In Turkey, a Late Crackdown on Islamist Fighters

Anthony Faiola

Souad Mekhennet

REYHANLI, Turkey - Before their blitz into Iraq earned them the title of the Middle East’s most feared insurgency, the jihadists of the Islamic State treated this Turkish town near the Syrian border as their own personal shopping mall.

And eager to aid any and all enemies of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Turkey rolled out the red carpet.

In dusty market stalls, among the baklava shops and kebab stands, locals talk of Islamist fighters openly stocking up on uniforms and the latest Samsung smartphones. Wounded jihadists from the Islamic State and the al-Nusra Front — an al-Qaeda offshoot also fighting the Syrian government — were treated at Turkish hospitals. Most important, the Turks winked as Reyhanli and other Turkish towns became way stations for moving foreign fighters and arms across the border.

Syrian government forces retake Kesab

Government forces flushed opposition fighters from their last strongholds in northwestern Syria near the Turkish frontier Sunday, seizing the Armenian town of Kasab and restoring government control over a nearby border crossing, activists and state media said.

The developments came as regime airstrikes pounded bases in eastern Syria belonging to the Al-Qaeda splinter group ISIS in coordination with the Baghdad government, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The military’s advances fully reversed the gains rebels had made during their three-month campaign in Latakia province, the rugged coastal region that is the ancestral heartland of President Bashar Assad.

The counteroffensive’s success is the latest blow to the rebels, who have suffered a string of recent setbacks.

#SaveKessab, #Save Aleppo, and Kim Kardashian: Syria’s Rashomon Effect

Elyse Semerdjian



A historic Christian Armenian town situated just a mile from the Turkish border in northwest Syria, Kessab is now among the war’s many casualties. On the morning of 21 March, the town was seized by opposition fighters from three Islamic militant groups: Jabhat al-Nusra, Sham al-Islam, and Ansar al-Sham. For Armenians around the world, the event conjured memories of past traumas as one of two remaining Armenian areas that survived the Armenian Genocide of 1915 was depopulated. The last remaining Armenian village in Turkey, Vakıflı, located across the border, is now a safe haven for some of Kessab’s former residents. Three weeks after the capture of Kessab, the event continues to take on a life of its own as various factions in the conflict seek to instrumentalize the tragedy to construct their own versions of reality, a phenomenon that could be called Syria’s Rashomon effect.

US, Turkey Reject Hersh Article on Sarin Gas Attack in Syria

The White House and the Turkish government have both dismissed a report suggesting that the Turkish government was behind a sarin gas attack in Syria last summer in cooperation with the al-Qaeda-affiliated organization al-Nusra Front.

American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, a regular contributor to The New Yorker magazine on military and intelligence issues, reported the controversial story on Sunday. The story appeared in the British literary publication “The London Review of Books” with the title of “The red line and the rat line.”

Was Turkey Behind Syrian Sarin Attack?

Robert Parry

 

Last August, the Obama administration lurched to the brink of invading Syria after blaming a Sarin gas attack outside Damascus on President Bashar al-Assad’s government, but new evidence – reported by investigative journalist Seymour M. Hersh – implicates Turkish intelligence and extremist Syrian rebels instead.

Syria Forces in Heavy Counterattack on Rebels in Latakia

Syrian government forces intensified their shelling Wednesday, March 26, 2014 of positions seized by rebels in the coastal province of Latakia, focusing on the Kessab border crossing into Turkey, an army officer said.

The province is the historic heartland of President Bashar al-Assad's clan and his Alawite sect of Shiite Islam, and territory the regime will not easily give up.

Bashar al-Assad Did Not Recognize the Armenian Genocide, Period

 Vartan Matiossian

As the readers of this blog know, Syrian President Bashar-al Assad has gone on record comparing the Armenian genocide to the brutal killing of civilians by foreign fighters in Syria during an interview with Agence France Press (AFP): "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." 

Enduring Myths of Sectarianism in Syria

Elyse Semerdjian

Over the last six months, analysts have shifted from describing the Syrian uprising-cum-civil war as a democratic uprising to highlighting its increasing sectarian dimensions. For those watching closely, sectarian undertones were evident early on. Most distinct were the regime’s attacks against the Sunni neighborhood of Baba Amr during the “Siege of Homs” in February 2012. After Syrian forces leveled the neighborhood, armed militants targeted Homs’s Christian population, which numbered around 800,000. Subsequently, 90 percent of Homs’s Christian population was erased.1 As the uprising increasingly militarized, the politics of revenge became business as usual.

Assad Compares Events in Syria with the Armenian Genocide

In an interview with Agence France-Presse, published on January 21, 2014, President of Syria Bashar Al-Assad touched upon the Armenian Genocide.

Turkey: Free Passage to al-Qaeda and Internal Unrest

On September 16, 2012, in letters to the U.N. Security Council and Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, Syria’s Foreign Ministry said Turkey allowed “thousands of al-Qaida, Takfiri and Wahhabi terrorists” access to the country in order to “kill innocent Syrians, blow up their properties and spread chaos and destruction,” reported Associated Press.