Category talk:Turkey

Peace Association of Turkey Report
A report of a group of Turkish Journalists, Lawyers, Members of Parliament etc has been handed over to Pillay's UN Syria booth, for a change focusing on the crimes of the "opposition". They are seeking national and international criminal justice and focus on the situation in and role of Turkey. Much of this is known (yet often not directly sourced in the report), but it is quite useful for a handy collection of dates (where and when was the SNC founded, was the formative "Friends of Syria" meeting, etc). A good part of the report deals with "Lawsuits in Turkey and their outcome". The first criminal complaint, against the actions on Turkish soil of Riad Al-A'saad, Belhadj and to-whom-it-will-lead, was already filed in late 2011 - and stonewalled as expectable. Good luck with getting Pillay et al to move their comfortable behinds at the UN.


 * War Crimes Committed Against The People Of Syria (38 pages, 1,1 MB PDF)

--CE (talk) 14:24, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Events at the border
Another weapons transport got busted on the weekend, under direct supervision of MIT and covered-up by them after the fact with direct Erdogan protection. This is as bold as it gets. Turkey-involvement article might be worth considering, this is the best place to park it I could think of for the moment.


 * Turkish intelligence service trucks reveal secrets, Al Monitor, Jan 20, 2014


 * After explosives-detecting dogs gave appropriate signals, the prosecutor allowed steel containers in the trucks to be opened. In six metal crates, concealed among medical supplies, were mortar shells, rockets and various other ammunition. While the trucks were being moved to nearby Seyhan Town Gendarmerie Command for a detailed search, the trucks were blocked by MIT personnel from their Adana regional office. At that point, the governor, Adana Huseyin Avni Cos, the provincial police chief and the MIT regional director arrived at the scene accompanied by 200 policemen. Cos tried for one hour to persuade the prosecutor not to go ahead with the search but couldn’t. Then Cos wrote to the Ceyhan district governor and the Adana Provincial Gendarmerie Command, warning that the MIT was attached directly to the prime minister and searching MIT vehicles without the permission of the prime minister’s office would be an offense. The vehicles then were released under the governor’s instructions and continued on their way toward Syria.

--CE (talk) 11:28, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Defending their Territory - inside Syria
In recent weeks, Turkey has on the one hand agreed with Saudi Arabia and a growing body of nations that foreign fighters in Syria must leave. Both KSA and Turkey still fail to acknowledge their own roles getting them there, and Turkey insists especially that all foreigners helping the government must leave. Ankara also emphasized their strange line that Syria itself created the Al Qaeda threat they now face, and that the climate breeding them comes from both government authority and also the destruction of it Turkey has helped so much in.
 * Reuters, Feb 26: "Ahmet Davutoglu told Reuters a robust international strategy including "real intelligence cooperation" and withdrawal of all foreign fighters was needed to end the conflict and help millions of Syrians devastated by violence. The crisis was "a threat to all" ... because of the presence of these terrorist groups based on the power vacuum and because of the totalitarian and autocratic nature of the regime," he said. "they wanted to focus on the threat of terrorism, which in fact was created by them."

At the same time, Ankara threatened to send their own Turkish military into Syria for the first time openly - if need be - to protect a historical site they consider theirs, that's recently become threatened. Turkish-funneled Salafists in the Aleppo area have issued threats against the Turkish tomb of Suleyman Shah, grandfather of the founder of the Ottoman Empire. They hate "idolatrous" tombs, shrines, and the like, and were surely motivated by that, not by the chance to get the Turkish Army in there, and somehow probably on their side against the Syrian government. France deeded the tomb to Turkey while they were in charge there, in 1921. For anyone worried how long ago that was, the treaty was renewed in 1936. It's been guarded ever since by a force of Turkish troops, now numbering 25. Reuters reported "Turkey threatened on Friday to retaliate for any attack on the tomb ... The Turkish warning follows clashes this week between militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), an al Qaeda breakaway group, and rival rebel groups in the area of the tomb, which lies east of Aleppo near the Turkish border."
 * Presna Latina English
 * Reuters, March 14
 * Hurriyet Daily:
 * “As of now, there has been no [move on] our soldiers or our land there. But in the event of such a threat, we are ready to take all sorts of precautions,” Davutoğlu told reporters in the eastern province of Van on March 14. 
 * The tomb sits 25 kilometers from the Turkey-Syria border and remains under Turkish sovereignty under a 1921 treaty signed between Turkey and France, which was then the colonial power in Syria. That agreement was renewed after Syria gained independence in 1936.
 * Any attack against the tomb either from “the regime, from radical groups of from anybody” would be subjected to retaliation from Turkey, which would take all measures for the protection of that land, Davutoğlu said.
 * Furthermore we can guess, any retaliation, no matter who launched the attack, will be against the "regime." --Caustic Logic (talk) 09:13, 17 March 2014 (UTC)