankara is a free agent, and glories in its independence. Russian natural gas also has advantages for Turkey at the moment over Iranian natural gas, since the US has been pressuring countries not to deal with Iran or to allow bank transfers of money from Iran.

The significant political differences between Turkey and Russia on the Crimean Tartars and on Bashar al-Assad in Syria appear to have proved no bar to these economic deals.

Environmentally, burning natural gas is bad, but it isn’t nearly as bad as burning coal; some consider it half as carbon-intensive as coal, but that idea probably underestimates the methane emitted in drilling for gas. And, Turkey has big plans for coal. A Greenpeace study [pdf] observes:

“According to the World Resources Institute, Turkey plans 50 coal-fired power plants with a total installed capacity of 37,000 MW. This will rank Turkey first among OECD countries investing in new installed coal capacity and fourth globally, behind only China, India and Russia. Some projections suggest up to 86 new coal plant projects, when accounting for those that are in the process of permitting and those that have failed the application process.

In 2011, Turkey’s overall energy mix was comprised of 31% coal, 32% natural gas, and 27% petrol, with the remaining 10% composed of hydropower, wood/biofuels and wind. The Ministry of Energy and Natural Resource’s energy vision for 2023 predicts a near doubling of total energy sources, with the only significant difference that use of gas would decrease in relative terms to 23% and the use of coal would increase to 37%. In absolute terms this would mean a 2.3-fold increase of coal use in just 12 years.”

A person can only hope that the diversion of Russian natural gas to Turkey will forestall the building of some of those 50 or 85 coal plants, which are an environmental catastrophe waiting to happen. Why sunny and windy Turkey doesn’t initiate a crash program of renewables is a huge mystery, since then their fuel would be free and their economy would really take off.

My advice to Greece and other southern European countries that Putin has just by-passed for natural gas is to turn to renewables rather than seeking to replace Russian gas with Qatari. Italy gets 7% of its electricity from solar. Greece so far has little wind or solar power, its main renewable source for electricity being hydroelectric. About half of its electricity comes from dirty lignite coal. A quarter is from gas. Greece has enormous solar and wind potential but its government hasn’t promoted it. Putin wants to maneuver Turkey into reselling Russian gas to southern Europe, so as to sidestep sanctions. But if Turkey and Greece initiated a crash program of renewables they would save money and remove themselves from the geopolitical cross fire.

Archaeologists Unearth Three Ancient Greek Mosaics in the Ongoing Excavation in Zeugma, Turkey

November 19, 2014 by Nasheman

Workers clear a mosaic depicting the nine Muses

The Zeugma excavation project conducted by Oxford Archaeology and supported byPackhard Humanities Institute and the Ministry of Culture of Turkey has recently unearthed three ancient Greek mosaics in the Turkish city of Zeugma. Zeugma had received some press and support in 2000 after flooding caused by construction began to bury and damage artifacts in the region.

The mosaics, created in the 2nd century BC, are constructed of boldly colored glass and are being covered for protection until excavation is complete. The head of the project, Professor Kutalmis Görkay, recently gave the Hurriyet Daily News more details about the plan for the future of the excavation.

From now on, we will work on restoration and conservation. We plan to establish a temporary roof for long-term protection. We estimate that the ancient city has 2,000-3,000 houses. Twenty-five of them remain under water. Excavations will be finished in the Muzalar House next year.

The muse Thalia

Ocean and Tithys

The Centro di Conservazione Archeologica created this video about the flooding and excavation projects at Zeugma.

photos via Greek Reporter

via Greek Reporter

The War in Western Kurdistan and Northern Syria: The Role of the US and Turkey in the Battle of Kobani

November 18, 2014 by Nasheman

by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, Global Research

A war is being fought for control over Western Kurdistan and the northern areas of Syria, including three de facto Kurdish enclaves there. The fighting in Western Kurdistan is a means to an end and not a goal in itself. The objectives of gaining control over Syrian Kurdistan and northern Syria are critical to gaining control over the rest of the Syrian Arab Republic and entail US-supported regime change in Damascus.

Western Kurdistan is alternatively called Rojava in Kurmanji, the dialect of the Kurdish language that is used locally there and spoken by the majority of the Kurds living in Turkey. The word Rojava comes from the Kurdish root word roj, which means both sun and day, and literally means «sunset» («the sun’s end») or the «end of the day» («the day’s end») in Kurmanji and not the word «west». The confusion over its meaning arises for two main reasons. The first is that in the Sorani or Central dialect of the Kurdish language the word roj is only used to refer to the day. The second is that Rojava connotes or suggests the direction of the west, where the sun is seen to set when the day ends.

The Siege on Ayn Al-Arab or Kobani

Despite the fact that neither the Syrian military nor the Syrian government controls most of Syrian Kurdistan and that a significant amount of the locals there have declared themselves neutral, the forces of the Free Syrian Army, Al-Nusra, and the ISIL (DAISH) have launched a multiparty war on Rojava’s mosaic of inhabitants. It has only been in late-2014 that this war on Western Kurdistan has gained international attention as the Syrian Kurds in Aleppo Governorate’s northeastern district (mintaqah) of Ayn Al-Arab (Ain Al-Arab) became surrounded by the ISIL in late-September and early-October. As this happened, the behaviour of the US and its allies, specifically the neo-Ottomanist Turkish government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, exposed their true objectives in Rojava and Syria. By the time that the Syrian Kurds in northeastern Aleppo Governorate were being encircled by the ISIL, it was clear that Washington and its counterfeit anti-ISIL coalition were actually using the ISIL outbreak to redraw the strategic and ethno-confessional maps of Syria and Iraq. Many of the Syrian Kurds think that the goal is to force them eastward into Iraqi Kurdistan and to surrender to Turkish domination.

Fears of another exodus in Syria—similar to the one that was felt when Turkey assisted Jubhat Al-Nusra’s violent takeover of the mostly ethnic Armenian town of Kasab (Kessab) in Latakia Governorate in March 2014—began to materialize. Nearly 200,000 Syrians—Kurds, Turkoman, Assyrians, Armenians, and Arabs—fled across the Syrian-Turkish border. By October 9, one-third of Ayn Al-Arab had fallen to the pseudo-caliphate.

The Stances of the US over Kobani Exposes Washington’s Objectives

Washington’s stance on Ayn Al-Arab or Kobani was very revealing of where it really stood in regards to the battle over control of the Syrian border city. Instead of preventing the fall of Kobani and supporting the local defenders which were doing the heavy fighting on the ground against the ISIL and containing its pseudo-caliphate, Washington did not move. The US position on Kobani is an important indicator that the US war initiated against the ISIL has been mere bravado and a fictitious public relations stunt aimed at hiding the real objective of getting a strategic foothold inside Syrian territory.

When the ISIL attacked the forces of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Iraqi Kurdistan in August 2014, the US acted quickly to help the KRG’s forces. In July, a month after the June capture of the Iraqi city of Mosul by the ISIL, which coincided with the military takeover of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk by the KRG, the ISIL began its siege of Kobani in Rojava. Up until October, the US just watched.

Even more revealing, the Pentagon announced on October 8 that the US-led bombing campaign in Syria, which it formally named Operation Inherent Resolve on October 15, could not stop the ISIL offensive and advances against Kobani and its local defenders. Instead the US began arguing and insisting for more illegal steps to be taken by NATO member Turkey. Washington began to call for Turkish soldiers and tanks to enter Kobani and northern Syria. In turn, President Erdogan and the Turkish government said that Ankara would only send in the Turkish military if a no-fly zone was established over Syria by the US and the other members of Washington’s bogus coalition.

Repackaging Plans for a Northern Buffer Zone in Syria

Using Kobani to make a case, the US and Turkish governments took the opportunity to repackage their plans for an invasion of Syria from 2011, which called for the establishment of a Turkish-controlled northern buffer zone and a no-fly zone over Syrian airspace. This time the plans were presented under the humanitarian pretext of peacekeeping. This is why the parliamentarians in the Turkish Grand National Assembly had passed legislation authorizing an invasion of the Syrian Arab Republic and Syrian Kurdistan on October 2, 2014.

Although Turkey passed legislature to invade Syria on October 2, Ankara remained cautious. In reality, Turkey was doing everything in its power to ensure that Kobani would fall into the control of the ISIL and that Kobani’s local defenders would be defeated.

Due to a lack of coordination between the Turkish National Intelligence Organization (MIT) and Turkish law enforcement officials, a domestic scandal even emerged in Turkey when undercover MIT trucks were detained in Adana by the Turkish gendarmerie after they were caught secretly transporting arms and ammunition into Syria for Al-Nusra and other anti-government insurgents.

In the context of Kobani, numerous reports were made revealing that large weapon shipments were delivered to the heavily armed battalions of the ISIL by Turkey for the offensive on Kobani. One journalist, Serena Shim, would pay with her life for trying to document this. Shim, a Lebanese-American working for Iran’s English-language Press TV news network, would reveal that weapons were secretly being delivered to the insurgents in Syria through Turkey in trucks carrying the logo of the UN World Food Organization. Shim would be killed shortly after in a mysterious car accident on October 19 after being threatened by the Turkish National Intelligence Organization for spying for the Turkish opposition.

To hide its dirty hands as a facilitator, the Turkish government began claiming that it could not control its borders or prevent foreign fighters from entering Iraq and Syria. This, however, changed with the battle for Kobani. Ankara began to exercise what appeared to be faultless control of its border with Syria and it even reinforced border security. Turkey, which is widely recognized for allowing Jabhat Al-Nusra and the other foreign-backed insurgent forces to freely cross its borders to fight the Syrian military, began prevented any Kurdish volunteers from crossing the Syrian-Turkish border over to Kobani to help the besieged Syrian city and its outnumbered defenders. Only under intense domestic and international pressure did the Turkish government finally let one hundred and fifty token KRG peshmerga troops from Iraqi Kurdistan enter Kobani on November 1, 2014.

Turkey Takes Note of Syria’s Friends

The Syrian government rejected the suggestions coming from Ankara and Washington for foreign ground troops on its territory and for the establishment of a northern buffer zone. Damascus said these were intentions for blatant aggression against Syria. It released a statement on October 15 saying that it would consult its «friends».

In context of the US-Turkish invasion plans, the Turkish government was monitoring the reactions and attitudes of Russia, Iran, China, and the independent segments of the international community not beholden to Washington’s foreign policy objective. Both the Kremlin and Tehran reacted by warning the Turkish government to forget any thoughts about sending ground troops into Syrian Kurdistan and on Syrian soil.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Aleksandr Lukashevych, the spokesperson of the Russian Foreign Ministry, announced that Moscow opposed the calls for a northern buffer zone on October 9. Lukashevych said that neither Turkey nor the US had the authority or legitimacy to establish a buffer zone against the will of another sovereign state. He also pointed out how the US bombardment of Syria had complicated the problem and influenced the ISIL to concentrate itself among civilian populations. His words echoed the warnings of Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, the permanent representative of Russia to the UN, that the US-led bombings of Syria will further degenerate the crisis in Syria.

On the part of Tehran, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Amir-Abdollahian publicly announced that Iran had warned the Turkish government against any adventurism in Syria.

Why has Operation Inherent Resolve made the ISIL Stronger in Syria?

Is it a coincidence that the ISIL or DAISH gained ground in Syria as soon as the US declared war on it? Or is it a coincidence that Rojava contains most the oil wells inside Syria?

The inhabitants and resistance in Kobani fighting the ISIL offensive have repeatedly asked for outside help, but have defined the US-led airstrikes in Syria in no uncertain terms as utterly useless. This has been the general observation from the actual ground about the illegal US-led bombing campaign of Syria by local paramilitary and civilian leaders. Locally-selected officials in Syrian Kurdistan have repeatedly said, in one form or another, that the US-led airstrikes are a failure.

The People’s Protection Units (Yekineyen Parastina Gel, YPG; the all-female units are abbreviated as YPJ) of Kobani made multiple statements that pointed out that the US bombing campaign did nothing to stop the ISIL advance on Kobani or throughout Syria. While calling for Kurdish unity and a united front between Syria, Iraq, and Iran against the pseudo-caliphate of the ISIL, Jawan Ibrahim, an YPG officer, has said that the US and its anti-ISIL coalition are a failure as far as the YPG and Syrian Kurds are concerned, according to Fars News Agency (FNA).

Before the US officially inaugurated its campaign in Syria by lunching airstrikes on Ar-Raqqa, the ISIL’s fighters had left the positions that the US and its petro-sheikhdom Arab allies bombed. Instead of bombing the ISIL, the US has been bombing Syrian industrial and civilian infrastructure. While saying that some of these bombings, which include civilian homes and a wheat silo, were mistakes, it is clear that the Pentagon strategy of eroding an enemy state’s strength by destroying its infrastructure is being applied against Syria.

After heavy criticism and international pressure, the US began to drop token medical supplies and arms shipments for the locals and Kobani’s local defenders. Some of these US arms got into the hands of the ISIL. The Pentagon says this was the result of miscalculations and that the ISIL were not the intended recipients. Skeptics, however, believe that the Pentagon deliberately parachuted the US weapons near places that the ISIL’s battalions could easily see and obtain them. The arms caches included hand grenades, rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), and ammunition, which were all displayed in at least one video produced by the ISIL during the battle for Kobani.

In parallel to the reluctant help of the US, the Turkish government was pressured into allowing a token number of KRG peshmerga fighters from Iraq cross its border into Kobani on November 1. These pershmerga, however, are part of the security forces of the corrupt, Turkish-aligned KRG. In other words, «Turkey’s Kurds» (as in their allies; not to be mistaken for Turkish Kurds) were allowed to enter Kobani (instead of the YPG, YPJ, or volunteers). Since Turkey’s detrimental role in Kobani became widely known, Ankara was also fearful that the fall of Kobani would effectively end the peace talks between the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and the Turkish government and result in a massive revolt in Turkish Kurdistan.

Useless US Bombing War Against the ISIL or Stealth US War Against Syria?

The US-led bombing campaign is not intended to defeat the ISIL, which is also doing everything it can to destroy the fabrics of Syrian society. The US-led bombing campaign in Syria is intended to weaken and destroy Syria as a functioning state. This is why the US has been bombing Syrian energy facilities and infrastructure, including transport pipes, under the excuse of preventing the ISIL from using it to sell oil and gather revenues.

The US rationale for justifying this is bogus too, because the ISIL has been transporting stolen Syrian oil shipments through transport vehicles into Turkey and, unlike the case of Iraq, not using the transport pipes. Moreover, most the oil stolen by the ISIL has been coming from Iraq and not from Syria, but the US has not taken the same steps to destroy the energy infrastructure in Iraq. Additionally, the purchases of stolen oil from both Syria and Iraq have taken place at the level of state actors. Even the European Union’s own representative to Iraq, Jana Hybaskova, has admitted that European Union members are buying stolen Iraqi oil from the ISIL.

The Pentagon’s two different approaches, one for Iraq and one for Syria, say a lot about what Washington is doing in the Syrian Arab Republic. Washington is still going after Syria and in the process it and Turkey wants to either co-opt the Syrian Kurds or to neutralize them. This is why the battle for Kobani was launched with Turkish involvement and why there was inaction by the US government. Also, when it comes down to it, the ISIL or DAISH is a US weapon.

The Syrian government knows that Washington’s anti-ISIL coalition is a façade and that the masquerade could end with a US-led offensive against Damascus if the US government and Pentagon believe that the conditions are right. On November 6, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Al-Muallem told the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar that Syria had asked the Russian Federation to accelerate the delivery of the S-300 anti-aircraft surface-to-air missile system to prepare for a possible Pentagon offensive.

Turkey arrests 15 more officers over alleged coup plot

November 13, 2014 by Nasheman

by Al-Akhbar

Turkish authorities arrested police officers on Wednesday in new nationwide raids over an alleged plot to overthrow the Islamic-rooted government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The operation, which targeted 15 police officers in seven different Turkish provinces, came after an Istanbul prosecutor issued arrest warrants for 17 officers, four of whom are senior police officers.

Apart from wiretapping, the police officers have been accused of forging official documents and violating privacy of individuals.

The sweeps were the sixth such in a sequence of coordinated raids aimed at cracking down on what Erdogan has described as a “parallel state” within the security forces loyal to his former ally turned foe, the US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen.

The probe is linked to last year’s stunning corruption allegations against Erdogan and his inner circle that were based on wiretapped telephone conversations.

The Erdogan-led authorities have since sacked hundreds of police and prosecutors believed to be linked to Gulen and introducing curbs on the judiciary and the Internet.

(Anadolu, Al-Akhbar)