.jpg)
Turkish tanks en route to Jarabulus
By Dr Jan Best de Vries:
Turkish tanks, neither invited by the secular Syrian regime nor by the democratic administration of Rojava, roll on Syrian soil. In former days a journalist would have written that Turkey is at war with Syria, but nowadays the extent of Turkey’s ‘self-defense’ is measured by which towns along the border have been under heavy Turkish artillery shelling. If these have been the town Afrin in the utmost West and Derek in the utmost East of Syria, one might be inclined to think of a premeditated invasion by Turkey over the full length of the Turkish-Syrian border. This notwithstanding an official assurance that the border between the two countries will only be transgressed into Syrian territory “70 km in length and 40 km in depth”.
On the 24th August 2016 the Turkish state occupied the Syrian town Jarabulus without a battle for it was held by IS and/or the former Al Nusra, which indicates a previous agreement with both IS and Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (Al Nusra under a new name, to make it acceptable to the USA and Europe as ‘a non-terroristic organization’). One look on the map of Syria makes clear that the real objective of Mr Erdogan is to win the battle of Aleppo with the cover and alibi of just supporting against Mr Assad’s army the Free Syrian Army, pouring in from Turkey again just like IS and Al Nusra have done over the last four years. After due thanks to IS and former Al Nusra for their help, a pro-Turkish administration of Syrian insurgents united in the FSA first will reign Aleppo and remove the Kurds from its district Sheikh Maksoud, Aleppo thus becoming part of the buffer zone to protect Turkey against the alleged danger the Syrian Kurds pose to it. Then once more this buffer zone will become permanent and awaits Aleppo the fate of Hatay.
All this is just the fantasy of a Dutch journalist…, or isn’t it?
Dr. Jan Best de Vries is an archaeologist and historian, decipherer of the so-called Byblos Script from Aleppo and Alalakh (‘How to Decipher the Byblos Script’, Aspekt Publishers 2014, ISBN978-946-153-420-0)
