Notes on the Revolution in Syria and Some Turkish Delights
Syria has always been around me.
Way back in 2011, I won a journalism award for exposing a pro-Assad shill professor at my college — Bassam Frangieh.
A 2007 petition [Frangieh signed] blamed a “Zionist conspiracy” for then-senator Biden’s plan to divide Iraq into three separate autonomous regions. In 2009, Frangieh brought the Syrian ambassador, Imad Moustapha, to speak as an honored guest of the college; he had earlier instructed his students to warmly serenade Moustapha with singings from the Koran. (One student even asked, in all earnestness, what students could do to help Syria promote peace.) Syria, designated as a state sponsor of terrorism, has been governed for 40 years by a brutal dictatorial dynasty. Along with the Muslim Student Association (MSA), Frangieh also brought to campus Imam Zaid Shakir, who blamed the Fort Hood massacre on America’s easy access to guns. Yet another major guest was PLO member Sari Nusseinbeh, who during the first intifada helped terrorists avoid arrest and secure funding.
Later I exposed so-called Syria analyst Elizabeth O’Bagy as a fraud. She hilariously went to work for the very compromised John McCain who I later outed as a fraud. The New York Times’s David Carr gave me credit but truthfully I felt as if Ms. O’Bagy — who I strongly suspect is Mormon — was scapegoated by the very neocon Study for the Institute of War and the Kagan family. She works for Senator Chris Coons now and doesn’t mention her stint there.
I was no Assad fan but it always seemed to America’s efforts in Syria were doomed to failure because they had the wrong people laying out plans. Too Georgetown. Apparently the Jesuits forgot the principle of subsidiarity — that those closest to the problem ought to solve it.
Turns out I should have crewed up with my Turkish friends far sooner.
As you know I spent about ninety days in Turkiye over the last two years. My uncle was stationed there for the “State Department” and I have lots of friends throughout the country. I vibe with the Turks and were it not for their complicated relations with the Armenians, who I am duty bound to protect, and the Kurds, who have way too many friends in Washington D.C., I’d roll with them a bit more.
Recent events make it so that I don’t really have to choose.
What few really understand is that the Turks have effectively cut Kurdistan off from the Israelis. Now Erdogan forces Israel to pay a tax to get their oil and gas which the Israelis were trying to bypass with their blackmail and black market. None of that works anymore.
Israel’s impotent bombing of the Syrian military and even seizure of some land in the Goland Heights is too little too late. It’s done.
The masterstroke here is that Türkiye forced Russia to access the Mediterranean only through them right as the Bosphorus is allowed to be formally tolled.
Of course these ties were going on much earlier. To quote a friend: “250,000 of their women are married to 250,000 of our men. They are over 200,000 Turkish kids with Russian mothers. Two thirds of property buyers in Turkiye right now are Russian, Ukranian or Belarussian.”
The Turkish Republic is a century years old. It’s not worried about 130 million Russians swamping 85 million Turks as much as it once was. In fact they welcome the Russian cash because they pay in dollars, naturally.
Now that Trump has nominated Tom Barrack, who was formerly charged and then acquitted with being an agent of UAE, to the ambassadorship of Türkiye you can see the corridor taking shape from Ankara to the end of the Persian gulf.
There isn’t going to be a corridor through Armenia and Kurdistan into Baku. It’s going to run through Syria and into Iraq and through the UAE.
You have to give it to Erdogan. The last days of the Biden Administration were masterfully played.
Hayʼat Tahrir al-Sham has taken over Syria in eleven days and not the fifteen initially forecast. Gulen — who was always a bit kayfabe — is dead.
Erdogan’s government was a disaster between 2018 to 2023 but since then? Well… it’s clear that Erdogan, next to Ataturk, is the great leader of the Turkish people.
The question going forward is whether or not the Arab powers will help strengthen the American and Turkish alliance. We will know they are serious when they jointly develop technology with America.
As one of my Turkish friends puts it, “After speaking the language, intermarriage and tech development are two things which really bond nations together. We need more talking, more boning and more coding.”
I wouldn’t have put like that but I can’t say I disagree.