I spoke to Ilhan about what he saw in Syria for several hours last night, and I recorded most of the conversation — where there are gaps it’s because he took a break for a cigarette or because a cat jumped on the computer. I don’t have the technical ability quickly to edit this into something more digestible, but I’m not sure that would be desirable even if I could do it. I’ll give you my idea of what the most important parts are, but watch as much as your schedule permits and come to your own conclusions. 

1: “One of the people in the news business told me some of these videos might be exaggerated.”

2. CB: “You showed up with a Turkish passport with a lot of entry and exit stamps from the United States. And if you put your name in Google it shows that you’re a journalist who’s been writing about this issue … and you show up with some story about opening a shwarma restaurant and they say, ‘Okay?” … “

3. IH: “I was saying I was looking for a good chef, to add new shwarma or whatever it is to my restaurant …. ” CB: “What kind of shwarma chef were you supposedly looking for?”

4. “Conditions are far worse than I expected. … They come house by house and they arrest every single person … it’s far worse than anything you can imagine. … the civil war has not arrived yet, but it looks like maybe a few weeks … I definitely think Assad forces must be distracted, must be distracted, they’re using all their resources on the people … but they’re doing this because there’s nothing else they worry about right now … Yes, Assad might play whatever he’s got — Kurds, PKK, it’s a risk … “Everyone is waiting, Assad does what he does best … today, they might do just what they did 30 years ago, same exact thing, and we are watching it again.”

Start there. I’ll keep uploading and trying to summarize.