Massacre in Al-Shughour: Turkey Ready For "All Scenarios, Including Military Ones"
Hürriyet Daily News--who I trust on this--has been interviewing the refugees now streaming over the Syrian border. This is reporting that should be making headlines in the States.
“We received a phone call from the center, and they ordered us to shoot and kill all the protesters,” said Ahmad Gavi, 21, a Syrian soldier who fled to Turkey following the deadly clashes in Jisr Al-Shughour.
“Five soldiers who refused to follow this order were killed immediately in front of me. Then commanders and some soldiers started to shoot each other,” Gavi said. “There were 180 soldiers at the security check post and 120 of them were killed.”
Gavi said he dropped his gun and ran away to Turkey as a refugee. “It was not the protesters who killed the soldiers, it was the commanders who killed them; most of the soldiers ran away with the protesters then,” he said, adding that there are 60 Syrian soldiers in the group that fled to Turkey.
I just saw this on Twitter:
@blakehounshell! MT @jenanmoussa: AJA quotesTurkish president: "we are following situation in #syria and ready for all scenarios including military ones"30 minutes ago via Twitter for Mac
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Feb '11
Re: Massacre in Al-Shughour: Turkey Ready For "All Scenarios, Including Military Ones"
Fox News has a small item headlined "Syrian Troops Mass Outside Turkish Border Town."
Dec '10
Re: Massacre in Al-Shughour: Turkey Ready For "All Scenarios, Including Military Ones"
Gee, if Syrian troops fire on Turkish troops, that will constitute an attack on a NATO member and trigger the mutual defense provision of the treaty. And NATO will have to do a hard pivot from Libya to Syria.
Nov '10
Re: Massacre in Al-Shughour: Turkey Ready For "All Scenarios, Including Military Ones"
I'm starting to like Mr. Erdogan. What say you, Claire?
Re: Massacre in Al-Shughour: Turkey Ready For "All Scenarios, Including Military Ones"
There's a lot more to this story--I'm sure of it--than I can make out from a cruise ship in the Baltics. I can't ask the questions and make the phone calls and have the conversations I'd need to have right now to begin to get a sense of what this really means. I do know that two days before an election, nothing Erdogan says means anything. But I also know that thousands of refugees streaming across the border is not something Turkey can ignore.
Dec '10
Re: Massacre in Al-Shughour: Turkey Ready For "All Scenarios, Including Military Ones"
Claire Berlinski, Ed.
There's a lot more to this story--I'm sure of it--than I can make out from a cruise ship in the Baltics. I can't ask the questions and make the phone calls and have the conversations I'd need to have right now to begin to get a sense of what this really means. I do know that two days before an election, nothing Erdogan says means anything. But I also know that thousands of refugees streaming across the border is not something Turkey can ignore. · Jun 10 at 1:19pm
Given that the AKP has been in favor of detente with Iran and that Syria is Iran's most important client state, silence on the issue of Assad's massacres of Syrians would reflect very badly on Erdogan -- do I have that right?
Dec '10
Re: Massacre in Al-Shughour: Turkey Ready For "All Scenarios, Including Military Ones"
I'm just glad to hear that the rank and file soldiers took pause and ultimately defected/deserted rather than fire on their own countrymen.
I'm sorry that it cost many of them their lives though.
Feb '11
Re: Massacre in Al-Shughour: Turkey Ready For "All Scenarios, Including Military Ones"
There've been enough fake defectors that I'd not be quick to believe this story -- not without some independent confirmation, and all versions of the story seem to go back to one or two individuals thus far. Whatever is happening in Jisr, it looks complicated. If the rebels are as well armed as they seem to be, who supplied them? No question it's a Sunni/MB stronghold. If civilians were actually evacuated before the army's assault, as it seems, why a mutiny among the soliders? The presence of Iranians, fighting with the regime, may well be true, says Chulov. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MSalUBcGqs&feature=youtu.be] And now Fisk says that the Turks are coming. (He does't always lie.)
God, what a mess. If it turns into civil war, it'll be like Lebanon, only without the civility.
Dec '10
Re: Massacre in Al-Shughour: Turkey Ready For "All Scenarios, Including Military Ones"
On a related note: meet Hamza Ali al-Katib.
Edited on Jun 10, 2011 at 6:45pmFeb '11
Re: Massacre in Al-Shughour: Turkey Ready For "All Scenarios, Including Military Ones"
Stuart Creque: On a related note: meet Hamza Ali al-Katib. · Jun 10 at 6:45pm
Edited on Jun 10 at 06:45 pm
The kid's death was a terrible thing, for Asad; a boon, for la revolution. It'll be good to learn who killed him. At present, no one knows.
Syrian secret police have been in business a long time. They're soulless monsters. They're not imbeciles. They certainly don't dump corpses of mutilated kids on the street, when doing so only makes their own job exponentially harder. They're the only thing that works in the god-forsaken country. I doubt they did it.
I'll wager the kid was killed in crossfire. Partisans then chopped him up and took pictures. But who knows.
A pox on his brain-dead parents, for sure, though: What idiot let's their 13-year old kid carry box-lunches to a firefight?
Nothing's real in Syria in normal times; even less at present.
Even media-darling abducted-blogger Gay Girl in Damascus is just a literary persona -- created in Feb., in Scotland, for a revolution not yet begun.
It's all smoke and mirrors, and corpses.