A stance with our Turkish friends

In the news, Ahmed Davutoglu presented to the recently concluded NATO summit his country's fears that the Syrian crisis will escalate even further. Davutoglu especially focussed on relations between the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the Syrian regime. We know that Turkey has other fears that are more important, such as its Kurdish insurgency, the regional role of Ankara, and its interests in Syria… Needless to say, we understand these interests and we are aware of the importance and critical importance of these fears. However, Turkey cannot claim to be “innocent” in its dealings with Syria, nor play the role of the "victim"… as the Turkish-Syrian border areas have become save havens for all “smugglers”, “strugglers”, “militants”, “informers”, “intelligence elements”… and recently Israeli “medical support” which Knesset member and Israeli deputy minister Ayoub Kara has revealed. From them, weapons are smuggled and militants head to the inner reaches of Syrian lands, and all who seek “a warrior’s rest” or look for better training resort to them under the nose of the Turkish government. When the Syrian-Turkish crisis broke out in 1998 we stood by the side of our Turkish friends, and demanded the Syrian regime in all our articles and television channels, and Jordanian TV as well, to disengage from the party, which prevented us from entering Syria for years, until we were honoured by a visit in the company of His Majesty King Abdullah II in his first visit to Syria after taking  power. We were soon barred again from entering it and for many years. We responded at that time to an invitation from the Turkish Foreign Minister, the late Ismail Cem, and it was my first visit to Turkey, where we had the opportunity to meet a large number of Turkish party officials, MPs, experts and specialists in different fields. We were happy with the renewal of relations between the two sides, and found in it a way to restore Turkish-Arab relations (not only Turkish-Syrian), until a dispute broke out between the two countries on the wake of the Syrian crisis. We followed with interest and understanding Turkey's advice to President Bashar al-Assad at the beginning of the crisis, and its keenness to continue the use of soft diplomacy in dealing with the Syrian crisis, until the Turkish position changed and Ankara went further than it should go in its reactions to the regime’s ignorance of its advice and its denial of Syria's reality. The change in Syria is required and desirable; it even tops the list of priorities of the Syrian people afflicted by its leadership and “some of its opposition”, as well as our priorities. But we do not talk here about the “change at any cost”, We seek to change the regime, not change the maps of Syria. We seek a free, democratic, pluralistic future for Syria, not an obscure Emirate that reproduces the “Kingdom of Anbar” or the “Emirate of the Taliban”. We want Syria to remain one of the steadfast fortresses against the Zionist project creeping over Palestine and the entire region. We do not want it to be a gate to re-produce Camp David. What Ankara does on the ground, and what its discourse reveals, make us unsure whether we and Turkey need have the same target… Tell me who your allies are, I tell you who you are. The allies of Ankara in the Syrian crisis are the most totalitarian, arbitrary and unilateral regimes in the Arab world. On the ground Turkey allows all the powers of extremism and fundamentalism to wreak havoc in Syria from its land and through its border. It makes efforts to include Syria in its NATO strategy, and our experience with NATO does not lead us to be optimistic about what may come up "in the interest of Syria", its people and the future democratic project there. The Turkish denial of all this “involvement” is no longer believable and is no longer an act that can be taken seriously. Is it enough that Turkey casts the blame on the Assad’s regime? What about the role of Ankara? Do its policies serve the future of Syria and its people, the future of freedom and democracy? Does Ankara serve its future interests, as today it uses every ways to justify its desire of the departure or deportation of al-Assad? If the situation remains like this, the Assad regime will end (it will end in any case), but the new Syria will not be a copy of the Turkish model of the past that we loved and admired. The new Syria will be like the United Talibanian Emirates, or the Ununited, and Ankara and (all of us) will have to deal with such a challenge. It will also have to deal with a Kurdish spring that started early in northern Iraq and will not stop in the south-east of Syria.