70 Armenian fighters join Syrian Kurds in war on ISIS

July 2, 2015 By administrator

By ARA News, July 3, 2015

The Armenian fighter Barkhodan speaking to ARA News in Sere Kaniye, northeastern Syria

Sere Kaniye, Syria – Dozens of fighters from different nationalities have joined the ranks of the Kurdish forces in Syria and Iraq in order to combat militants of the Islamic State (IS/ISIS).

An Armenian fighter in the ranks of the Kurdish forces of the People’s Protection Units (YPG), nicknamed Barkhodan, came to Syria nearly two years ago and joint the fight against ISIS.

“I am 55 years old, I came to Syria along with 70 Armenian young men, and we joined the ranks of the YPG more than two years ago,” he told ARA News, pointing out that they have been deployed on various positions at battle fronts in accordance with their military expertise.

“We are fighting here in defense of the Armenian people from the risk of IS extremists, we do not differentiate between Arabs, Kurds, Christians and Muslims,” he said.

“The main reason for many foreign fighters to be here (northern Syria) is the necessity to eliminate the enemies of humanity (in reference to ISIS militants).”

“ISIS is killing women and children. What happened in Kobane several days ago when they killed hundreds of innocent people is the biggest motivation for me to fight those barbarians, despite my old age,” Barkhodan told ARA News.

“When we fight alongside the YPG forces, this actually raises the overall morale among Kurds in the war on terrorism,” he added.

In Syria, hundreds of foreign members of the YPG have formed what is known as “Lions of Rojava” (Lions of Syrian Kurdistan). They combat ISIS in several areas in Syria’s Kurdish region alongside Kurdish forces.

Recently, foreign fighters of YPG formed a battalion under the banner “World Freedom” in Sere Kaniye (Ras al-Ain), northeastern Syria, which includes dozens of fighters who were distributed at the anti-ISIS fighting fronts after having completed military training in YPG-held camps.

Turkish prosecutor says Turkish officials involved in supplying arms to radical Syrian Islamist groups,

June 18, 2015 By administrator

Two MİT trucks en route to Syria were intercepted by gendarmes on Jan. 19

Turkish officials, including intelligence agency personnel, have been involved in the supply of weapons and ammunition to radical Syrian Islamist groups, particularly Ahrar ash-Sham, according to the team of prosecutors who previously carried out investigations into terrorist activities, including the infamous intervention into the weapon-laden trucks headed for Syria in January 2014. Report ZAMAN

Prosecutor Özcan Şişman, who was one of the four prosecutors jailed last month for intercepting trucks carrying arms into Syria, in 2014, testified in his defense to the Tarsus 2nd High Criminal Court in May that he had, on several occasions, spotted Turkish officials facilitating the flow of jihadists into Syria. Şişman also stated that a string of bombings within Turkey and on the Syrian border, as well as the transfer of arms into territory held by radical Islamist groups, were among the activities undertaken by the Turkish personnel, according to a report by Arzu Yıldız for the online news portal grihat.com.tr.

In January 2014, Adana prosecutor Özcan Şişman went to Hatay, a neighboring province that sits on the border with Syria, after a truck that was suspected of carrying arms into Syria was stopped. Two weeks later, another prosecutor, Aziz Takçı, intercepted three trucks that were carrying arms and medical supplies to Syria. The trucks were later found to be owned by the Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MİT).

Then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan publicly criticized the prosecutors and urged the authorities to arrest those who were involved in stopping the trucks. Erdoğan, former President Abdullah Gül and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu described the trucks as a “state secret” and claimed that they were carrying baby formula and food to Syrian Turkmens.

Şişman said a crime committed by a state cannot be classified as a “state secret.” He argued: “It is a terror crime committed by officials.” He said only police and gendarmerie could carry weapons, not MİT.

Former Adana Chief Public Prosecutor Süleyman Bağrıyanık, former Adana Deputy Chief Public Prosecutor Ahmet Karaca, Adana Prosecutors Aziz Takçı and Özcan Şişman and former Adana provincial gendarmerie commander Col. Özkan Çokay are facing charges ranging from espionage to membership in a terrorist organization to attempt “to topple or incapacitate the Turkish government.”

Şişman had been operating in border areas with Syria and was involved in many investigations into terrorist activities that popped up as a result of the Syrian civil war. Şişman said in his testimony that he detected Turkish public officials aiding a number of criminals ferrying arms and jihadists into Syria.

Ahrar ash Sham hasn’t publicly declared its affinity with al-Qaeda, but US officials said a number of al-Qaeda operatives have influenced the radical group after joining them. It is not part of the Free Syrian Army and most Western nations consider it a radical jihadist group.

Şişman: I wanted to avoid repeat of Reyhanlı

Şişman said previous incidents and investigations convinced him that any failure to intercept such a large-scale arms transfer could result in the deaths of dozens of Turkish people, as it had in Reyhanlı in 2013.

He noted that two suspects who stood trial as part of an investigation into the twin bombings in Reyhanlı, which claimed the lives of 53 people confessed that a Turkish official called H.T. had pushed them to mastermind the attack. H.T. was also accused of facilitating the entry of terrorists who killed three people including two police officers, in Niğde, in March 2014.

Republican People’s Party (CHP) former deputy Ali Özgündüz wrote on his social media account on Thursday that he had given a parliamentary questionnaire to the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) regarding H.T., but received no reply.

In February 2013, the prosecutor said the investigation found that a MİT official purchased SIM cards for four suspects who orchestrated the car bombing attacks in Cilvegözü, a Turkish border town. At least 14 people were killed in the attack, including several Turkish nationals.

Yaşar Kavalcıoğlu: MİT personnel tried to coerce gendarmerie

Yaşar Kavalcıoğlu, the first prosecutor at the scene of the three trucks intercepted in Hatay’s Kırıkhan district, on Jan 1, 2014, said that there had been a squabble between the MİT agents accompanying the trucks and the gendarmerie forces sent to the scene by the prosecutors.

Kavalcıoğlu said in his defense statement, which he sent to the Supreme Council of Judges and Prosecutors (HSYK) after the four prosecutors involved with the case were detained and arrested in May, that by the time he had reached the scene of crime, the gendarmerie were in a near stand-off with the MİT agents.

The gendarmerie officers told Kavalcıoğlu that the MİT agents had tried to convince them to switch the trailer of the trucks with empty ones, and had threatened to fight after the gendarmerie replied negatively. Kavalcıoğlu then states that he phoned Özcan Şişman, and asked if he could come and take over the investigation as it was his jurisdiction.

Investigation file manipulated to frame prosecutors

Süleyman Bağrıyanık said in his defense statement to the court that evidence proving his innocence was intentionally not included by the HSYK chief inspector, adding that the investigation against him amount to a campaign to frame him.

He said that he was being accused of acting together with the Adana deputy chief public prosecutor and the prosecutors who intercepted the trucks despite any evidence, by noting he did not hold any phone conversations with the prosecutors who intercepted the trucks, except on one occasion when Şişman called him upon the order of Kenan İpek, then-undersecretary to the Justice Minister.

Bağrıyanık maintained that he was not given the chance to disprove the allegation that he was in contact with the prosecutors who intercepted the trucks, as his request from the chief inspector to include the Historical Traffic Search (HTS) records, which show all mobile phone usage within the range of a specific cell tower, featuring his phone conversations with his colleagues including prosecutors and the deputy chief public prosecutor, was not met.

Bağrıyanık said that İpek called him several times, ordering him to halt the search of the trucks and remove the prosecutor conducting the search.

Saying that he disobeyed the order of Undersecretary İpek, Bağrıyanık added that he would have acted in accordance with İpek’s order if he had sent a document to him showing that the trucks’ were indeed used as part of MİT duty. He also lashed out at İpek for giving instructions to a jurist although the law prohibits third parties to sway the judgments of jurists.

“What I was supposed to do? Should I have acted [in accordance with İpek’s instruction] by saying ‘Yes, sir’ and removing the prosecutor from the file. Since when have administrators been informing the jurists on what constitutes a crime? If the search was against the law, the procedure is already set out in the Code on Criminal Procedure (CMK). Judiciary determines what constitutes an unlawful act, the administrators do not have such an authority” said Bağrıyanık.

Prosecutor Takçı: Trucks were full to the brim with weapons

Aziz Takçı, one of the four prosecutors involved in an investigation of the trucks belonging to MİT, which were allegedly carrying weapons to radical groups in Syria, testified in his defense to the Tarsus 2nd High Criminal Court regarding the investigation of the truck that the trucks were filled to the brim with weapons.

Prosecutor Takçı was one of the four prosecutors jailed for intercepting trucks carrying arms into Syria. Describing the events that unfolded on Jan. 19, 2014, when trucks later found to belong to MİT were stopped in the Ceyhan district of Turkey’s Adana province en route to Syria, Takçı said: “When I went to the scene there were two trucks. A few stubbly bearded men, claiming to be MİT operatives, were shouting, swearing. As I had gone to the scene of the search, I had to look at what was there. [The trucks] were full to the brim with weapons… 155mm [howitzer] shells, anti-aircraft munitions; I also saw munitions of different types and sizes.”

Turkey has wanted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad removed from power ever since an uprising that started at the end of 2011 turned into a fully fledged civil war in the neighboring country. Assad is a member of the Nusayri (Alawite) sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, whose members are a minority in both Syria and Turkey. However, Turkey has been accused of arming radical elements within Syria such as the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) and Ahrar ash-Sham.

Ex-prosecutor Karaca: Interception of trucks carrying arms was legal

Former Adana Deputy Chief Public Prosecutor Ahmet Karaca said in his defense that everything was done according to legal procedure. He also denied the charge brought against him of revealing state secrets.

Karaca said that as the deputy chief public prosecutor he had no authority to interfere in any prosecutor’s work and vouched for the investigations pursued by four public prosecutors who worked under his authority.

He said his mandate under the law was to oversee prosecutors in his office, taking on administrative duties such as assigning cases, preparing duty rosters and managing the office. He said his role didn’t allow him to legally interfere in any investigation pursued by independent prosecutors.

Karaca said he did not even know what a report drafted by the government-controlled HSYK chief inspector said about him because he was not allowed to see the case file with the supposed criminal evidence. When he asked the chief inspector to share the documents with him so he could file his defense, Karaca said the inspector cynically told him that the documents would not be relevant to his defense.

According to the leaked video footage of the hearing, he asked the presiding judge: “How can I defend myself if I am not allowed to examine the evidence?”

Erdogan vows to punish journalist for publishing Syria trucks video

June 1, 2015 By administrator

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has vowed to punish the editor of a newspaper which published video footage it said showed the MIT state intelligence agency helping send weapons to Syria.

The Cumhuriyet newspaper published footage on its website which it said showed gendarmerie and police officers opening crates of what it described as weapons and ammunition on the back of three trucks belonging to MIT.

“The individual who has reported this as an exclusive story will pay a high price for this,” Erdogan said in a television interview with state broadcaster TRT late on Sunday, May 31.

“I will not let this go.”

Reuters said it reported on May 21 that witnesses and prosecutors have alleged that MIT helped deliver arms to parts of Syria under Islamist rebel control during late 2013 and early 2014, quoting a prosecutor and court testimony from gendarmerie officers.

Cumhuriyet said the video was from Jan 19, 2014 but did not say how it had obtained the footage. Erdogan has said the trucks stopped that day belonged to MIT and were carrying aid to Turkmens in Syria. He has said prosecutors had no authority to search MIT vehicles and were part of what he calls a “parallel state” run by his ally-turned-foe Fethullah Gulen, a U.S.-based Islamic cleric whom Erdogan says is bent on discrediting him and the government.

“These allegations against the national intelligence agency and this illegal operation is some kind of espionage activity. This paper is now involved in this espionage,” Erdogan said, adding that he had instructed his lawyer to file a lawsuit.

The state-run Anadolu news agency said on Friday that the Istanbul chief prosecutor’s office had launched an investigation into Cumhuriyet’s editor-in-chief Can Dundar under counter-terrorism laws. Reuters could not reach Dundar for comment, but he defended the newspaper’s coverage on his Twitter account.

“We are journalists, not civil servants. Our duty is not to hide the dirty secrets of the state but to hold those accountable on behalf of the people,” he said in a tweet on Monday.

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu also said at the weekend that the trucks were carrying aid for Turkmens but declined to comment on their content.

“It is nobody’s business what was inside the trucks. Yes there were serious clashes in Syria and we helped the Turkmens,” Davutoglu said on Sunday in a Haberturk television interview.

Reuters Exclusive: Turkish intelligence helped ship arms to Syrian Islamist rebel areas

May 21, 2015 By administrator

ADANA, Turkey | By Humeyra Pamuk and Nick Tattersall

A locally made shell is launched by rebel fighters towards forces loyal to Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad at the frontline in al-Breij district of Aleppo December 10, 2014. REUTERS/Sultan Kitaz

Turkey’s state intelligence agency helped deliver arms to parts of Syria under Islamist rebel control during late 2013 and early 2014, according to a prosecutor and court testimony from gendarmerie officers seen by Reuters.

The witness testimony contradicts Turkey’s denials that it sent arms to Syrian rebels and, by extension, contributed to the rise of Islamic State, now a major concern for the NATO member.

Syria and some of Turkey’s Western allies say Turkey, in its haste to see President Bashar al-Assad toppled, let fighters and arms over the border, some of whom went on to join the Islamic State militant group which has carved a self-declared caliphate out of parts of Syria and Iraq.

Ankara has denied arming Syria’s rebels or assisting hardline Islamists. Diplomats and Turkish officials say it has in recent months imposed tighter controls on its borders.

Testimony from gendarmerie officers in court documents reviewed by Reuters allege that rocket parts, ammunition and semi-finished mortar shells were carried in trucks accompanied by state intelligence agency (MIT) officials more than a year ago to parts of Syria under Islamist control.

Four trucks were searched in the southern province of Adana in raids by police and gendarmerie, one in November 2013 and the three others in January 2014, on the orders of prosecutors acting on tip-offs that they were carrying weapons, according to testimony from the prosecutors, who now themselves face trial.

While the first truck was seized, the three others were allowed to continue their journey after MIT officials accompanying the cargo threatened police and physically resisted the search, according to the testimony and prosecutor’s report.

President Tayyip Erdogan has said the three trucks stopped on Jan. 19 belonged to MIT and were carrying aid.

“Our investigation has shown that some state officials have helped these people deliver the shipments,” prosecutor Ozcan Sisman, who ordered the search of the first truck on Nov. 7 2013 after a tip-off that it was carrying weapons illegally, told Reuters in a interview on May 4 in Adana.

Both Sisman and Takci have since been detained on the orders of state prosecutors and face provisional charges, pending a full indictment, of carrying out an illegal search.

The request for Sisman’s arrest, issued by the Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors (HSYK) and also seen by Reuters, accuses him of revealing state secrets and tarnishing the government by portraying it as aiding terrorist groups.

Sisman and Takci deny the charges.

“It is not possible to explain this process, which has become a total massacre of the law,” Alp Deger Tanriverdi, a lawyer representing both Takci and Sisman, told Reuters.

“Something that is a crime cannot possibly be a state secret.”

More than 30 gendarmerie officers involved in the Jan. 1 attempted search and the events of Jan. 19 also face charges such as military espionage and attempting to overthrow the government, according to an April 2015 Istanbul court document.

An official in Erdogan’s office said Erdogan had made his position clear on the issue. Several government officials contacted by Reuters declined to comment further. MIT officials could not immediately be reached.

“I want to reiterate our official line here, which has been stated over and over again ever since this crisis started by our prime minister, president and foreign minister, that Turkey has never sent weapons to any group in Syria,” Erdogan’s spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said on Wednesday at an event in Washington.

Erdogan has said prosecutors had no authority to search MIT vehicles and were part of what he calls a “parallel state” run by his political enemies and bent on discrediting the government.

“Who were those who tried to stop MIT trucks in Adana while we were trying to send humanitarian aid to Turkmens?,” Erdogan said in a television interview last August.

“Parallel judiciary and parallel security … The prosecutor hops onto the truck and carries out a search. You can’t search an MIT truck, you have no authority.”

‘TARNISHING THE GOVERNMENT’

One of the truck drivers, Murat Kislakci, was quoted as saying the cargo he carried on Jan. 19 was loaded from a foreign plane at Ankara airport and that he had carried similar shipments before. Reuters was unable to contact Kislakci.

Witness testimony seen by Reuters from a gendarme involved in a Jan. 1, 2014 attempt to search another truck said MIT officials had talked about weapons shipments to Syrian rebels from depots on the border. Reuters was unable to confirm this.

At the time of the searches, the Syrian side of the border in Hatay province, which neighbors Adana, was controlled by hardline Islamist rebel group Ahrar al-Sham.

The Salafist group included commanders such as Abu Khaled al-Soury, also known as Abu Omair al-Shamy, who fought alongside al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden and was close to its current chief Ayman al-Zawahiri. Al-Soury was killed in by a suicide attack in Syrian city of Aleppo in February 2014.

A court ruling calling for the arrest of three people in connection with the truck stopped in November 2013 said it was loaded with metal pipes manufactured in the Turkish city of Konya which were identified as semi-finished parts of mortars.

The document also cites truck driver Lutfi Karakaya as saying he had twice carried the same shipment and delivered it to a field around 200 meters beyond a military outpost in Reyhanli, a stone’s throw from Syria.

The court order for Karakaya’s arrest, seen by Reuters, cited a police investigation which said that the weapons parts seized that day were destined for “a camp used by the al Qaeda terrorist organization on the Syrian border”.

Reuters was unable to interview Karakaya or to independently confirm the final intended destination of the cargo.

Sisman said it was a tip-off from the police that prompted him to order the thwarted search on Jan. 1, 2014.

“I did not want to prevent its passage if it belonged to MIT and carried aid but we had a tip off saying this truck was carrying weapons. We were obliged to investigate,” he said.

(Additional reporting by Ercan Gurses in Ankara; Editing by Nick Tattersall and Anna Willard)

No safe place left for Syrian refugees in Turkey’s southeast, wound 3

May 18, 2015 By administrator

A group of locals in Turkey’s southeastern province of Şanlıurfa have attacked Syrian refugees in their neighborhood on Sunday, injuring three of them; 10 assailants were consequently detained by the police.

According to Cihan news agency, the suspects organized the attack via social media several days before the incident under the cover of a call for a rally titled “We don’t want Syrians.” The planned rally could not be held after Şanlıurfa Governor İzzettin Küçük issued a statement last week banning such an event.

The police took strict security measures around Topçu Square, where the rally was scheduled to take place on Sunday. However, around 20 people who gathered to attend the event attacked a group of Syrians outside of a plaza.

The assailants injured one of the Syrians in the leg with a knife. Two other Syrians were beaten up by the same group. The three Syrians fled the scene and took shelter at local stores. The police arrived the neighborhood and an ambulance was called for the injured Syrians.

Syrian Parliament Speaker Calls for Genocide Recognition

April 22, 2015 By administrator

YEREVAN—On the sidelines of a global forum on crimes against humanity and genocide being held in Yerevan, Armenia’s President Serzh Sarkisian met with Syria’s Speaker of Parliament Mohammad Jihad al-Laham, who called for the recognition of the Armenian Genocide.

Sarkisian welcomed the dignitary to his country and thanked him for his participation in the forum, which, according to Sarkisian, once again speaks to the “sincere respect of the friendly Syrian people toward the Armenian people.” The President expressed his gratitude to the People’s Council of Syria, as the Syrian parliament is called, for its steps aimed at the recognition of the Armenian Genocide. The President praised the special session of the People’s Council of Syria held in March in connection with the Armenian Genocide and the influential speech delivered by Speaker al-Laham.

Al-Laham conveyed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s warm regards and best wishes to President Sarkisian and stressed that Syrians have a special attitude towards Armenia and the Armenian people. He noted that the participation of his delegation in the Yerevan forum bears witness to the fact that Syria recognizes the Armenian Genocide committed by the Ottoman Empire. Speaker al-Laham said that the global forum, titled “Against the Crime of Genocide,” is a good opportunity to mobilize the efforts of the international community and prevent the repetition of such crimes in the future.

President Sarkisian lamented the internal political situation prevailing in Syria for more than four years now and expressed the hope that the friendly country of Syria will grow stronger as a result of this hardship and will manage to ensure domestic peace and stability.

At the meeting, the parties also attached value to the strengthening of inter-parliamentary ties which lie at the core of relations between Armenia and Syria.

Syrian President finally recognizes the Armenian Genocide

April 6, 2015 By administrator

17:20, 29 Jan 2014
Siranush Ghazanchyan

Pres. Bashar al-Assad

In a lengthy interview last week with Agence France Presse (AFP) on the tragic situation in Syria, Pres. Bashar al-Assad made an unexpected reference to the massacres of 1.5 million Armenians. This is the first time that any Syrian head of state has acknowledged the Armenian mass murders and identified the perpetrator as Ottoman Turkey. Report armradio.am

During the interview, Pres. Assad compared the Armenian Genocide of 1915 to the brutal killings of civilians by foreign fighters nowadays in Syria: “The degree of savagery and inhumanity that the terrorists have reached reminds us of what happened in the Middle Ages in Europe over 500 years ago. In more recent modern times, it reminds us of the massacres perpetrated by the Ottomans against the Armenians when they killed a million and a half Armenians and half a million Orthodox Syriacs in Syria and in Turkish territory.”

Not surprisingly, two days later, Bashar Jaafari, Syria’s Ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, made a similar remark: “How about the Armenian Genocide where 1.5 million people were killed?”

The only other high ranking Syrian official who has acknowledged the Armenian Genocide was Abd al-Qader Qaddura, Speaker of the Syrian Parliament, when he inscribed a poignant statement in the Book of Remembrance of the Armenian Genocide Monument and Museum in Yerevan on July 16, 2001: “As we visit the Memorial and Museum of the Genocide that the Armenian nation suffered in 1915, we stand in full admiration and respect in front of those heroes that faced death with courage and heroism. Their children and grandchildren continued after them to immortalize their courage and struggle…. With great respect we bow our heads in memory of the martyrs of the Armenian nation — our friends — and hail their ability for resoluteness and triumph. We will work together to liberate every human being from aggression and oppression.”

While the Parliament Speaker’s 2001 statement was a candid and heartfelt message with no political overtones, the same cannot be said about Pres. Assad’s words on the Armenian Genocide as he clearly intended to lash back at the Turkish government’s hostile actions against the Syrian regime. It is well known that Turkey has played a major role in the concerted international effort to topple Pres. Assad, by dispatching heavy weapons and arranging the infiltration of foreign radical Islamist fighters into Syria.

Relations between Syria and Turkey were not always hostile. Before the start of the Syrian crisis in 2011, the two countries were such close political and economic allies that the Assad regime banned the sale of books on the Armenian Genocide, and did not permit foreign film crews to visit Der Zor, the killing fields of thousands of Armenians during the Genocide. Mindful of possible Turkish backlash, Pres. Assad’s staff cancelled my courtesy meeting with the President in 2009 after they discovered on the internet my countless critical articles on Turkey. Moreover, during the honeymoon period between the Syrian and Turkish governments, Pres. Assad advised the visiting Catholicos Aram I that Armenians should maintain good relations with Turkey and not dwell on the past!

In his recent interview with AFP, Pres. Assad also complained about the failure of Western leaders to comprehend developments in the Middle East: “They are always very late in realizing things, sometimes even after the situation has been overtaken by a new reality that is completely different.” Frankly, one could make the same criticism about Pres. Assad for realizing at his own detriment only too late the dishonesty and duplicity of Turkey’s leadership.

Regrettably, the Syrian President is not the only head of state who has failed to decipher the scheming mindset of Turkey’s rulers. Countless Middle Eastern, European, and American leaders have made the same mistake, trusting Turkey’s feigned friendship, only to be let down when the time came for Turkey to keep its end of the bargain.

In recent months, with the increasing dissatisfaction of the international community with Prime Minister Erdogan’s autocratic policies and belligerent statements, it has become crystal clear that no one knows the true face of Turkey better than Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks and Kurds, who have suffered countless brutalities, massacres and even genocide under despotic Turkish rule.

Despite Pres. Assad’s political motivations, Armenians should welcome his belated statement on the Armenian Genocide. After refraining from acknowledging the Genocide for all the wrong reasons for so long, at least now the Syrian President is on record telling the truth about past and present Turkish atrocities!

Syria’s beleaguered opposition-in-exile is about to collapse

March 14, 2015 By administrator

The internationally recognized opposition has been plagued by infighting, incompetency and accusations of corruption since its inception.

Editor’s note: The names of some people quoted in this article have been changed to protect their identities.

GAZIANTEP, Turkey — Four years after Syria’s revolution began, its political opposition-in-exile has little to show for it.

Half-heartedly propped up by foreign governments, the Turkey-based Interim Government is going broke, and on the brink of collapse.

Khaled, a senior opposition official, is tired and depressed. We meet at a Gaziantep restaurant, in one of its three shiny malls popular for out of office meetings. It’s just down the road from the government building, which faces frequent security alerts.

He speaks frankly, seemingly relieved to get his frustrations off his chest. In his mid-30s, he’s the antithesis of the old guard that has taken the reigns of the political opposition, and is sick of pretending.

“We’re fake. We’re a lie — an illusion. We’re not a real government,” he sighs.

“Ministers think that just because someone opens a door for them that they are real… but we have zero legitimacy. We do not represent the people and don’t provide enough services.”

The illusion is convincing — the Turkey-based government has around 500 employees in addition to its teams in Syria. It produces sleek reports, holds press conferences in fancy hotels and capacity-building workshops at seaside resorts.

In the months after the revolution took hold, defectors and prominent opposition figures formed an opposition-in-exile, one that would in theory run Syria in a transitional period after the eventual fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

But its technocratic ministers face vehement criticism for spending more time vying for power than running effective projects on the ground.

The budget runs dry

Frequent elections ensure the politicians are always on the look out for friends. More than one gathering of the National Coalition of Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces has ended in disaster as members accuse each other of representing either Saudi Arabia or Qatar, whose competition for control of the opposition has been an open secret since its inception.

The lengthy and altogether distracting disputes have caused more than one leader to fall from favor or resign in frustration. The Interim Government’s first prime minister, Ghassan Hitto, a professional IT executive living in Texas, lasted just a few months, as did Muaz al-Khatib the first president of the Coalition itself.

“It is on the shoulders of the coalition to approve this government and let us get down to business,” Hitto told me just two days before he was asked to resign as prime minister in July 2013. “It is completely unacceptable, and Syrians should not accept this status or situation of inaction.”

And while successes include big-scale infrastructure projects to repair and maintain water and electricity in Syria, they are vastly expensive and have failed to stir up much enthusiasm.

The little authority they had garnered by paying the salaries of teachers or doctors or some local administrators in Syria ran out the same time as the money.

Government employees say the budget simply ran dry at the end of last year after an annual $53 million stipend from Qatar was not renewed. The opposition has zero independent income — lucrative oil fields in Syria are controlled by the Islamic State and the idea of an already unpopular government-in-exile taxing the people is unthinkable.

But the lack of money is just the latest of the government’s problems. Established in 2013, it has been plagued by infighting, incompetency and accusations of corruption since its inception.

It is derided by many of the people it seeks to represent — among both the millions of refugees and the people still inside the sliver of opposition-held territory in northern Syria.

Each time an initiative is posted on the government’s Facebook pages to highlight achievements; detractors quickly attack it and vent their frustration. The latest post announced the supply of orthopedic equipment to Binesh Hospital, in a town in eastern Idlib province.

“May God not reward you. You dogs! I’m wondering how much you stole from our backs,” spit one commenter named Abu Ratib. He’s joined by an Abu Khaled Muhammad, who followed up bluntly: “It’s time for you to go fuck off. What the hell! You’re only good for fraud and theft.”

One forlorn contributor desperately tried to use the forum to get in touch with his government, “I wish you would reply to my comment, there is an area in rural Deraa and we’ve needed an electricity generator for nine months. What’s the solution?”

A revolution against the revolution

It’s not an easy reputation to defend, although the Syrian Coalition, the opposition’s executive branch, does its best.

“All of our reports say the government tries to do good things, but sometimes they make mistakes and mismanagement,” Vice President Dr. Hisham Marwah told GlobalPost. “There is no intention for corruption.”

But he can’t deny the mistakes have come thick and fast.

The government’s finance minister, for example, is on leave and can’t come into the office, after failing to be reelected to his post. He sends his staff orders from home and has no replacement.

And in September last year at least 15 children died after being given fatal doses of an incorrectly mixed measles vaccine through an ACU and Health Ministry immunization campaign, according to the World Health Organization.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=psuPrwMq4f8

The sense of depression is palpable. Stories swirl of young activists self-medicating with freely available alcohol and the marijuana that drifts across the border. Many have lost friends and family to the carnage, or are separated from them after fleeing the regime, or Al Qaeda, or the Islamic State. The list of groups that Syrians working with the official opposition must run from grows year by year.

There are some hopeful new arrivals in Gaziantep that see the opposition government as a chance to continue their revolution, to help finish what was started.

“I had three job offers with NGOs here when I came,” Ahmad, who came to Turkery four months ago, told GlobalPost. “But I chose to work for the Interim Government because I thought that’s how I could best serve my country and the revolution.”

Ahmad came to Turkey after covertly documenting Islamic State and regime abuses for an independent organization. He is a recent arrival compared to his colleagues.

“Now I do nothing, literally nothing and spend most of my day on Facebook because I don’t get given anything to do.

“We need a revolution against the revolution.”

No plan B

Hundreds of activists have left Syria and restarted their lives in Gaziantep, working on relatively lucrative contracts with International NGOs.

“I don’t blame them — but the activists left and now we need people inside Syria,” reasons Khaled, the senior opposition figure, saying he too would like to return.

The notion is admirable, though now inconceivable, with the safety of government officials from the people it supposedly represents far from guaranteed.

It’s also uncertain where new funding for the opposition government will come from. According to Western government officials, the international community does not have a Plan B. US and European governments have refused to fund the Interim Government with cold, hard cash, leaving Qatar as the only state to step forward. There is no news on when the next infusion might come. Syrian employees may do well to update their CVs.

“We are not 100 percent when the funding is coming and if it’s from our supporters or business people or the Friends Of Syria,” says Dr. Hisham, the Syrian Coalition vice President.

“I think we’re going to hear soon but they have to find a way to reform and restructure their system and the body of the government. Either way, a lot of employees will have to leave.”

Report globalpost.com

Syrian Army Plays Trick on ISIL near Deir Ezzor Airport

January 27, 2015 By administrator

TEHRAN (FNA)- Ten militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) terrorist group were killed in the operation carried out by Syrian army and national defense forces after infiltrating into their sites in the village of Jufrah, near the military airport of Deir Ezzur.

Moreover, the army has gained control over an area stretching for one kilometer from the Eastern side of Deir Ezzur military airport, in a move that aims at expanding the safety zone of the airport, Al-Manar TV reported Monday.

Pro-armed groups’ websites admitted that the army soldiers deceived ISIL gunmen in the perimeter of Deir Ezzur airport, and swept into one of their positions killing more than 14 terrorists, after playing a trick on them by wearing Afghan uniforms.

Syria was hit by a violent unrest since mid-March 2011, where the western media reports accuse countries, mainly the US, Turkey and Saudi Arabia of orchestrating the conflict in the country and providing terrorist groups with money, weapons and trained mercenaries.

On May 2011, Syrian army launched a wide-scale operation against armed groups and gunmen operating in the country, who started escaping the army blows and crossing the border into Lebanon.

Syrian refugees add multi billion $$ to Turkish economy, business boom as Syrians put down roots in Turkey

December 13, 2014 By administrator

Why should Turkey stop the war? Islamic state (ISIS) have added hundreds of billions of dollars into Turkish economy. thanks to Iraqi, Syrian refugees. Turkey have drain middle east.

Ahmet Davutoğlu dream of first stage of neo-ottoman establishing economic hegemony over middle east is working.

Comment by gagrulenet

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By Sibel Utku Bila for al monitor

MERSIN, Turkey — In a bustling office on a palm-lined street along the Mediterranean shore, Ahmet Ammar Restom is busy answering phones, rifling through papers and greeting clients. He looks like any another businessman, but in the eyes of the Turkish authorities he is a refugee — and he doesn’t like it.

“When I go to government offices to sort out problems, I’m treated as a refugee. But I’m a businessman,” the Aleppan merchant told Al-Monitor, proudly sharing the documentation for his latest shipment of cooking oil exports. “I don’t take any aid [from the Turkish state]. On the contrary, I am aiding the state — I pay taxes.”

Restom is among a growing number of Syrians who have started businesses in Turkey, many with little intention to return home one day. After registering 489 companies in 2013, Syrians set up 1,004 companies in the first 10 months of 2014, becoming the largest group of new foreign entrepreneurs in the country, according to Turkey’s Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges. In addition to the wealthier, larger-scale businessmen who register their companies, hundreds of Syrians have opened small shops and restaurants, often under the table.

These industrious newcomers certainly offer financial relief for Turkey, where the bill for providing for nearly 2 million refugees has swelled to $5 billion, according to Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu. Official statistics show that only about 221,500 Syrians remain in the 22 camps in the border regions. Scattered across the country, the rest struggle to earn their bread and often live in squalid conditions, and Syrian beggars are now a fixture in urban centers.

Under Turkish law, the Syrians are not technically refugees but “guests” under “temporary protection.” Yet, with Syria’s civil strife dragging on, Ankara has acknowledged that the “guests” are here to stay. The Syrians are unlikely to return home “for a long time to come,” Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said Nov. 25, calling for “permanent policies” to deal with the problem. Despite widespread public discontent, Ankara is currently drafting legal measures to grant Syrians work permits.

According to Mazhar Bagli, deputy chair of the ruling Justice and Development Party, at least 1 million Syrians are expected to stay in Turkey even after the war ends.

This prospect is clear in the Mediterranean city of Mersin, where at least 45,000 mostly well-off Syrians are slowly putting down roots. Shops with Arabic signs, luxury cars with Syrian plates and private schools for Syrian children are now common across the city.

“Even if the war ends, Syria will not recover for 25 years. Both Turkey and Syria are my motherlands now. … We want to have equal rights with the Turks. We want Turkish citizenship,” said Restom, voicing a common expectation among Syrians.

Mersin — some 300 kilometers (185 miles) from the Syrian border — has lured Syrians with favorable business and living conditions. The pretty coastal city, home to Turkey’s largest commercial port, is a gateway for trade with the Middle East and offers abundant accommodation, including summer vacation homes, many of which are now rented by Syrians. It has a sizeable population of ethnic Arabs who serve as a social link between the locals and the newcomers.

Citing sources in the banking industry, Ali Altinel of the Syria Trade Office, a consultancy in Mersin, estimates that some $10 billion of Syrian money has flowed into Turkey’s southern provinces in the past three years, and most of it is now invested in business.

About a fourth of the Syrian companies set up in Turkey this year are based in Mersin. After a sharp decline in bilateral trade due to the war, exports to Syria from Mersin alone shot up by 331% in the first seven months of this year, with the Syrians exporting mostly flour, cereals and cooking oil, according to the local trade chamber.

For some Syrian merchants, starting a business in Mersin meant little more than relocation. They maintain their long-established trade links with Middle Eastern countries while also exporting goods to their war-ravaged country.

One of them, Zakaria Darwish, said he has transferred 20% of his assets to Mersin and was working to move the rest. He has brought along his employees from Aleppo, has already married a daughter off to a Turk, put his younger children in a Syrian school in Mersin and plans to buy the home he currently rents.

“Our future is here. Life is better and people have more freedom here. The Syrians who fled to Turkey are the luckiest ones,” Darwish told Al-Monitor, stressing that difficulties stemming from the Turkish bureaucracy and Syrians’ ambiguous legal status have been his only problems.

In a neighborhood not far from Mersin’s long seaside promenade, a whole street is lined with Syrian establishments: two barber shops, several groceries, a restaurant, a cafe and two elegant buildings housing a private school and a community center. The groceries sell Syrian foods, including the traditional bread, supplied by a nearby Syrian bakery. Ads in Arabic advertise a wide range of products and services — from shisha charcoal to preparatory courses for Syrians who wish to sit for Turkish university entrance exams.

Syrian students, like 21-year-old Meral from Manbij, a town near Aleppo now under Islamic State (IS) control, are already enrolled in the local university. “I plan to stay in Turkey,” she said. “What would I do in Syria, with [President Bashar al-] Assad in Aleppo and IS in Manbij?”

Syrians have opened 10 schools in Mersin, said Ahmed al-Muhammad, an administrative officer for one of them. While most cater to the children of the well-to-do, his makeshift school — 11 tiny classrooms in a former warehouse — provides education to 800 students in the city’s outskirts, where impoverished Syrian families live.

The school, whose 30 teachers are themselves refugees, receives no aid from the Turkish state and barely survives with donations from a Syrian association in France, Muhammad told Al-Monitor. He added it recently received money from the Western-backed Syrian interim government, based in the Turkish border city of Gaziantep, to buy new textbooks printed in Turkey and purged of Baathist propaganda.

While Syrians are building new lives in Mersin, their Turkish neighbors have mixed feelings. Some have embraced the newcomers and are readily helping them. Others grumble about rising rents, unregistered trade and job competition.

Altinel, himself a businessman, complained of illegal Syrian workers, “unfair business competition,” price undercutting and fraud. He said, “They are getting in the way of our businesspeople and harming them. I’m rather pessimistic.”

In a survey released in November, Ankara’s Hacettepe University warned that Turkish acceptance of the refugees had reached its limits, and hostility might explode. The survey found that more than 70% of Turks see the Syrians as an economic burden and say they should remain confined to refugee camps. About 47% are opposed to work permits for Syrians and almost 50% are averse to having Syrian neighbors. The study concluded, “Turkish society has displayed a high level of social acceptance for the Syrians and tried to support them so far, but unless the process is properly managed, xenophobia is likely to spread fast, with some groups propagating hatred and engaging in attacks.”

Sibel Utku Bila is a freelance journalist based in Ankara who has covered Turkey for 15 years. She was a correspondent for Agence France-Presse (AFP) from 1999 to 2011, and articles she wrote during that period have been published in many newspapers around the world. She has worked also as an editor at the Hurriyet Daily News, Turkey’s oldest English-language newspaper.