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OpEdNews Op Eds    H3'ed 4/11/14

NATO and Turkey's genocidal war on Syria

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(Article changed on April 12, 2014 at 01:58)


NATO and Turkey's genocidal war on Syria


by Cem Ertür, Axis of Logic, 7 April 2014


map of Turkey's border with Syria
map of Turkey's border with Syria
(Image by Cem Ertur)
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"President [Obama] has been clear: Any [military] action that he might decide to take will be a limited and tailored response to ensure that a despot's brutal and flagrant use of chemical weapons is held accountable."

[ U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, speech at the U.S. State Department, Washington D.C., 30 August 2013]1


"What matters is to weaken the regime to the point where it gives up power. [...]  What matters is to repeat here the Kosovo [War] precedent. Otherwise, [just] a 24 hours hit-and-run wouldn't work."

[ Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, press remarks at the Victory Day reception, Cankaya presidential residence, Ankara, 30 August 2013 ]2


On March 16 , the third anniversary of the NATO-led covert war on Syria, Syrian army won a landmark victory by taking back the Yabroud town on the Lebanese border. 3 Hours later, NATO-backed 'Al-Nusra Front in Lebanon' retaliated by launching a false-flag bombing attack in Lebanon. 4 On March 18-19, the Israeli army bombarded Syrian Army positions by tank and artillery fire and airstrikes. 5  

On March 21, NATO-backed mercenary forces and Turkish Armed Forces launched a massive offensive on the Syrian border town of Kasab in the Latakia province. The unprecedented overt military aggression by Turkey and its NATO allies is the clearest indication of their desperation in the face of Syria's steady progress towards a decisive victory on all fronts.

This article details the flagrant war crimes committed by Turkey and NATO during the ongoing offensive on Kasab and puts them in a context.


The offensive on Kasab

Turkey's Yayladagi-Kasab border crossing with Syria was unilaterally closed by Erdogan's government in the aftermath of the May 2013 false-flag attacks in the border town of Reyhanli "to prevent the suspects from fleeing". 6   At the time, this was the only border gate along the border with Turkey which was controlled by the Syrian government and therefore the only legal and safe transit point for the civilians. 7 Thanks to Turkey's full support, NATO-backed mercenary forces are currently occupying nine out of twelve border gates between Syria and Turkey. 8  

In the early stages of the covert war on Syria, Erdogan's government rendered the entire 877 kilometres-long border with Syria porous for the NATO-backed mercenaries who have been using it as a highway. In many areas along the Syrian border, fences and concrete barriers were removed and roads were stabilized to allow the passage of all sorts of vehicles, including those rigged with bombs. 9

Furthermore, with hindsight, the motive behind the removal of some 615,000 landmines on the Syrian border was to ease the passage of mercenaries as well as military and intelligence officials of Turkey's and allied NATO countries' security forces. Planted with NATO's support between 1957-1959, the activities to remove these landmines began in 2007, for which the help of NATO's Maintenance and Supply Agency (NAMSA) was sought in 2009. 10,11,12   Likewise, lifting mutual visa requirements with Syria in 2009 allowed Turkey to prepare the ground for destabilizing its neighbour. 13   In November 2013, Syria's Deputy Foreign Minister Fayssal Mikdad accused Turkey of letting terrorists from 83 countries to enter Syria to topple the government. 14

Over the few months, mercenaries from Kosovo, the Balkans and other European countries had been deployed in Yayladagi and Samandag countryside in preparation for a cross-border offensive on the predominantly Armenian town of Kasab. 15   Seven villages on Turkey's border with Syria were evacuated and allocated to the mercenaries. 16   Just before the offensive, power outages occurred along the route through which military vehicles moved towards the Syrian border. 17  

According to the local villagers, on March 21, backed up by the heavy artillery fire of the Turkish Armed Forces, over 1500 mercenaries launched a coordinated assault from at least five separate points across Turkey's border with Syria. They were directly commanded by NATO's radar base on Keldagi (Mount Aqraa) on the border and supported by the Turkish Armed Forces. 18,19,15 The mercenaries used pick-up trucks fitted with anti-aircraft weapons, tanks belonging to the Turkish Armed Forces, vehicles loaded with heavy weaponry and lorries. 19,20   The primary and initial assault was the one launched from the Yayladagi border gate to the opposite Kasab border gate, during which masked Turkish special forces troops killed 15 Syrian border guards. 20,21

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Cem Ertür is an independent researcher and peace activist, currently based in Istanbul. Some of his work is published at Global Research and all his Propaganda Alerts since November 2011 are published on Indybay .

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