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ChannelNewsAsia reported internet censorship equipment supplied by a California based internet filtering company is being used to block web activity in Syria. An official reported 13 of the 14 web censoring applications sent to Iraq are being used in Syria. The Iranian government used similar methods during the 2009-2011 uprisings.
Some Syria protesters are calling for UN intervention via a ‘no-fly zone’ this as more than 40 protesters were killed in Syria yesterday and U.N. estimates over 3,000 have been killed in the last seven months. However, most opposition groups are opposed to intervention fearing it will lead to increased government crackdown and foreign military intervention. There are also reports are armed uprisings in the border region with Lebanon as the Syrian regime is reported to have planted mines in the region.
The Guardian reports once one of Syria’s closest allies, Turkey is hosting an armed opposition group waging an insurgency against the government of President Bashar al-Assad, providing shelter to the commander and dozens of members of the group, the Free Syrian Army, and allowing them to orchestrate attacks across the border from inside a camp guarded by the Turkish military.
The support for the insurgents comes amid a broader Turkish campaign to undermine Assad’s government. Turkey is expected to impose sanctions soon on Syria, and it has deepened its support for an umbrella political opposition group known as the Syrian National Council, which announced its formation in Istanbul.
But its harboring of leaders in the Free Syrian Army, a militia composed of defectors from the Syrian armed forces, may be its most striking challenge so far to Damascus.
After seven months of wrangling to form a cohesive opposition movement, Syrian activists finally pulled it off with the formal announcement in Istanbul of the Syrian National Council (SNC), a body that mirrors the Libyan opposition’s National Transitional Council in seeking international recognition. But the opposition group, which formed in Istanbul and is headquartered there, appears to be increasingly influenced by the Turkish government, which has so far played a significant role in helping to usher Syria toward a post-Assad era.
There are some good reasons to have confidence in the SNC. The group began by reaffirming its desire to see a democratic Syria with constitutional guarantees on civil and political rights. It also says it rejects foreign military intervention, arguing that the only way to topple Assad is through "peaceful" and "legal" means. Many of its top officials — such as prominent U.S.-based dissident Radwan Ziadeh, newly appointed the head of the SNC’s foreign affairs bureau, and Paris-based university professor Burhan Ghalioum, a member of the body’s presidential council — are secular, intelligent, and friendly to the West.
In 2007, Ghalioun went on Al Jazeera and said, in Arabic, that the two biggest problems besetting the Arab world were dictatorship and clerical control of the media, adding that these were mutually reinforcing.
Of the SNC’s 230-member General Assembly, 55 seats are designated for grassroots domestic groups. Twenty seats apiece have also gone to selected special interests: Kurds, the Muslim Brotherhood, the "Damascus Declaration" (a group of reformist intellectuals who emerged briefly in 2000 on the mistaken assumption that Assad, newly in power, would be an improvement on his tyrannical father), and independents. Another 20 are saved for any additional stakeholders who may join the SNC at a later date.
The Muslim Brotherhood, which belatedly joined the body en masse, appears to be over-represented. Although they now hold 20 seats in the General Assembly and another 5 seats in the Secretariat, Hafez al-Assad all but destroyed the movement in the 1980s. Syrian oppositionists I’ve interviewed in the past several months say they believe that Islamists represent, at most, 30 percent of the opposition — and that figure, they say, is confined mainly to the ranks of the diaspora.
Nevertheless, the Brotherhood, along with a collection of independent Islamists, have wielded significant influence within the SNC, owing largely to the Obama administration’s "lead from behind" strategy in Syria, which has left Turkey as the main liaison to the opposition.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) almost certainly prefer a fellow Sunni government in Syria to replace the current Alawite regime. Although previously friendly to Assad, AKP’s Turkey has since taken the lead among Islamic nations in condemning the regime’s violence. Turkey has hosted the majority of Syrian opposition conferences on its soil, from Istanbul to Antalya. Ten thousand Syrian refugees who fled a massacre in the Idleb province last June are currently living in tents on the Turkish border.
Erdogan probably reckons that if he can’t rein in the Syrian regime’s terror, he’d better cultivate the inevitable alternatives. Turkey will wish to salvage its strong commercial relations with its southern neighbor. But it’s more than that: the chance to lure Syria away from Shia Iran and toward fellow a Sunni Muslim power is likely too tantalizing to pass up. If Assad falls, then Iran will lose its only state ally in the Levant, weakening Hezbollah’s position in Lebanon and almost certainly ending the Hamas politburo’s residence in Damascus.
Since the Arab Spring kicked off, Erdogan has attempted to play a larger role in Arab politics, giving a recent speech in Egypt that included, among other things, public advice on how Egyptians shouldn’t be wary of "secular" democracy. When Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, which had rapturously received Erdogan in Cairo, blanched at the use of the term "secular," Erdogan said that he’d been mistranslated in the national press and that he wasn’t referring to the Western model.
The trouble is, Turkey’s credibility among many Syrian protesters plummeted in recent weeks after it was reported that Turkish intelligence agents may have been involved in the abduction of Lieutenant Colonel Hussain Harmoush, a leading figure in the Free Syrian Army, a contingent of defected soldiers. Harmoush went missing on August 29, after which his brother quickly claimed that he’d been ambushed in a Turkish refugee camp after government security contacts betrayed him, handing him over to Assad’s infamous mukhabarat secret police.
Turkey denies any responsibility and has vowed to conduct a government inquiry. But the damage was done. Erdogan’s convoy in Egypt was surrounded last month by angry Syrians chanting "Erdogan coward" and "Erdogan, where is Harmoush?" Shortly thereafter, Harmoush appeared on Syrian state TV where he made an abject "confession," almost certainly forced, that blamed every imaginary bugbear for the regime’s troubles except the regime itself. Fellow activists now fear him dead.
Another headache for Ankara will be the SNC’s National Consensus Charter language on Kurdish rights, which are tightly curtailed in Turkey. The charter calls for "constitutional recognition of Kurdish national identity and the creation of a just democratic formula for the Kurdish question within the framework of unity of the homeland." Though vague (does this allow for a semi-autonomous Kurdish governorate in Syria? formal recognition of the Kurdish language?) it is far more broad-minded than any AKP policy on Turkey’s own restive Kurdish population, which can now point to the Turkish-backed SNC and say, "What about us?" The Assad regime is increasingly aggressive against Syrian Kurds‘ participation in this revolution: Syrian forces recently assassinated Kurdish SNC member Mishal Tammo and closed the border with Turkey to prevent more Kurds from coming in to demonstrate.
Syrian security forces have, in the last several weeks, conducted a dragnet of prominent activists as well as rebel soldiers, thought to be as many as 10,000. Rape and organ theft are allegedly new state policies of intimidation and repression. Armed protestors in Homs have lately begun to fight back, and in a sectarian fashion, fueling speculation that Syria is now poised for a full-on civil war — exactly the outcome Assad has long tried to provoke.
The situation is dire and bound to get worse. The SNC’s responsibility now is to shore up international recognition and go the way of the Libyans in presenting a coherent framework for democratic government. Syria’s transition stands to be the most dangerous and crucial for the Middle East — as Turkey plays a greater role with the Syrian opposition, it will have an ever-larger say in the political landscape of post-Assad Syria.
VIA Atlantic
Turkish soldiers, air force bombers and helicopter gunships reportedly launched an incursion into Iraq on Wednesday, hours after Kurdish rebels killed 26 soldiers and wounded 16 others in multiple attacks along the border.
Turkish authorities did not immediately confirm the incursion, which was first reported by the websites of Hurriyet newspaper and the pro-Kurdish Firat news agency.
However, the chief of the military as well as interior and defense ministers rushed to the area while Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan cancelled a visit to Kazakhstan.
NTV television reported Turkish troops penetrated as deep as four kilometres into Iraq and artillery units were shelling Kurdish rebel bases across the border. Turkey last staged a major ground offensive against Iraq early in 2008.
"No one should forget that those who make us suffer this pain will be made to suffer even stronger," President Abdullah Gul told reporters on Wednesday.
"They will see that the vengeance for these attacks will be immense."
The rebels launched simultaneous attacks on military outposts and police stations near the border towns of Cukurca and Yuksekova early on Wednesday, authorities said.
The attacks left 26 soldiers dead and 16 others wounded, NTV television said.
It was the deadliest Kurdish rebel attack in several years.
Around 100 Kurdish rebels were believed to have participated in the attacks, according to TRT television. The rebels fled to northern Iraq at dawn after nearly four hours of intense fighting as Turkish military shelled their escape routes, NTV said.
The rebels have lately intensified their attacks in a war for autonomy in the country’s Kurdish-dominated southeast, killing dozens of members of the country’s security force and at least 18 civilians since mid-July.
On Tuesday, a roadside bomb blast killed five policemen and three civilians, including a four-year-old girl.
The conflict has killed tens of thousands of people since 1984.
VIA AFP
Iran’s popularity among the Arab countries have plunged over the past decade, while Turkey’s favorability ratings have soared, according to a survey by the Arab American Institute in Washington.
The poll, which was conducted last month in six Arab countries – Morocco, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon,Egypt, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) – indicate that Iran, a Shia Muslim power which is developing a nuclear program, is becoming a grave concern to the Arab world.
A majority in each country polled (except Lebanon) thinks Iranian involvement in the Middle East is largely negative.
According to the Zogby poll, Iran’s positive rating is an abysmally low 6 percent in Saudi Arabia. In the other Arab countries surveyed, Iran’s favorability rating ranges between 14 percent and 37 percent. In Lebanon, however, Iran enjoys a positive rating of 63 percent.
Still, as recently as 2006, Iran positive rating ranged between 68 percent and 82 percent.
“It really was rather shocking I thought,” the director of the Arab American Institute, Dr. James Zogby, told Newsmax.
“Even a couple of years ago, people would say, ‘Oh, Arab leaders are against Iran, but their people aren’t.’”
Zogby thinks the Arab countries are becoming annoyed and alarmed by Tehran’s constant meddling in their affairs.
For example, Iran has repeatedly criticized Saudi Arabia’s presence in neighboring Bahrain, where the ruling Sunni elite has been brutally quelled an uprising by Shias.
Iran is also friendly with Syria (which is quickly becoming a pariah state) and is also involved with Hezbollah in Lebanon.
The poll also indicated that five of the six Arab countries polled would like to see a nuclear-free Middle East. However, most Lebanese did not share this view. In fact, a majority of Lebanese Shias actually believed that the Middle East would be more secure if Tehran had the bomb.
“It shows Arab leadership is concerned with Iran – but so are Arab people, so the Arab leadership will have to take these sentiments into consideration”, Zogby told reporters.
Meanwhile, Turkey is enjoying high popularity among the Arab nations polled.
Turkey has a favorable rating in Morocco (80 percent), Egypt (64 percent), Jordan (45 percent), Saudi Arabia (98 percent), UAE (62 percent), and Lebanon (93 percent).
VIA IBTimes
Russia and China vetoed a resolution draft written by France, Britain, Germany and Portugal Tuesday, sparking U.S. and European outrage. The measure contained possible references to sanctions against Syria if its leader pursues a crackdown on opposition protesters.
Meanwhile, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said during a speech in South Africa Wednesday his government will impose its own sanctions on Syria, despite the resolution’s failure at the U.N. Security Council.
U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the vote does not change U.S. commitment to increase pressure on the Syrian government. She said countries will have to take responsibility for the decisions made Tuesday and any impact it may have on the ground in Syria.
French Foreign Minister Alain Juppé said France and others tried everything possible to propose a strong resolution that reflected everyone’s concerns about what he called the "massacring" of the Syrian people. He said Tuesday was a "sad day" for the Syrian people and the U.N. Security Council.
However, a senior aide to the Syrian president told the French news agency that Tuesday was a "historic day." Bouthaina Shaaban told AFP in Damascus that Russia and China stood "with the Syrian people" and provided the time needed for the government to "enforce and enhance reforms."
Syria has been using military force to crush almost seven months of opposition protests demanding an end to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad‘s 11-year autocratic rule.
The United Nations says at least 2,700 people have been killed in the crackdown against protesters and other dissidents.
Turkey has provided refuge for several Syrian dissidents. A Syrian colonel who found refuge there and heads the armed opposition force called the Free Syrian Army said a brutal crackdown last week in Rastan was an operation to capture him.
Colonel Riad al-Asaad says he defected in July after refusing to follow Syrian government orders to shoot protesters. He says his opposition group now has more than 10,000 defectors.
Via VOA
Tags: Turkey,Russia,China,Syria,Erdogan
Turkey‘s parliament voted Wednesday to extend the government’s mandate to order military strikes against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq.
Lawmakers passed the measure by a wide margin. The current mandate was due to expire on October 17.
Rebels from the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) have increased attacks in Turkish territory recently, sometimes targeting civilians.
Last month, Kurdish rebels killed five people during multiple attacks on police facilities in southeastern Turkey. Turkish forces have responded by increasing their airstrikes against suspected rebel bases in northern Iraq.
Turkey, the European Union and the United States regard the PKK as a terrorist group.
In August, Turkey’s military said it killed about 160 Kurdish rebels in cross-border air and artillery strikes.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said Ankara‘s "patience is running out" in dealing with the rebels, who have been fighting for autonomy in Turkey’s largely Kurdish southeast since 1984. The conflict has killed more than 40,000 people.
VIA VOA
To a substantial degree, the Arab Spring has continued a long process of pushing foreign powers out, and reclaiming the region – both from foreign powers, and from the autocrats which worked the alliances to their advantage – for its inhabitants. But this has not left a vacuum. Instead, the politics of the region is coming to be structured increasingly by the regional powers. Chief among these are Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia.
The US is losing out, as it watches its influence in the region diminish, and its ally in Israel being isolated. It is pulling out of Iraq, and its retreat from the region will probably accelerate as the budget cuts in Washington put a further crimp on its diplomatic and aid resources. Washington will have to rely on other allies, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, to advance its interests. But both of these countries have their own agendas, and will not merely do the US’s bidding.
Iran, whose own 1979 revolution sought to throw out foreign influence, had expected the Arab Spring would usher in governments more friendly to itself. On the face of it, the optimism was reasonable enough. It was always understood that in the Arab world, democracy would increase the influence of political Islam, which has been repressed by the region’s autocrats. One could assume democratic governments would then look more kindly on Iran’s theocracy.
The problem with this reasoning was that, first, it overlooked the depth of differences, and sometimes outright hostility, between Iran’s Shi’ite Islam, and the Sunni variety that dominates most of the Arab world. Equally, it overlooks the profound cultural and historical hostility between the Arab peoples on one hand, and the Persians who dominate Iran on the other – not to mention the tensions between Iran’s Persians and its own, substantial minorities. Moreover, the uprising against Syria’s government, one of Iran’s few friends in the region, bodes ill for Iranian influence. On balance, Iran probably won’t come out ahead from the Arab Spring.
Saudi Arabia, with its vast oil wealth and, home as it is to some of Islam’s holiest sites, moral leadership in much of the Muslim world, is eager to serve as a counterweight to Iran. It will throw its largesse around and, where necessary, intervene directly (as it has done in Bahrain) to quell uprisings which threaten its interests. Saudi Arabia might gain in influence. But given the divisions within the Saudi ruling family, not to mention the fact that it is yet another autocratic regime, it is a fragile foundation upon which to found future American interests.
The biggest winner of all, as far as foreign policy is concerned, appears to be Turkey. A secular country run by an Islamic party, Turkey sees itself as the perfect model for the region’s newly democratic regimes. Coming off several years of growth, with a confident and assertive government, Turkey has been able to appeal to democrats, while also being seen by elites as a safe party. Having once built close ties with Syria and Israel, Turkey has lately turned on both governments, further burnishing its regional credentials.
Turkey is not without baggage in the region, though. As the heart of the former Ottoman Empire, which itself incurred much resentment in the Arab world, it cannot appear too belligerent. But longer term, it has reason to feel confident about the future. Whereas Iran is struggling with political dissent, a divided ruling class and a sluggish economy, Turkey’s future looks comparatively bright.
No wonder it seems to be enjoying the Arab Spring so much.
John Rapley is a research associate at the International Growth Centre, London School of Economics and Political Science. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and rapley.john@gmail.com.
Tags: Turkey,Islamic,Syria,Israel
Turkey Friday denied as “black propaganda” claims it asked Syria to offer the banned Muslim Brotherhood government posts in exchange for Turkey’s support in ending rallies in Syria.
“Those allegations have nothing to do with the truth,” Selcuk Unal, the Foreign Ministry spokesman said. He said Turkey had repeatedly told Syria to start reforms “to ensure a transition to parliamentary democracy.”
“Under this context we suggested them to allow all democratic entities on the political spectrum to be active in Syria and participate in the political transition process,” Unal said.
According to Syrian officials and Western diplomats, Ankara asked Damascus to offer the Muslim Brotherhood government posts in exchange for Turkey’s support in ending rallies against Syrian President Bashar Assad but the offer was rejected.
The Muslim Brotherhood has been banned in Syria since the rise of the Baath Party to power in 1963.
They unsuccessfully tried to organize the population against Assad’s father and predecessor, Hafez, who brutally repressed a 1982 revolt in the city of Hama, leaving around 20,000 people dead.
Law 49, issued in July 1980 and still in force, makes it a “criminal offense punishable by death to be affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood.
Via Rantburg
[An Nahar] Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan lashed out at Syrian 
President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck
al-Assad.
One of the last of the old-fashioned hereditary iron-fisted fascist dictators. Before going into the family business Pencilneck was an eye doctor…on Friday, telling him the era of oppressive dictators is past.
Erdogan, who is in Tripoli on the final leg of his "Arab Spring" tour, hailed the advent of democracy in Libya and the "memory of deaders who sacrificed themselves for their country and their religion."
"You have proved in the eyes of the world that there is no regime that can go against the will of the people. This is what those who oppress the people of Syria should realize.
"This kind of leader should understand that his time is past because the era of repressive regimes has ended," Erdogan said.
Earlier Friday, the Turkish daily Hurriyet said Erdogan had warned Iran "not to spoil" the Syrian leadership, whose security forces have been cracking down on protesters since mid-March.
Erdogan said: "I cannot say there has been tension with Iran but we warned them (the Iranians) that 'the Assad administration is getting spoiled with your encouragement.'"
Turkey has expressed frustration with Assad and his iron-fisted regime for failing to listen to the people, whose almost daily demonstrations for democracy have been met with violent repression, at a cost of more than 2,600 lives according to the U.N.
"Unfortunately he did not do it," Erdogan said earlier this week, warning of the consequences of failing to meet popular aspirations for reform.
He said a solution would be for Assad to get rid of "those surrounding him who insist on the repression and the breaking of the Syrian people's will".
"If President Bashar does not take this step, he personally will pay the price," Erdogan said.
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Turkey’s foreign minister demanded Monday that the Syrian government end its crackdown on a five-month-old uprising “immediately and unconditionally,” warning that unspecified steps would be taken otherwise.
via Turkey Warns Syria to Stop Crackdown Immediately – NYTimes.com.
Assad’s forces have avoided the neighborhoods of Assad’s Alawite sect, and instead have been targeting Sunni Muslim neighborhood, including a large Palestinian refugee camp in Latakia’s al-Ramel district. Five to ten thousand refugees were forced to flee, and their whereabouts are unknown, according to the BBC. Newspapers in the region have expressed anger about Arab states’ failure to respond to events in Syria.Another report indicates that Assad’s security forces began ordering residents of the Ramleh region, which includes a refugee camp housing more than 10,000 Palestinians, to go to a soccer stadium ahead of what they described as a huge military operation. After the people were herded into the stadium, security forces took away their identification cards and cellphones. At least five people were confirmed dead, according to the LA Times
via Turkey Threatens Syria, As Military Attacks Palestinian Refugee Camp.
Obama avoids calling Armenia deaths genocide – Europe – Al Jazeera English.
President Barack Obama failed to label the mass genocide against the Armenians by the Turks during World War I as “genocide”. Argentina, Belgium, Canada, France, Italy, Russia and Uruguay have recognized it as such and several historians agree with the term. The United States does not want to upset its Nato Ally – Turkey.