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TURKISH PM ERDOGAN: BIGGEST LOSER IN SYRIA CHEMICAL "ATTACKS" HOAX
BY STAFF
- POSTED ON APRIL 17, 2014
By APPO JABARIAN
Obama's sudden climb-down in late August-early September 2013 on
his threatened military strike against Syria was in part forced on
him by a chemical analysis of samples of the sarin used in Ghouta,
which showed that its signature did not match that of the stockpiles
held by the Assad regime.
Now that the so-called 'Chemical attacks in Damascus by Syrian
Government,' hasn't yielded the 'stated objective' - U.S. airstrike
against Syria, the warmonger neo-cons and pseudo-progressives are
pushing for "Humanitarian Interventionism," giving the embattled
Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan an 11th hour glimmer of hope to save
face. In recent years PM Erdogan emerged as the biggest stakeholder
in toppling the Syrian government.
By late 2012 the US had assessed that the rebels were losing the civil
war, and started to downgrade their involvement in the 'rat line'.
That left Turkey's Erdogan the main loser and the notion became the
consensus among such reputable independent Western journalists like
Pulitzer prize-winning writer Seymour Hersh who was credited for
having exposed US Government lies on Syrian Sarin chemical attacks.
"The US involvement in the rat line ended unhappily when its consulate
was stormed by Libyan militiamen. The US diplomatic presence in
Benghazi had been dwarfed by that of the CIA and, when US personnel
were airlifted out of the city in the aftermath of the attack,
only seven were reportedly from the State Department and 23 were
CIA officers. The disaster in Benghazi, which soon ballooned into
a political battle between Republicans and Democrats in Washington,
severely loosened US control of what arms were going to which rebel
movements in Syria. This happened at the moment when Assad's forces
were starting to gain the upper hand, wrote Patrick Cockburn in an
April 13 article in The Independent.
"The US's Secretary of State John Kerry and its UN ambassador,
Samantha Power have been pushing for more assistance to be given to
the Syrian rebels. This is despite strong evidence that the Syrian
armed opposition is, more than ever, dominated by jihadist fighters
similar in their beliefs and methods to al-Qa'ida. The recent attack
by rebel forces around Lattakia, northern Syria, which initially
had a measure of success, was led by Chechen and Moroccan jihadis,"
revealed Cockburn. Also according to eyewitnesses in Turkish-invaded
Kessab, many of the invaders were speaking Turkish.
He further noted that America has done its best to keep secret its
role in supplying the Syrian armed opposition, operating through
proxies and front companies. It is this which makes Seymour Hersh's
article "The Red Line and The Rat Line: Obama, Erdogan and the
Syrian rebels" published last week in the London Review of Books,
so interesting. Attention has focused on whether the Syrian jihadist
group, al-Qa'ida-linked Jabhat al-Nusra, aided by Turkish intelligence,
could have been behind the sarin gas attacks in Damascus last 21
August, in an attempt to provoke the US into full-scale military
intervention to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad.
Critics vehemently respond that all the evidence points to the Syrian
government launching the chemical attack and that even with Turkish
assistance, Jabhat al-Nusra did not have the capacity to use sarin.
"We now know it was a covert action planned by [Turkish Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip] Erdogan's people to push Obama over the red line,"
a former senior US intelligence officer was quoted as saying.
In an April 15 scathing news analysis in MintPress News titled "The
Failed Pretext For War: Seymour Hersh, Eliot Higgins, MIT Rocket
Scientists On Sarin Gas Attack," Carmen Russell-Sluchansky highlighted
"The Turkish connection" citing "Hersh's initial assertion that
neighboring Turkey has played a role in the Syrian civil war by
supporting the al-Nusra rebels is known to those who are watching
the events there. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan started
providing significant material support to the Muslim Brotherhood in
Syria -- which later merged with al-Nusra -- in the early stages of the
Syrian Civil War, as well as the Muslim Brotherhood across the Middle
East. Political analysts view this as Erdogan's attempt to re-assert
Turkey's influence in the region as it did during the Ottoman Empire."
Furthermore, according to U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency documents
cited by Hersh, "Turkey and Saudi-based chemical facilitators were
attempting to obtain sarin precursors in bulk, tens of kilograms,
likely for the anticipated large scale production efforts in Syria."
Among other things the Hersh articles point to the fact that a senior
US intelligence officer strongly believed that it did. The fact that
"it became publicly known is already damaging Turkey."
Cockburn highlighted the US intelligence community's deep suspicions on
"Erdogan's actions in Syria" articulating the common knowledge that it
"may also be starting to strike home in the US and Europe that aid
to the armed rebellion in Syria means destabilizing Iraq."
"A problem here is that the secular moderate faction of committed
Syrian opposition fighters does not really exist. ... It is curious
that the US military has been so much quicker to learn the lessons of
Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya than civilians like Kerry and Power. The
killing of Ambassador Stevens shows what happens when the US gets
even peripherally involved in a violent, messy crisis like Syria
where it does not control many of the players or much of the field,"
concluded Cockburn.
In a mid-April article titled "Turkey's War Against Syria," Lionel
Reynolds ofOPEDnews.com asked: "Why does the Turkish regime appear
to be doing everything in its power to help the war against the
Ba'athist regime? Turkish-Syrian relations in the last century were
strained by a number of local and regional issues. These included the
Turkish annexation of Hatay from the French mandate of Syria in 1938,
Turkish dam building projects in South Eastern Turkey, and Syrian
protection for PKK militants. ... Turkey seemed to be re-balancing
away from the traditional Kemalist agenda towards a more independent
neo-Ottoman engagement with its neighbors."
Mr. Reynolds underlined: "Certainly, Turkey's importance to NATO has
declined since the collapse of the Soviet Union. During the Cold War,
it was critical as the southern flank of the NATO encirclement of
the Eastern Bloc. ... With the expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe,
Turkey's role has diminished. It is now just one of three NATO members
on the Black Sea. The other two, Bulgaria and Romania, host the US
Joint Task Force East program, which includes a permanent US military
presence and on-going joint training exercises. Turkey opposed both
this venture as well as a plan to expand Operation Active Endeavour
into the Black Sea. The AKP has also been at pains to point out that
Turkish participation in NATO operations in Iraq and Afghanistan does
not include combat troops. Added to all this, relations between Turkey
and Israel are currently at an all-time low. Turkey was the first
Muslim country to recognize the State of Israel, but under the AKP
regime events such as the 2009/9 Gaza war, the 2010 Gaza Flotilla raid,
and alleged Turkish involvement in the exposure of Israeli agents in
Iran in 2013, have significantly soured relations. Alongside this there
is greater Turkish openness to Russia - a significant geopolitical
opponent of the Euro-Atlanticist bloc. Turkey is a Dialogue Partner
of the Shanghai Co-operation Organization and has signed numerous
economic and visa-free travel agreements with Russia.
Turkey's major trading partner is now the EU, but at the same time that
the Turkish regime is seeking full EU membership it is also carving out
an increasingly independent role in regional and global affairs, with
a particular interest in the nations of the former Ottoman Empire."
But the Arab nations of former Ottoman Empire are no fools.
Interestingly, when a wave of public hangings in Lebanon and Syria
was initiated by Ottoman Turkey in 1910's, the very first Syrian
and Lebanese leaders were Muslim Sunni. Generation after generation,
many Sunni Muslim tribes and families in Lebanon and Syria remember
Turkish brand of 'brotherhood' and they're wary Turkey playing 'big
brother' under an Erdogan with Ottoman tendencies.
Besides the impending Turkish isolation, Ankara also seems to grapple
with Turkey's internal sectarian problems that dwarf those of the
entire Middle East region. While Turkey misrepresents its population
to be 97% Turkic, the reality is that out of a population of nearly
80 million, around 25-28 million are Kurds, 19 million Alevis
(Alawites?), 5 million Arabs, 3-5 million hidden Greeks, 2-3 million
hidden Armenians, about 3-4 million foreign refugees (Syria, Iraq,
Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistanis, Chechens, etc.) collectively accounting
for well over 60 million non-Turks. Even many of the citizens of
what is now called Turkey discover their non-Turkic ancestry on a
daily basis.
As for the Turkish state's current border, it could prove to be far
more porous than any of its neighbors, including Syria.
A stalemate in Syrian civil war can be detrimental to Turkey's
territorial integrity. So for now, the absence of a misguided U.S.
military operation against Arab Republic of Syria makes Turkish PM
Erdogan the biggest loser in Syria 'Chemical Attacks' Hoax.
http://www.armenianlife.com/2014/04/17/turkish-pm-erdogan-biggest-loser-in-syria-chemical-attacks-hoax/
From: Baghdasarian
BY STAFF
- POSTED ON APRIL 17, 2014
By APPO JABARIAN
Obama's sudden climb-down in late August-early September 2013 on
his threatened military strike against Syria was in part forced on
him by a chemical analysis of samples of the sarin used in Ghouta,
which showed that its signature did not match that of the stockpiles
held by the Assad regime.
Now that the so-called 'Chemical attacks in Damascus by Syrian
Government,' hasn't yielded the 'stated objective' - U.S. airstrike
against Syria, the warmonger neo-cons and pseudo-progressives are
pushing for "Humanitarian Interventionism," giving the embattled
Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan an 11th hour glimmer of hope to save
face. In recent years PM Erdogan emerged as the biggest stakeholder
in toppling the Syrian government.
By late 2012 the US had assessed that the rebels were losing the civil
war, and started to downgrade their involvement in the 'rat line'.
That left Turkey's Erdogan the main loser and the notion became the
consensus among such reputable independent Western journalists like
Pulitzer prize-winning writer Seymour Hersh who was credited for
having exposed US Government lies on Syrian Sarin chemical attacks.
"The US involvement in the rat line ended unhappily when its consulate
was stormed by Libyan militiamen. The US diplomatic presence in
Benghazi had been dwarfed by that of the CIA and, when US personnel
were airlifted out of the city in the aftermath of the attack,
only seven were reportedly from the State Department and 23 were
CIA officers. The disaster in Benghazi, which soon ballooned into
a political battle between Republicans and Democrats in Washington,
severely loosened US control of what arms were going to which rebel
movements in Syria. This happened at the moment when Assad's forces
were starting to gain the upper hand, wrote Patrick Cockburn in an
April 13 article in The Independent.
"The US's Secretary of State John Kerry and its UN ambassador,
Samantha Power have been pushing for more assistance to be given to
the Syrian rebels. This is despite strong evidence that the Syrian
armed opposition is, more than ever, dominated by jihadist fighters
similar in their beliefs and methods to al-Qa'ida. The recent attack
by rebel forces around Lattakia, northern Syria, which initially
had a measure of success, was led by Chechen and Moroccan jihadis,"
revealed Cockburn. Also according to eyewitnesses in Turkish-invaded
Kessab, many of the invaders were speaking Turkish.
He further noted that America has done its best to keep secret its
role in supplying the Syrian armed opposition, operating through
proxies and front companies. It is this which makes Seymour Hersh's
article "The Red Line and The Rat Line: Obama, Erdogan and the
Syrian rebels" published last week in the London Review of Books,
so interesting. Attention has focused on whether the Syrian jihadist
group, al-Qa'ida-linked Jabhat al-Nusra, aided by Turkish intelligence,
could have been behind the sarin gas attacks in Damascus last 21
August, in an attempt to provoke the US into full-scale military
intervention to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad.
Critics vehemently respond that all the evidence points to the Syrian
government launching the chemical attack and that even with Turkish
assistance, Jabhat al-Nusra did not have the capacity to use sarin.
"We now know it was a covert action planned by [Turkish Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip] Erdogan's people to push Obama over the red line,"
a former senior US intelligence officer was quoted as saying.
In an April 15 scathing news analysis in MintPress News titled "The
Failed Pretext For War: Seymour Hersh, Eliot Higgins, MIT Rocket
Scientists On Sarin Gas Attack," Carmen Russell-Sluchansky highlighted
"The Turkish connection" citing "Hersh's initial assertion that
neighboring Turkey has played a role in the Syrian civil war by
supporting the al-Nusra rebels is known to those who are watching
the events there. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan started
providing significant material support to the Muslim Brotherhood in
Syria -- which later merged with al-Nusra -- in the early stages of the
Syrian Civil War, as well as the Muslim Brotherhood across the Middle
East. Political analysts view this as Erdogan's attempt to re-assert
Turkey's influence in the region as it did during the Ottoman Empire."
Furthermore, according to U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency documents
cited by Hersh, "Turkey and Saudi-based chemical facilitators were
attempting to obtain sarin precursors in bulk, tens of kilograms,
likely for the anticipated large scale production efforts in Syria."
Among other things the Hersh articles point to the fact that a senior
US intelligence officer strongly believed that it did. The fact that
"it became publicly known is already damaging Turkey."
Cockburn highlighted the US intelligence community's deep suspicions on
"Erdogan's actions in Syria" articulating the common knowledge that it
"may also be starting to strike home in the US and Europe that aid
to the armed rebellion in Syria means destabilizing Iraq."
"A problem here is that the secular moderate faction of committed
Syrian opposition fighters does not really exist. ... It is curious
that the US military has been so much quicker to learn the lessons of
Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya than civilians like Kerry and Power. The
killing of Ambassador Stevens shows what happens when the US gets
even peripherally involved in a violent, messy crisis like Syria
where it does not control many of the players or much of the field,"
concluded Cockburn.
In a mid-April article titled "Turkey's War Against Syria," Lionel
Reynolds ofOPEDnews.com asked: "Why does the Turkish regime appear
to be doing everything in its power to help the war against the
Ba'athist regime? Turkish-Syrian relations in the last century were
strained by a number of local and regional issues. These included the
Turkish annexation of Hatay from the French mandate of Syria in 1938,
Turkish dam building projects in South Eastern Turkey, and Syrian
protection for PKK militants. ... Turkey seemed to be re-balancing
away from the traditional Kemalist agenda towards a more independent
neo-Ottoman engagement with its neighbors."
Mr. Reynolds underlined: "Certainly, Turkey's importance to NATO has
declined since the collapse of the Soviet Union. During the Cold War,
it was critical as the southern flank of the NATO encirclement of
the Eastern Bloc. ... With the expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe,
Turkey's role has diminished. It is now just one of three NATO members
on the Black Sea. The other two, Bulgaria and Romania, host the US
Joint Task Force East program, which includes a permanent US military
presence and on-going joint training exercises. Turkey opposed both
this venture as well as a plan to expand Operation Active Endeavour
into the Black Sea. The AKP has also been at pains to point out that
Turkish participation in NATO operations in Iraq and Afghanistan does
not include combat troops. Added to all this, relations between Turkey
and Israel are currently at an all-time low. Turkey was the first
Muslim country to recognize the State of Israel, but under the AKP
regime events such as the 2009/9 Gaza war, the 2010 Gaza Flotilla raid,
and alleged Turkish involvement in the exposure of Israeli agents in
Iran in 2013, have significantly soured relations. Alongside this there
is greater Turkish openness to Russia - a significant geopolitical
opponent of the Euro-Atlanticist bloc. Turkey is a Dialogue Partner
of the Shanghai Co-operation Organization and has signed numerous
economic and visa-free travel agreements with Russia.
Turkey's major trading partner is now the EU, but at the same time that
the Turkish regime is seeking full EU membership it is also carving out
an increasingly independent role in regional and global affairs, with
a particular interest in the nations of the former Ottoman Empire."
But the Arab nations of former Ottoman Empire are no fools.
Interestingly, when a wave of public hangings in Lebanon and Syria
was initiated by Ottoman Turkey in 1910's, the very first Syrian
and Lebanese leaders were Muslim Sunni. Generation after generation,
many Sunni Muslim tribes and families in Lebanon and Syria remember
Turkish brand of 'brotherhood' and they're wary Turkey playing 'big
brother' under an Erdogan with Ottoman tendencies.
Besides the impending Turkish isolation, Ankara also seems to grapple
with Turkey's internal sectarian problems that dwarf those of the
entire Middle East region. While Turkey misrepresents its population
to be 97% Turkic, the reality is that out of a population of nearly
80 million, around 25-28 million are Kurds, 19 million Alevis
(Alawites?), 5 million Arabs, 3-5 million hidden Greeks, 2-3 million
hidden Armenians, about 3-4 million foreign refugees (Syria, Iraq,
Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistanis, Chechens, etc.) collectively accounting
for well over 60 million non-Turks. Even many of the citizens of
what is now called Turkey discover their non-Turkic ancestry on a
daily basis.
As for the Turkish state's current border, it could prove to be far
more porous than any of its neighbors, including Syria.
A stalemate in Syrian civil war can be detrimental to Turkey's
territorial integrity. So for now, the absence of a misguided U.S.
military operation against Arab Republic of Syria makes Turkish PM
Erdogan the biggest loser in Syria 'Chemical Attacks' Hoax.
http://www.armenianlife.com/2014/04/17/turkish-pm-erdogan-biggest-loser-in-syria-chemical-attacks-hoax/
From: Baghdasarian