Assad’s brutality and Erdogan’s hypocrisy

By Harem Karem:

As waves of unprecedented anti-government protests continue in Syria, the regime relentlessly uses brutal measures to crack down on protesters, without respect for human lives. The distressing images we have seen on our television screens are inhuman.

Reports say Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan has criticised the Syrian outrage and arranged a buffer zone to prevent the Syrian chaos spreading into Turkey. While the US, Germany and Portugal have supported the case presented by the UK and France for a UN Security Council resolution, Erdogan has condemned the Syrian actions against civilians and declared that Turkey might approve UN intervention.

Until three months ago the hypocrite Erdogan believed that wrongs aren’t wrong when done by nice people like him, and he considered Assad to be his brother. This very same Prime Minister has received Gaddafi’s ‘peace award’. His government recently refused to continue the excavation of mass graves in Kurdish populated Mutki in Bitlis province and follow up on the crimes committed against the Kurds during the 90s.

This same Erdogan introduced ‘counter-terrorism’ legislation in 2006, giving a green light to Turkish prosecutors to try juveniles as adults and jail them for up to 50 years. Recent official figures revealed that there are 2,622 minors in Turkish prisons. According to the Diyarbakir Human Rights Association, some 737 minors have been charged under the counter-terrorism legislation since its introduction.

This same Erdogan has denied 20 million Kurds their basic rights, the right to speak and to be educated in their mother tongue language.

Turkey’s 180-degree turn against the Syrian regime might appear to some to be motivated by human rights concerns following the recent massacres in Jisr al-Shughour. But the reality is different.

The rather confused Assad has no contingency plan and he is witnessing cracks appearing within his army, paving the way for him to become more isolated and make more mistakes. Assad continues to resist reality as the pressure mounts. He has demonstrated a lack of ability to foresee an exit strategy and gradually he is making the same mistakes as other recently-fallen dictators.

By offering a broader amnesty and freeing prisoners without a tangible agreement with the opposition, the Syrian regime has tightened the chain that has become fastened to its neck. By releasing thousands of prisoners, many of whom are members of the Kurdistan Workers Party’s (PKK) and the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, it has jeopardized the Syria-Turkey relationship. The released prisoners are back in the battlefields, not just against Syrian regime but also, potentially, against the Turkish regime.