RT: Why did the Turkish government label the Syrian government as the “usual suspects” in the bombings \u2013 before the investigation even started?<\/p>\n
Jeremy Salt: The Turkish government claims it arrested nine people and it claims to have evidence that they\u2019re connected with the Syrian intelligence service. We haven\u2019t seen that evidence yet. We\u2019ll have to wait and see what it says. At this stage, it seems to me quite inconceivable that Syria would do that because if we look at what\u2019s happening on the ground right now. The Syrian army is rolling back the insurgency. The insurgents have taken huge losses in the last few months, in particular, around Damascus, near the Lebanese border, and even around Halab \u2013 Aleppo \u2013 and in the North Syria. And along with this is the fact that the Americans are changing pace and are going into negotiations with Russia to come out with a solution. So it doesn\u2019t make any sense that Syria would do that right now.<\/p>\n
RT: Just in the last few hours, Syria’s information minister said that Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan’s responsible for this by playing a “dangerous game with al-Qaeda”. What did he mean by that?<\/p>\n
JS: We know for a fact that \u2013 because the main Islamist fighting group in Syria has admitted this \u2013 al-Qaeda in Iraq and Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria are one in the same. And all the fighting groups in Syria are Islamist and they\u2019re working tactically with Jabhat al-Nusra. So, al-Qaeda is in Syria. We know that. It\u2019s now confirmed, but this was more or less suspected from the start. What we\u2019re seeing now is kind of charge and counter-charge as people try to put the blame for this on to someone else. My feeling about this \u2013 and obvious kind of guess is that the party responsible for this is one of the armed groups because if anyone has a reason to try to heat up the situation and drag outside countries it would be them. They\u2019re in very serious problems right now.<\/p>\n
Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. (AFP Photo \/ Adem Altan)<\/p>\n
RT: Turkey’s Interior Minister urged the international community to get involved against Syrian President Assad. Doesn’t this undermine the peace efforts proposed by Russia, US and the UK?<\/p>\n
JS: The whole point is that they (the international community) have been deeply involved for more than two years and they haven\u2019t succeeded in their objective, which is ultimately to overthrow the Syrian government \u2013 to bring it down. And so they\u2019re still kind of chanting the same refrain, but there\u2019s actually no possibility that the Syrian government can be brought down without direct intervention from outside governments. And the emphasis on Bashar al-Assad takes the emphasis where it should be, which is the Syrian army. Because the Syrian army is fighting \u2013 this is a national project. The foot soldiers in the Syrian army are mainly Sunni Muslims and, so, they have a national spirit. And that kind of refrain that the outside government should do more, should send in arms, should declare a no-fly zone are only going to worsen the situation.<\/p>\n
What we clearly need now is progress towards negotiating a solution, which is the path Obama has taken. And I think, in spite everything we\u2019ve seen in the last couple of weeks \u2013 the chemical weapons propaganda, the Israeli attack \u2013 that I don\u2019t think Obama is going allow himself to be drawn into this.<\/p>\n
RT: Turkey says it will take “every kind of measure” in response. What could that be?<\/p>\n
One has to take it seriously, but the fact is that [Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip] Erdogan is going to Washington this week and Syria will be on top of the agenda and my feeling is that Turkey won\u2019t do anything by itself \u2013 that if Obama won\u2019t bite, if he won\u2019t commit America to take a more involved position over Syria, I don\u2019t think that Turkey will do anything.<\/p>\n
Now, the key issue here is what kind of evidence are they going to come up with. Will they come up with any evidence that\u2019s going to convince us that this, in fact, was an action carried out by the Syrian intelligence services. So there are many many unknowns right now and, of course, everything is going to depend on the outcome of the talks in Wahington between Obama and Erdogan.<\/p>\n
via \u2018Turkey won\u2019t act on Syria without US blessing\u2019 \u2014 RT Op-Edge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Despite harsh rhetoric, Turkey won\u2019t take any action against the Syrian government of Bashar Assad without getting a go-ahead from Washington, Middle East expert, Jeremy Salt, told RT. Turkish authorities have detained nine people in connection with Saturday’s deadly car bombings in a town near the Syrian border. Two blasts killed 46 and injured over […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":70351,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[9163],"class_list":["post-70350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-syria","tag-reyhanli"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70350"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70350\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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