Erdogan's advisor: Turkiye needs full control over Syria's Aleppo to solve refugee issue
Erdogan’s desire to unload Syrian refugees and address the emerging autonomous Kurdish state along its border with Syria is forcing him to rush for a solution that would involve reconciliation with the Syrian government.
In the past few weeks alone, the Turkish leader sent out his defense minister and head of intelligence to meet their Syrian counterparts in Russia. Turkish leaders then announced plans to for the foreign ministers to meet soon to pave the way for a historical summit between Erdogan and Assad. All these changes are driven by Erdogan’s fear that economic hardships, volatile border with Syria, and large Syrian population in Turkey will limit his chances of winning another term and derail his party’s ambitions to keep a decisive plurality in the parliament.
However, given the role Erdogan played in supporting the Syrian armed factions who wanted, and still want, to overthrow the Syrian government, neither Assad is eager to meet him and many of his party leaders and advisors are unwilling to give up their dream of Syria controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies. This split among Turkey’s Islamists is reminding observers of their ideology-driven campaign to fuel a war in Syria designed to overthrow the government no matter what the human and economic costs. Nothing more telling of this ideological and sectarian impulse than the chain of events that lead to the recent revelations that Turkey should aim to control Aleppo and use it to resettle Syrian refugees instead of rebuilding the Syrian-Turkish relations to what it was before the so-called Arab Spring.
Immediately after the announcement of the expected meeting between the Syrian and Turkish foreign ministers, Qatar’s Aljazeera publishes a long piece by an Islamist commentator and professor at Qatar university floating the idea of Turkey’s control over Aleppo and rejecting Turkish reconciliation with the Syrian government. The article was picked by a long time advisor the Erdogan and his party and he made the same point an interview with a Turkish outlet. Given how skeptical the Syrian government is from this about-face from Erdogan, it can easily use this statement to cancel the proposed meeting and reject Erdogan’s courting of Assad.
Aware of the problem, it was revealed that the Turkish foreign minister was very upset with the advisor’s statements and perhaps that is what forced the advisor to appear on Arab media outlets and explain that what he said was a personal opinion based on an article that he read in the media (a clear reference to aljazeera’s piece).
These events revisit the events and actors that promoted and benefited the so-called Arab Spring, including the role of the Qatari government and its media influencer, Aljazeera, the Muslim Brotherhood, Salafism, and Turkey who wanted to create a middle east to their liking that resulted in destroyed communities in Syria, Libya, Yemen, and Iraq and the displacement of millions of people—in addition to the nearly one million people killed in these countries as a result of the geopolitical ambitions of Turkey, Qatar, UAE, and the Muslim Brotherhood.
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Here are the background stories for this event:
With the opposition accusing Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of not being serious in dealing with the Syrian file and developing an urgent plan for reconciliation with Damascus to return Syrian refugees to their country, Yasin Aktay's proposal, Erdogan's advisor, came to confirm the validity of doubts about the latter's intentions and accounts for Syria.
Aktay, who was a very close friend of the late Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi who was killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, said, "To ensure the safe return of Syrian refugees to their country, the city of Aleppo must be placed under Turkish administration for a transitional period."
Aktay pointed out, in his interview with the pro-President Erdogan channel, "Olca", to "the importance of dialogue between Turkey and the Syrian regime." But thanks to the Iranian and Russian support, the Assad regime was able to control it, after carrying out very large massacres. And had it not been for Turkey's intervention at the time, the regime would have carried out bloody massacres greater than it."
Aktay's speech aroused the interest of the media and social networks, which said that he revealed the true intentions of President Erdogan by inviting President Putin to bring him together with President Assad after the recent meeting of the Syrian and Turkish defense ministers in Moscow, in the presence of the Russian defense minister.
Some saw his words as a message from Ankara to the Syrian opposition with all its factions, including Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, after the information that talked about Ankara's efforts to convince it of the feasibility of a possible reconciliation with Damascus, which is what this opposition started after meeting its leaders, Foreign Minister Mouloud Jawish. oglu last week.
Journalist Muhammad Ali Gullar recalled "the slogan raised by nationalist circles at the beginning of the Turkish intervention in northern Syria, when they talked about annexing this region to Turkey, as it was part of the map of the National Pact of 1920, just as Aleppo declared the 82nd state of present-day Turkey."
It seems that Aktay's statements and the media's interaction with them will remain the talk of the Turkish street during the next stage, as long as the Syrian file, with all its main and subheadings, will be the semi-main topic of the upcoming election campaigns, after it became clear that this file, especially the issue of Syrian refugees in Turkey, will affect the decision of the Turkish voter when He will vote for President Erdogan or his potential rival, Kemal Kilicdaroglu.
This explains why the security authorities raided a gathering center for Syrian refugees in a suburb of Istanbul, whom the Republican People's Party was preparing to deport to Syria with their consent, and the aforementioned authorities transferred them to an unknown location so that Kilicdaroglu would not meet them before they left Istanbul towards the Syrian border.
All this while betting on information that was reported a while ago about Syrian President Assad's hesitation in reconciliation with Erdogan before the upcoming elections, which may be in mid-May, at a time when Russian and Gulf pressures continue on the two sides to achieve this reconciliation as quickly as possible.
This account did not prevent the Supreme Constitutional Court from considering the issue of banning the activity of the Peoples’ Democratic Party before the end of this week, after it froze 3 days ago the aid provided by the treasury, according to the election law, which orders it to support the electoral campaigns of all political parties that have parliamentary blocs, i.e. on At least 20 seats.
All these complex data suggest the next stage in Turkish domestic politics, as long as it is affected by the future of the relationship with Damascus, for many surprises in terms of Turkish-Syrian relations, which will be under direct influence from Moscow, Tehran and the Gulf capitals represented by Abu Dhabi, which the Turkish media says is " It is ready to pay billions of dollars to the Syrian and Turkish sides in exchange for their agreement to the final reconciliation, according to its mood and the mood of its allies, who are many and contradictory.
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