Syria becoming "Afghanistan on the Mediterranean"

This bit of disingenuous twaddle is a prime example of history being fudged even as it is unfolding. After two and a half years fanning the flames of the Syria conflagration, the Turks are absolutely shocked to find there's a roaring inferno next door!

Turkey has from before the beginning connived in the training and arming of the Syrian "opposition," the harbouring of rebels, and the delivery of weapons to the various groups. But now that it has become plain that the support funnelled through Turkey and Jordan hasn't been enough to topple Assad, it's the weak moral fibre of the international community in not escalating the violence that is to blame.

Surely Erdogan and Gul knew what they were doing when they signed on for this regime-change exercise. We don't know yet what promises were dangled in front of them by the Big Dogs to entice them into what was always a dubious undertaking. The constant need to suck up to their NATO betters, as well as the endless scraping and bowing in front of the EU pack they are so desperate to join, no doubt helped to becloud their better judgement.

Alas, times have changed since those CIA promises were made three years ago, when they were assured that Assad would be gone in a matter of months, and the star of the Muslim Brotherhood would shine more brightly than ever before thanks to the noble efforts of Erdogan and Gul.

Assad is still there. The Big Dogs have turned their backs on the MB, in Turkey and across the region. The "revolution" has long since fallen into the hands of al Qaeda. Syria is at risk to become a failed terror state on the periphery of Europe...

All of this was readily predictable three years ago, Mr. Gul.

 

New "giant" rises in Middle East

That's from the fevered imagination of Turkey's Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, and yes, that would be Turkey he's talking about.

The Erdogan regime is becoming increasingly aware that it has been left holding the bag on the Syria Question by all those allies who were only too quick to rush to the recognition of the Syrian "rebels" as the only official representatives of the Syrian people months and months ago.

The most recent pronouncements on the fate of al-Assad, after two years of claiming he is weeks, days, possibly hours from fleeing the country, seem to be, "oh well, guess he's not going anywhere after all..."

The Nations of Virtue have lost interest, and have now discovered even greater threats to freedom and democracy in the middle of the African deserts.

So Erdogan and Davutoglu sound increasingly pathetic as they try to redirect Western attention to the horror show they have unleashed next door.

The latest cry is for humanitarian aid. While there is no question of a humanitarian crisis in Syria, that can be laid in its entirety at the feet of those who spent hundreds of millions of dollars instigating the fiasco in Syria. In other words, the US and its regional proxies Qatar and Saudi, and last but not least, Turkey.

It's a curious kind of giant Erdogan is raising up there; a NATO ally that has a "strategic arrangement" with China, an ally in the war on terror fomenting terror in it's next door neighbor, an aspiring EU candidate that continues to buy Iranian oil...

Perhaps not quite a giant yet, but certainly creating a giant heap of contradictions.