Is Turkey Implementing The Brookings Plan?

April 9, 2012

The next steps the "west" will take to destruct Syria are now visible. They seem to follow this Brookings Institute paper: Saving Syria: Assessing Options for Regime Change (pdf):

An alternative [to UN Security Council action] is for diplomatic efforts to focus first on how to end the violence and how to gain humanitarian access, as is being done under Annan’s leadership. This may lead to the creation of safe-havens and humanitarian corridors, which would have to be backed by limited military power. This would, of course, fall short of U.S. goals for Syria and could preserve Asad in power. From that starting point, however, it is possible that a broad coalition with the appropriate international mandate could add further coercive action to its efforts.

The Gülen movement financed daily Today Zaman is loyal to and sometimes a mouthpiece of Turkish prime minister Erdogan's government. It just published a piece describing the implementation of this plan. As we expected the truce is declared irrelevant even before it is supposed to happen: Turkey to tighten grip on Syria as Annan plan fails to deliver truce:

With just hours left into what seems to be already collapsed UN brokered ceasefire deadline on April 10, the last minute diplomatic rush to avert more bloodshed in a 13-month uprising against President Bashar al-Assad has gained momentum. Turkey is putting the squeeze on its southern neighbor with strong indications that Ankara is finalizing plans to set up a humanitarian corridor and possibly a buffer zone inside Syria in order to contain the burgeoning refugee crisis and border skirmishes.
…
A series of security agreements, including 1998 Adana Agreement, Turkey has signed with Syria over the course of the last decade give Turkey the right to intervene in Syria if the security situation in the country becomes threatening to the national security of Turkey. Turkey may even ask NATO to invoke Article 5 of the NATO Charter, which says that an attack on any member shall be considered an attack on all.
…
Since the Assad regime allows the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and its affiliates to launch attacks on Turkish soil and harbors some 1500 to 2000 hard-core PKK militants in areas close to the Turkish border, Turkey can very well utilize the NATO security provisions as a last resort.
…
In the meantime, the tension at Turkey’s border with Syria got tense after Syrian forces fired shots across the border on Monday, wounding 19 and killing two Syrian refugees according to reports from the Kilis province near the border.

The supposedly legal justification through the Adana agreement is bogus. It certainly does not allow for an invasion of Syria. Additionally NATO has never seen the Turkish fight against the Kurds as an exterior attack but rather as an internal Turkish problem.

The Zaman account of the shots fired at the border lacks a rather important detail:

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the fighting along the Turkish border began before dawn Monday when rebel fighters attacked Syrian soldiers manning a checkpoint near the Turkish border, killing six soldiers.

Turkey is openly hosting and supporting armed rebels that attack the Syrian state. If someone has justifiable reason to invade the other country it is Syria.

If the Turkish government is really implementing the Brookings plan of "safe-havens" and "humanitarian corridors" as a starting point for further coercion we can expect the start of a wider war.

Erdogan is currently on a visit to China. Let us hope that the Chinese will make clear to him that any such plan would be a serious blunder.

Posted by b on April 9, 2012 at 15:26 UTC | Permalink

Comments

Of course, arming the insurgency is insane. Stability is the key, and the model for instability is Iraq. So, it is preferable that the Alawites hang on and humbly manage a transition to a more free and open society. Not going to happen, unfortunately.
But not for b! oh no. For b it’s all about the defense of baath totalitarianism as a bulwark against “Empire.”

Posted by: slothrop | Apr 9 2012 16:23 utc | 1

The supposedly legal justification through the Adana agreement is bogus. It certainly does not allow for an invasion of Syria.
That sounds about right to me.
It’s easy to forget that neither Turkey nor Syria would be stupid enough to forget that Western colonial powers have a long record of successfully driving wedges between friends with the aim of getting them to fight each other.
Turkey would be acutely aware that it’s a second-class (non-Christian) citizen in NATO. I won’t be even mildly surprised if Turkey’s patience with NATO’s right-wing cranks expires without warning in the near future.

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Apr 9 2012 17:02 utc | 2

I think it is highly unlikely that Turkey will actually intervene militarily, for humanitarian or another other reasons. The danger of internal destablisation within Turkey is too great.
The Kurds, who are mainly sitting on the fence, could go the wrong way. Or any one of the other ethno-religious groups shared between the two countries.
Me, I think the Turks will just have to take it, if they don’t want trouble at home.

Posted by: alexno | Apr 9 2012 17:08 utc | 3

There’s a deafening silence in the Western media about Russia’s presence and role in Syria. Does anyone think it’s accidental?
Reports in Oz say Assad has deployed jet fighters against the ‘rebels.’ If that’s true it could be a sign that Russia is on board with helping Assad to correct his previous “mistakes”.

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Apr 9 2012 17:19 utc | 4

Reports in Oz say Assad has deployed jet fighters against the ‘rebels.’
So far there has been one video from Aleppo showing jet fighters. (I closely follow what the foreign paid rebels put out) Those were three jets without weapon load flying in formation in what looked as a show event. Using fighter planes in such a conflict is mostly useless.

Posted by: b | Apr 9 2012 17:41 utc | 5

Has Grass written a gongorist poem about this as well? Maybe he can do one a week like Ann Landers or a rotation of former Waffen SS members could provide a weekly poetic recitation about the evils of juden and their favorite goyim the americans.

Posted by: Sultanist | Apr 9 2012 17:43 utc | 6

It’s amusing that Saudi Arabia’s role as a US ally in the Syria pantomime helps add weight to the theory that 9/11 was an inside job by Bush Administration insiders. A lot of commentators were surprised that Bush’s reaction to 19 Saudis flying commuter jets into the WTC was to bomb Afghanistan and Iraq instead of Saudi Arabia.
But now, maybe not so surprising.

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Apr 9 2012 17:48 utc | 7

@1 – I believe you don’t have a proper understanding of either “totalitarianism” or “empire”. In totalitarian power structure, the one-ideology/one-party national system is a tool to achieve the goal of agressive and expansionist conduct toward external adversaries. It is (and I should probably say ‘was’, since the term has become more and more obsolete) this latter aspect which was the reason for the negative coining of the term by the likes of Arendt, Castoriadis, Lefort etc…Empire is a generic term used for any political structure that aims to expand (violently or peacefully doesn’t matter) its dominance outside its boundaries and towards other political entities. USA today is clearly an empire and Syria by no means a totalitarian regime.

Posted by: AH | Apr 9 2012 17:51 utc | 8

(1)Those were three jets without weapon load flying in formation in what looked as a show event. (2)Using fighter planes in such a conflict is mostly useless.
(1) The ones in the clip I saw certainly weren’t bristling with missiles and bombs. And I did add the obligatory ‘if’.
(2) Not so sure about that. Jet fighters would seem the ideal ‘rapid response’ reaction to tip-offs about arms shipments transiting open ground between Syria’s borders and a city or trouble spot.

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Apr 9 2012 18:16 utc | 9

Hoarsewhisperer @9 is citing/responding to two tweets I made after a request of my opinion on fighter jets used in Syria.
So far there have been used none. The videos of helos allegedly firing on rebels in Syria are also dubious. They do not show any targets. Could have been training or old video material.

Posted by: b | Apr 9 2012 18:41 utc | 10

I just got home, but heard on NPR (National Pentagon Radio version today) that Assad just, out of the blue, began shooting at protesting Syrians in a refugee camp inside Turkey. Really! Just, no reason.
Also, according to the same NPR news summary, Syria had shot and killed a journalist in Lebanon, so the headline had been Syria spread violence into two surrounding countries.
Do they really believe such things?

Posted by: jawbone | Apr 9 2012 19:20 utc | 11

The real story is of the totalitarian lock step of the western media- b is on the money there, and slothrop, as ever, dead wrong. Despite the fact that there is enormous war weariness in the US, UK and the other NATO bulwarks, it is almost impossible to read critiques, of what is clearly a cynical adventure plotted by amoral, infatuated and idiotic renegades, in the media.
Just as in 2003 on Iraq and 2001, when the war against Afghanistan began, the government line is given overwhelming exposure while the obvious and broadly held critiques (“how can we afford it, if we can’t afford homes and schools?” ” it will cause heavy civilian casualties and lead to the installation of a puppet dictator”) are verboten in respectable circles.
It is here that the totalitarian threat lies, as secret courts, detentions without trial by the tens of thousands, torture, massive data mining and electronic surveillance, open assassinations of ‘suspects’ and all the marks of precisely the sort of regimes that the fascists, whom Jabotinsky and Netanyahu, so admired could only dream of, plus unending undeclared and unjustifiable war, become the norms in the “west”.
From Asad we have nothing to fear, unless he is subcontracted by the White House again. We had nothing to fear from Ghadaffi either: “we” will sell him no more enemies to torture, no more women and children or Ayatollahs to disappear for “us”.
What we ought to fear, as Gunter Grass pointed out, is a decline into war, very likely to become nuclear, inspired by a fascist death cult, far more dangerous than the Waffen SS was in 1944, centred in Israel and presided over by war criminals of the most ruthless and unbridled nature. I imagine that Grass has the sense to be lamenting the assistance he gave, during the Cold War, to disposing of the great weight in international affairs which not only dealt with the Waffen SS but maintained a balance of power which kept Washington’s fantasists in a state of relative sobriety.
Once again the hopes of the peacefully minded and the sensible grandparents of the planet, rest on China and Russia acting like grown-ups. How the “west” from Washington to Riyadh, from Stockholm to Tel Aviv,warmongers convoyed by liars, will proceed, we know only too well.

Posted by: bevin | Apr 9 2012 19:28 utc | 12

All that we hear is based on Opposition claims, frequently rebutted, as above.
On the thread, is that going to convince the Turks to intervene? I don’t see it. They are not fools. It would be a risky intervention for the Turks. It is not the interest of the Turkish military to put themselves in danger, simply for the interests of the US.
That said, there are also economic questions. The reaction of the Arabs of Hatay, formerly part of Syria, has been quietened by the feeling that they are better off economically in Turkey than in Syria. The Kurds don’t necessarily feel the same.
All could change tomorrow. That’s why the Turks don’t intervene. If they could assure themselves that there is no danger, then they might intervene. But that would be difficult to prove to themselves.

Posted by: alexno | Apr 9 2012 20:01 utc | 13

re slothrop. Normally I don’t reply to trolls; it is not worth it.
I am convinced that the new slothrop is not the same as the old. It was not denied when I said it before. The new one is much more abusive of b.
I thought that he was simply the new hasbarist, allocated by the Israel Foreign Ministry to bug b and the rest of us. By the way, congratulations to b, that he is now so widely read that he merits a permanent hasbarist troll.
I doubted for a while, as slothrop is capable of being abusive on any subject. He could have been any sort of troll, but in the end, I’ve decided he must be a hasbarist troll. Because who else would be so persistent?

Posted by: alexno | Apr 9 2012 20:29 utc | 14

Hoarsewhisperer @9 is citing/responding to two tweets I made after a request of my opinion on fighter jets used in Syria.
No I wasn’t.
I was responding to your comment @ 5 which was a response to an earlier comment by me.
In (1) I agreed with your observation.
In (2) I expressed an opinion about a situation in which jet fighters could be useful. That opinion in no way undermines your opinion that “fighter planes in such a conflict is mostly useless” assuming ‘such a conflict’ means urban warfare (street-by-street clearing ops).

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Apr 9 2012 21:04 utc | 15

re the usefulness of jet fighters. They don’t have to be armed necessarily. They’re pretty scary just flying overhead.

Posted by: yes_but | Apr 9 2012 22:22 utc | 16

congratulations to b, that he is now so widely read that he merits a permanent hasbarist troll.
i think sloth has been here from the beginning, so b merited a permanent hasbrat presence from day one.
how to gain humanitarian access
wasn’t that clinton’s recent request, and wasn’t it already turned down? i think i read that here last week. humanitarian corridor my ass. that’s code for cia/usaid.

Posted by: annie | Apr 9 2012 22:57 utc | 17

turkey won’t initiate war, but they sure might arm Sunni factions. I can imagine that even if all of Turkey isn’t in support of this, that a faction might be. Too often conspiracy theorists imagine a whole institution being corrupt, when a faction might be far more effective, and tight lipped.

Posted by: scottindallas | Apr 10 2012 2:34 utc | 18

Turkey’s Felicity Party Leader Mustafa Kamalak said on Sunday night that the West made the Ottoman Empire enter the First World War and then disintegrated it in order to establish Israel.
Kamalak noted that the West now intends to coerce Turkey into another war to form a greater Israel.

At least one Turkish politician has awakened!

Posted by: hans | Apr 10 2012 11:04 utc | 19

hans @ 19
That is probably the core of recent events in the middle east. At least a major part of the picture, and denying there are forces utilizing “the arab spring” for own interests is naive at best – if not a cynical lie. Some immediately want to dismiss such claims as crazy conspiracy theories, but that is too simple. If not for western meddling, the arab spring would likely have stopped in Tunisia.

Posted by: Alexander | Apr 10 2012 11:39 utc | 20

the situation’s so hopelessly snarled up with conflicting motives and ethnic groups…
i’m wondering if turkey isnt doing its own version of “operation enduring turmoil” in syria to keep pipelines from being built through syria from the kurds’ oil patch in northern iraq… currently, that oil goes through turkey, maybe half a milion barrels a day, and it periodically gets blown up, presumably by kurds who may or may not be supported by israeli america.
it’s mess… that’s about all you can say for sure.
(click my handle below for map)

Posted by: retreatingbladestall | Apr 10 2012 11:58 utc | 21

i forgot about the wall street journal’s paywall…
here’s the google search of news about the pipeline being blown up in turkey…

Posted by: retreatingbladestall | Apr 10 2012 12:06 utc | 22

we should remember exxon’s attempts to make deals with the kurds…
israel supports kurds, AEI ally exxon makes oil deals with the kurds despite objections from the iraqi government, the neocons seem determined to overthrow assad.
maybe turkey suspects they’ll be cut out of the pipeline pattern once a puppet regime is installed in syria…
the turks’ solution: operation enduring turmoil, syrian version.
it’s at least a possibility we chould keep in mind… given the thousands of possibilities, though, it’s probably wrong.

Posted by: retreatingbladestall | Apr 10 2012 12:34 utc | 23

r. @ 23
I don’t think different possibilities are mutually exclusive, it’s probably more a case of different forces aligning to break thru as actions when enough interests are pushing the same direction.

Posted by: Alexander | Apr 10 2012 13:33 utc | 24

Heads up the two tyrants are meeting asap
the Saudi King and the King of Turkey…
http://pennyforyourthoughts2.blogspot.ca/2012/04/memory-hole-news-what-russia-said-about.html
The false flag “shots” across the border worked
The spin was so intense yesterday I could almost not believe my eyes
Almost

Posted by: Penny | Apr 10 2012 13:54 utc | 25

@horsewhisperer
“It’s amusing that Saudi Arabia’s role as a US ally in the Syria pantomime helps add weight to the theory that 9/11 was an inside job”
Amusing wouldn’t be my choice of word, but, I get what your saying
Oh so helpful to the NATO agenda….
But, was there really any doubt that Saudi Arabia as well as Israel was involved. Then as now.

Posted by: Penny | Apr 10 2012 13:57 utc | 26

turkey gets most of its oil and gas and transit fees from neocon-controlled pipelines, with plans for more (nabucco) if iranian gas is “liberated” by regime change in iran… on the other hand, israeli americans are coddling the kurds, which is not good from a turkish viewpoint.
meanwhile, turkey gets some gas from russia, and chokes russian tanker exports, south, at the strait of bosporus… but turkey just signed a big energy cooperation agreement with russia, including nukes, gas and oil…
it’s almost as if the turks are in a strategic position, but they dont quite know what to do with it, and they’re getting whipsawed by israeli america, while russia is offering more carrots than sticks.
i spose time will tell us what the turks intend to do in syria.
the naming of the nabucco pipeline is interesting… that may have given everyone a clue, part of the “resistance is futile” campaign, with a little helping of “poor poor pitiful us” thrown in for good measure…

Nabucco follows the plight of the Jews as they are assaulted, conquered, and subsequently exiled from their homeland by the Babylonian King Nabucco (in English, Nebuchadnezzar).
Nabucco wikipedia

fuck me dead

Posted by: retreatingbladestall | Apr 10 2012 14:08 utc | 27

i wrote in the post above, “turkey just signed a big energy cooperation agreement with russia…”
well, maybe not so “just”… that article’s from 13 January, 2010…
russia’s hedging its bets on turkey by opening a new tanker port in the baltic…

The new BPS-2 route also lessens Russia’s dependence on the Black Sea and the chokepoint at Turkey’s Bosporus Straits as an oil shipment outlet to European customers.
New Russian Baltic oil port up and running UPI April 9, 2012

the article doesnt say anything about the chokepoint between denmark and sweden, so it’s from the frying pan into the fire.
what the neocons really need is regime change in russia, especially after putin doublecrossed them and banished the oily israeli russians… that really put a kink in the PNAC program.

Posted by: retreatingbladestall | Apr 10 2012 14:40 utc | 28

i think the humanitarian corridor thing has been the plan for a while. humanitarian corridors are what you need to get murdered western reporters out before their unrefrigerated corpses are decomposed. or your western reporter with a shattered femur needs an amputation. just a camel’s nose approach to occupation.
so, knowing the tactics, other humanitarian crises will be generated, fake and otherwise, to implement the plan. this would be an act of terrorism to support a conventional military operation.

Posted by: Proton Soup | Apr 10 2012 17:33 utc | 29

Alexander says @24

“I don’t think different possibilities are mutually exclusive…”

yes, that’s got to be how it works…
i’m trying to think of some reason, other than access to energy, that would cause turkey to switch sides back to israeli america after buddying up to russia…
the gaza flotilla, 31 may 2010, was a response to israel’s bombing gaza and shelling it with white phosphorus in january of 2009 …israel raided the flotilla, and apparently murdered a few turks during the raid…
but before that, turkey had signed that big energy deal with russia in april of 2010, then, may 31, 2010, israelis murder turks in the flotilla, and turkey divorces israel.
apparently, turkey’s gotten over its mad (or is submitting to some pressure or other), and is now willing, again, to do israeli america’s bidding while antagonizing russia.
or it could be that turks have their own agenda, and are content, for the time being, with appearing to go along with this brooking plan.
dont know.

Posted by: retreatingbladestall | Apr 11 2012 0:30 utc | 30

that post above is confusing me, so here’s the timeline…

january 2009… israel bombs and shells gaza
april 2010… turkey signs energy deal with russia
may 2010… israelis murder turks aboard the gaza flotilla, turkey divorces israel
late 2011… turks apparently reconcile with israeli america, and demand that assad be dummped.

in the long run, i cant see how turkey will be truly aligned with israeli america, seeing as how israeli america’s trying to stir up a “clash of civilizations” between the west and muslims, and the israeli americans are supporting kurds who are causing trouble for turkey.

Posted by: retreatingbladestall | Apr 11 2012 0:49 utc | 31

These people have not gone away. Conspiracy? nope the plan is still in the works.
http://www.reasoned.org/e_pnac.htm

Posted by: ben | Apr 11 2012 2:53 utc | 32

@ Penny | Apr 10, 2012 9:57:57 AM | 26
But, was there really any doubt that Saudi Arabia as well as Israel was involved?
Well, yes.
No-one’s been convicted/framed yet. What makes it amusing is that the Yankees are all set to inflame the doubts by holding a mock trial of a water-boarded suspect at Guan’o (Guano more accurate reflects what the Yankees are up to in Guantanamo than the tough-talkin’ Gitmo label).
Guano means birdshit which, in my book, is a close relative of the bull and horse varieties.

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Apr 11 2012 6:37 utc | 33

On reflection I suppose one could argue that the Yankees created Guantanamo to torture guano out of suspects and thereby git mo’ evidence against them.

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Apr 11 2012 6:53 utc | 34

Reports in Oz say Assad has deployed jet fighters against the ‘rebels.’
So far there has been one video from Aleppo showing jet fighters.”
May sound like a long shot, BUT any chance those fighter jets are US or Israeli owned vehicles overflying Turk-Sy border? US planes accompanied IDF planes during the 2007 hit on Sy’s bogus “nuke reactor” in Dayr Al Zor.

Posted by: kylee | Apr 11 2012 8:36 utc | 35

@ 35.
Probably not. It was a night raid.
I haven’t heard the version which includes US planes. If that part is true then it raises the possibility that long-range external tanks, sourced from, or painted to look like, IAF tanks were the only Israeli participants.
Stories involving heroic conduct by “Israelis” are never true.

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Apr 11 2012 14:19 utc | 36

Back to Main