Merve Sebnem Oruc – in her latest article in Daily Sabah – blames Assad’s survival on the ignorance of the US-led coalition countries and Iran, Russia, Hezbollah and Iraq, arguing that his survival paved the way for ISIS barbarity.
The writer explains that despite all the internal threats Turkey faced, it still has “not dropped its humanitarian policy on Syria” which has strongly affected its relations with other countries, pushing Turkey into a position that the president’s spokesman referred to as “precious loneliness.”
However, the writer argues that in fact, “Turkey was not losing friends, but the US was decreasing the number of its friends,” explaining that Turkey’s ties with Saudi Arabia and Iran are ameliorating.
The writer then mentions the separatist Syrian PKK affiliate Democratic Union Party (PYD) which gained the support of the US and the EU despite warnings from Ankara, giving the PKK the power it needed to reignite a conflict within Turkey.
She then touches upon the issue of whether Ankara is changing its Syria policy, arguing that it actually has a couple of times in the last five years; Ankara first asked Assad to make reforms, when he never stopped killing his own people, adding that the Assad regime became the primary threat to Turkey in 2012-13, then ISIS in 2014 and then the PKK in 2015-16.
The writer accuses the US of putting “these three carrots one after the other in front of Turkey and locking it in a labyrinth,” explaining that “Ankara is now being forced to choose one of these three tools of blackmail.”
So which one will Ankara choose as a priority? The writer states: “We will see.”
