Mar 31, 2014

The Turkish Foreign Ministry has informed the United Nations that a camp for 2,000 persons is ready at Mardin for Syrian-Armenians who may wish to take refuge in Turkey.

I was delighted. Then a Christian friend called and asked: “April 24 is approaching and it is the Armenians again, just as 1915 will be observed.” I was angry because I couldn’t make the connection. Then came a statement by our Foreign Ministry: “All claims that Turkey supported opposition forces involved in the Kassab clashes by allowing them to use Turkish territory or in any other manner are entirely baseless.”

Mehmet Ali Edipoglu, a member of the parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee was in Hatay for a while to find out what was happening. He sent me an email: “We went to the villages of Gozlekciler and Candir as well as the Teknecik outpost. We were stopped by soldiers. We were upset by their warnings that our lives could be in danger. But in the areas they didn’t let us enter and even in the areas used by the soldiers, Syrian-plated cars were roaming about. According to information from villagers, thousands of fighters coming from Turkey crossed the border at at least five different points to launch the attack on Kassab. We ourselves observed dozens of Syrian- plated cars nonstop transporting terrorists and firing into the Syrian outpost from the military road between Gozlekciler village and our military base at Kayapinar.”

Among the allegations we heard was one that two tanks and about 30 semis had crossed the border, in addition to pickup trucks mounted with DShK heavy machine guns. According to a hard-to-believe report by a reporter for Al-Alam news channel, “The Turkish army shelled the Syrian military base near Kassab. … At Kassab, Jabhat al-Nusra hoisted its own flags on Turkish tanks.” The prevailing conviction is that the Turkish military shot down the Syrian jet to impede Syrian air operations against armed groups that captured Kassab.

Just as we were focusing on Kassab, the tape recording of the meeting between Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs Feridun Sinirlioglu, Deputy Chief of General Staff Gen. Yasar Guler and chief of National Intelligence (MIT) Hakan Fidan surfaced. If the recording was authentic, they were talking about measures to be taken for the Tomb of Suleiman Shah threatened by the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), Syria scenarios, weapons and ammunition problems of groups fighting in Syria, ammunition sent to the area earlier and results achieved. Their discussions showed how deep Turkey has sunk in Syria. They were scary, beyond logic. How then can I be surprised by the claims about Kassab?