Syria

firefinga

Well-known member
conspiracy theory regarding Syria: as shared via social media by german right wing politicians from the AfD ("Alternative für Deutschland"):

War in Syria: Isis (and Al Quaeda) products of US/Israeli-government/secret service to destabilize the Middle East - possibly topple Anti-Israeli errr i mean Anti "zionist" regimes/leaders - and in the process islamize Europe via refugees - made possible via Soros sponsored NGO's. Assad, Putin and Iran heroes against Western imperialism and defenders of international law.

Those guys are in the German parlament, and reaching majority in assorted Eastern Germany (former GDR) regions.
 
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thirdform

pass the sick bucket
What is worse is that the Turkish left is totally complicit in all these racist attacks on the Syrian and other immigrants. Ever hostile to proletarian internationalism, the main body of the Turkish left sees its best opportunity to seize power positions in an alliance with a moderately secular racist Kemalist regime, as opposed to the conservative racism of the AKP. Turkish left is completely incapable of envisioning an internationalist world without borders. In the last elections almost all major parties supported the openly anti-Arab mainstream opposition coalition. For instance, ODPs leader (Freedom and Solidarity Party), one of the biggest left-wing parties in Turkey agreed to ran in the Kemalist CHPs list in Istanbul municipal elections, TKP (the mainstream stalinist party) pulled out from the election in June (in support of the CHP candidate) and HDP (the Kurdish opposition party, which many socialist parties and groups support) openly supported the CHP candidate for Istanbul. For these nationalist left-wing groups and parties uniting under the banner of an anti-Arabic coalition is convenient, since they can't envision a secular and internationalist program. From the Turkish left's standpoint the choice is between islamism or secularism. Instead of a class struggle perspective this is the fake bourgeois duality they accept and force upon the working class.

Internationalists in Europe, the middle East and elsewhere should know that:
1) Turkey has become a vast concentration camp for immigrants from the middle East and Africa.
2) The EU's policies against immigrants are more vicious, sinister and successful than even that of the US. By turning huge countries in its periphery (not only Turkey but also Libya etc) into prisons, the EU indirectly and de facto reestablished slavery. EU capitalists are taking in as many immigrant laborers as they need to exploit for cheap and they are expelling the rest to be exploited or die in even worse conditions in its peripheral slave states like Turkey.
3) Internationalists can not turn a blind eye to the suffering of immigrant proletarians in these states, nor they can trust the local official left-wing groups and parties. These middle-class nationalist parties are openly racist and chauvinist and they are tailing behind the government or official bourgeois opposition parties.
4) To show class solidarity, the first practical step the European internationalists can take is to tell the workers of Europe the truth about the situation of immigrants in Turkey. The EU policies must be exposed and its covert support for Turkey must be stopped.

https://libcom.org/news/turkish-sta...en-masse-back-war-zones-syria-world-should-kn
 
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Leo

Well-known member
shameful, abandoning an ally who fought beside our troops. I'm sure trump having investments and properties in turkey didn't have anything to do with it.
 

firefinga

Well-known member
shameful, abandoning an ally who fought beside our troops. I'm sure trump having investments and properties in turkey didn't have anything to do with it.

Absolutely. and while we're at it: Erdogan marching in, apparent breach of international law, war-crimes just a matter of time. Mostly shrugs from the "International community".
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
Haven't sanctions been threatened? Maybe I have that wrong.

Hideous the way he's using refugees as a threat as well. I read a Tweet saying the best way to deal with that is bloody embrace them. Let them know that this xenophobia won't wash..... Except it does with large blocks of people but I think we spend too much time ceding space to racist shit.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I heard on the radio that Erdoğan has said, in so many words, "Don't fuck me off or I'll shunt 3m Syrian refugees into the EU."

What an absolute fucking piece of work that man is.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
I'm going to post the letter as I'm sure no cunt will click through and read it. It sounds like Erdogan is really weaponising the presence of Syrian refugees in true xenophobic fashion.

Dear Commissioner Hahn, High Representative Mogherini and High Commissioner Filippo Grandi,

We, the undersigned Syrian and international human rights organizations, are writing to ask you to urge the Turkish authorities not to deport Syrian refugees from Istanbul and other cities to Syria, where they face a real risk of detention, torture, and death.

On 20 August the Istanbul governor's office announced that Syrian refugees in Istanbul who are registered under the country's temporary protection policy in other provinces must return there by 30 October. Turkey's Interior Ministry has also said that unregistered Syrians found in Istanbul will be sent to other as yet unspecified provinces in Turkey. Since late 2017, Istanbul and nine other provinces have stopped registering newly arriving Syrian asylum seekers, forcing many to live in Turkey without a temporary protection permit.

In addition, in recent months, xenophobic sentiment towards Syrian refugees in Turkey has escalated , fueled in part by hostile rhetoric from politicians across the political spectrum who have promised voters to send refugees home.

Since mid-July, activists and human rights organizations have documented many cases in which the authorities have arrested and detained registered Syrian refugees outside their registered province. The arrests have included those traveling from other parts of Turkey to their registered provinces, as well as unregistered Syrians. The authorities have coerced Syrians into signing “voluntary return” documents before deporting them to Syria.

In July and August, 6,160 and 8,901 Syrians — both registered and unregistered — were deported to Syria from Turkey through the Bab al-Hawa border crossing, according to the Syrian immigration authorities' website. This is a significant increase compared to previous months and coincides with the July policy change. These figures may also include Syrians intercepted and deported shortly after they crossed into Turkey, a practice that has been going on for a number of years.

Reports from media and activists in touch with our organizations confirm that the Turkish police have beaten detainees, denied them medical care and, in some cases, sent them to Idlib and northern Aleppo, where more than 1,180 civilians have been killed since February 2019, according to the local monitoring organization, the Response Coordination Group.

By deporting refugees and asylum seekers to a war zone or to areas where there is a real risk of persecution, Turkish authorities are in violation of their obligations under international law, and specifically the prohibition on refoulement. The Syrians being sent back not only face being caught up in the offensive in Idlib governorate but are at risk of arrest and torture at the hands of the Syrian government or armed groups.

Syrians we have spoken to describe how afraid they are now in Turkey. They stay at home to avoid arrest, including once they have returned to the cities where they were registered.

In August, the EU announced a further € 127 million to boost its Emergency Social Safety Net program for refugees in Turkey. In total, the EU has pledged € 6 billion in refugee funding to Turkey, while the UNHCR continues to support Syrian refugees in the country.

However, neither the European Commission, EU member states, nor UNHCR have spoken publicly about these deportations, despite the clear risk that large numbers of Syrians in Turkey's cities now face. They should press the Turkish authorities to stop all forced return of Syrians, including an end to coercing Syrians into signing voluntary repatriation forms, and to give those already deported to Syria the option to return to Turkey.

Member states, the European Commission and UNHCR should also commit to increasing their presence in Turkey's removal centers to ensure that Syrians are not coerced into signing voluntary repatriation forms.

If needed, they should support Turkish authorities to register unregistered Syrians and ensure ongoing financial support to Turkey to better protect Syrian refugees.

We also urge EU member states to resettle significant numbers of Syrian refugees from Turkey.

Sincerely,

11.11.11
Adopt a Revolution
Cairo Institute for Human Rights
Dawlaty
Human Rights Watch
Irish Syria Solidarity Movement
PAX
PÊL- Civil Waves Bell -
URNAMMU
Syrian British Council
Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression
Syrians for Truth and Justice And Justice
Syrian Network for Human Rights
Syria Solidarity UK
The Syria Campaign
Women Now for Development
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
Well, that assumes "they" have some traction in that part of the world and aren't just ceding it all to Russia, Iran and Erdogan and retreating into glorious isolation. Doesn't seem to be a massive problem for anyone in power, having genocidal dictators out there rn.
 

Leo

Well-known member
Trump's bluff kicked off invasion

President Trump had been calling Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's bluff for more than 2 years, and some senior administration officials thought Erdoğan would never actually go through with his long-threatened Syria invasion, according to 6 sources with direct knowledge of the situation.

"I think everyone thought Erdoğan was bluffing," a source close to Trump told me today.

The big picture: Trump would tell Erdoğan that if he wanted to invade Syria he would have to own whatever mess ensued, according to these sources. Erdoğan would have to take care of ISIS and manage international condemnation, trouble from Capitol Hill, and the quagmire with the Kurds. And when Trump put it in such stark terms to Erdoğan, the Turkish leader would demur. Until last Sunday, that is, when he told Trump he was moving ahead with the invasion of northern Syria.

This time, Erdoğan called Trump's bluff, having waited for international forces to wipe out the ISIS caliphate.

Erdoğan's decision — which the White House cleared the way for in its Sunday night announcement, alienating and blindsiding key allies including Republican lawmakers and the Christian right — has plunged the Middle East and Trump's political standing in Washington into crisis.

Sources in Turkey have indicated that while Erdoğan was talking big, he thought Trump would restrain him, a U.S. official familiar with the details told Axios' Margaret Talev.

For example, Erdoğan did not expect — or want — a 30-km-deep (18-mile) buffer; that was assumed to be a negotiation aimed at getting something smaller.

Now Erdoğan may be in over his head and facing global condemnation and sanctions, but he got so far extended politically inside Turkey that he has had little choice but to go forward, the official said.

Behind the scenes: In phone calls and in-person meetings dating back to 2017, Trump has been effectively calling Erdoğan's bluff, according to sources who have been in the room with the two leaders and had access to their phone calls.

On one 2017 phone call, Erdoğan was complaining to Trump about the Kurdish threat on his border and told Trump he wanted to move in to take care of the Kurdish threat, per a source with direct knowledge of the call.

The source paraphrased their recollection of what Trump said on the call: "It was pretty blustery. Trump was like, 'I don't want to be there in the first place, but you know our guys are there. They don't take s--t. We're there. Maybe I don't want to be there, but if you do a border crossing and come into conflict with our guys, they are way better equipped and you don't want to do that.'" Trump's message, the source said, was "don't mess with the U.S. military."

But after conveying that threat, Trump signaled he wasn't going to keep his troops in Syria for long and was not going to be hanging around to protect the Kurds against the Turks, the source added. Trump said something to the effect of, "But you know I don't want to be there. We're there to defeat ISIS. My people tell me we are winning. ... So hang tight. But you don't want to get into a conflict with my guys," the source recalled.

Another former senior administration official, who was with Erdoğan and Trump when Erdoğan visited the White House in 2017, said Trump called the Turkish leader's bluff then, too.

"Trump basically said, 'Look, if you want it you own it, but don't come looking to me for help. You can take it, it's yours,'" the former official recalled of that 2017 conversation about Turkish intent to cross the border into Syria.

https://www.axios.com/trump-erdogan...uff-fc761d8f-e33b-473b-8ece-d0b8b3a51f26.html
 

Leo

Well-known member
and now, in an attempt to prevent their own slaughter, the Kurds have sided with syria (a sworn entry of the US and backed by Russia/Iran). fuckin' hell.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses

Jasmin Mujanović
@JasminMuj
Everything about Syria now feels like some perverse redux of the Spanish Civil War; a yrs-long bloodbath out of which only reactionary authoritarian regimes shall emerge emboldened bc the democratic world chose not get its priorities and values in order. Shameful, irresponsible.

The only thing I disagree with here is the scale of the bloodbath. There was simply not as much suffering in the Spanish Civil War. There wasn't systematic torture on an industrial scale, chemical weapons attacks, the bombing of infrastrcuture and hospitals afaik.

Why I've always thought this conflict was so important was that it's epochal - it asks what sort of world we want? What will set the tone for the 21st Century? Will it be a world where authoritarian regimes are free to murder or one whether the other states try to hold them to account? Clearly we've chosen the former.
 
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yyaldrin

in je ogen waait de wind
well, we've went from the yugoslav wars, to the iraq war, to the syrian civil war. i don't really see or notice a trend change but rather a continuation of horrible conflicts.
 

firefinga

Well-known member
and now, in an attempt to prevent their own slaughter, the Kurds have sided with syria (a sworn entry of the US and backed by Russia/Iran). fuckin' hell.

And first reports coming in that IS-captives fled, are regrouping and taking bloody revenge on the Kurds. The very same IS-folks Erdogan's family (his son IIRC) had dealings with regarding oil smuggeling.

So much Winning!!!
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
well, we've went from the yugoslav wars, to the iraq war, to the syrian civil war. i don't really see or notice a trend change but rather a continuation of horrible conflicts.

I wouldn't want to put these things in a hierarchy but to me the difference is the Iraq war at least was in the UK, it was popularly contested, widely debated and discussed and damaged Blair's reputation for good, and cost him a lot of seats in the election that followed.

AFAIK there wasn't the widespread use of tactics such as starvation sieges, and aerial bombardment of civilian populations and infrastructure. It wasn't about putting down a democratic people-led revolution either with two authoritarian regimes working in concert.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
I mean, if Corbyn does become PM (a likely possibility IMO) he owes his visibility and support in no small part to his opposition to the Iraq war.

Whoever is leading Russian in 17 years time (Putin in an oxygen mask probably) - it won't be 'cos of their anti-war credentials.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
I heard on the radio that Erdoğan has said, in so many words, "Don't fuck me off or I'll shunt 3m Syrian refugees into the EU."

What an absolute fucking piece of work that man is.

I wish erdogan would actually do this rather than the far more bastardly sinister thing he is doing that is using them as political commodities to fuel anti arab and anti kurdish sentiment. We'll see how many remainers then say we have an immigration problem on our hands. but you're right, he's a piece of shit and he won't.
 
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