JOHN CHERIAN
The West is trying to enforce a regime change in Syria through violence with the aid of insurgents and pro-West Arab states.
MUZAFFAR SALMAN/AP
Supporters of President Bashar al-Assad demonstrate at a fountain in Damascus on November 16 against the Arab League meeting in Morocco. The League has suspended Syria for failing to accept its proposals.
WITH the Western powers seemingly intent on implementing their plans for a regime change in Syria, the scope for a negotiated settlement to the crisis that erupted earlier in the year is receding by the day. United States Vice-President Joseph Biden, on a visit to Turkey in the first week of December, once again demanded that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad step down. Turkey, a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) member, has been providing a base and training for the so-called Free Syrian Army consisting of a motley group of army deserters and Islamist insurgents. According to the Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister, Faisal al Mikdad, terrorist groups within Syria “are being financed in an unofficial way by Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Jordan”. At the same time, Ankara is allowing the Free Syrian Army to launch attacks in Syria from Turkish territory.
The Turkish government has already imposed unilateral sanctions on Syria, one of its biggest trading partners. The sanctions, announced in early December, include a freeze on the Syrian government’s assets and the suspension of all financial dealings with Damascus. Syria has retaliated by suspending the free trade agreement with Turkey and imposing a tax of 30 per cent on all goods imported from the country.
The West and its allies in the region are also upping the diplomatic ante in various international forums. The game plan is to not allow the Syrian government to implement the wide-ranging set of reforms it had announced in the middle of the year in response to a wave of protests. Multiparty parliamentary elections are scheduled to be held early next year, but the West seems to prefer to enforce regime change through violence.
The Turkish government is coordinating closely with Western capitals and the pro-Western Arab states to implement this policy Turkey’s Foreign Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, along with the French Foreign Minister, Alain Juppe, recently called for more international pressure to be exerted on Syria. Until early this year, Turkey and Syria had an extremely close political and economic relationship. Davutoglu seems to have abandoned his much-praised “zero problems with neighbours” foreign policy.
The leader of Syria’s banned Muslim Brotherhood Party, Mohammed Riad Shaqfa, told the media in Istanbul that Turkey should intervene more actively in Syria in case the international community did not come to the aid of the opposition. According to the Turkish newspaper Sabah, which is close to the ruling AK Party, the opposition wants Turkey to set up a “limited no-fly zone” over Syria. There are also reports in the Turkish media that the government is preparing to set up a “military buffer zone” along the borders between the two countries. The US. has been supporting Syrian opposition groups financially since the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
