He has condemned an attack on Idlib in north-west Syria believed to have been carried out by Russian planes, saying Syrian lands will not be part of “Russian imperialist goals.”

That’s right – the Prime Minister of Turkey – a country which has spent the past four years trying to get its favored ‘rebels’ into power in Syria – and which has sent its own troops into northern Iraq – is criticizing somebody else for having ’imperialist goals’!

Davutoglu’s statement is a classic example of what psychologists call ‘projection’ – accusing others of things that you yourself are guilty of.

Neocons, who ignore the hundreds of thousands of deaths they caused in Iraq following the illegal invasion of 2003, do it all the time when they label people they don’t like ‘war crime deniers’.

Or when they call people ‘conspiracy theorists’ – when it was they who peddled the biggest conspiracy theory of the 21st century – namely that Iraq had WMDs.

Now it seems the practice is all the rage in governing circles in Ankara too.

Imperialist goals are most certainly are being pursued in Syria, but not by Russia- which is only intervening in Syria with the permission of that country’s lawful and UN-recognised government.

While the dominant western narrative portrays the conflict as the fault of a Syrian ‘regime’ which tried to brutally suppress an ‘Arab spring’ uprising, US regime change plans for Syria go back to at least 2006, according to wikileaks.

The Arab Spring- as I argued here – was merely the smokescreen to go full steam ahead with already formulated plans for ‘regime change’ by Syria’s enemies who resented its independence and its friendship with Iran.

As the award-winning investigative journalist John Pilger put it, the ‘true crime’ of the Syrian Arab Republic was “not the oppressive nature of its government but its independence from American and Israeli power – just as Iran’s true crime is its independence, and Russia’s true crime is its independence … In an American-owned world, independence is intolerable.”

Independent Syria was targeted by the US and its allies, in the same way that Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya were targeted. The model used by imperalists in Syria most closely resembles the strategy deployed in Yugoslavia and Libya. Demonization of the ‘regime’ and its leader and support to ’rebels’ portrayed as ‘moderates’.Followed up by air strikes from NATO to help the western approved ‘rebels’ come to power.

But in Syria, stage three proved a problem. The British Parliament voted against air strikes on the Syrian government in 2013. And by 2015, it was clear – even to those who generally were in favor of the imperial strategy – that the ‘moderate rebels’ weren’t very ‘moderate’ at all.

Even the think-thank of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair now concedes that most of the ‘moderate’ rebels in Syria sympathize with ISIS.

If Russian policy towards Syria can be criticized it is that the intervention which we saw in September this year did not come earlier. But when it did come, it became a game changer – or even a game ender.

The ‘regime changers’ are now badly rattled.

Neil Clark is a journalist, writer, broadcaster and blogger. He has written for many newspapers and magazines in the UK and other countries including The Guardian, Morning Star, Daily and Sunday Express, Mail on Sunday, Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, New Statesman, The Spectator, The Week, and The American Conservative. He is a regular pundit on RT and has also appeared on BBC TV and radio, Sky News, Press TV and the Voice of Russia. He is the co-founder of the Campaign For Public Ownership @PublicOwnership. His award winning blog can be found at www.neilclark66.blogspot.com. He tweets on politics and world affairs @NeilClark66