"And I have found both freedom and safety in my madness, the freedom of loneliness and the safety from being understood, for those who understand us enslave something in us. But let me not be too proud of my safety. Even a Thief in a jail is safe from another thief. "

Khalil Gibran (How I Became a Madman)

Lübnan Marunîleri / Yasin Atlıoğlu

NEWS AND ARTICLES / HABERLER VE MAKALELER

Wednesday, August 08, 2012

Davutoglu: Betting on the Fall of Assad (Hüsnü Mahalli- Al-Akhbar)


It now appears that the political future of Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu very much depends on the fate of Syria. If the Assad regime falls, then Davutoglu may very well become prime minister. But if the regime survives, Turkey’s top diplomat will be scapegoated and possibly sacked.

Istanbul - Gursel Tekin, the deputy chairman of the opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), has predicted that the Turkish FM Ahmet Davutoglu will be sacked after implicating Turkey in the Syrian crisis. Tekin added that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is planning to get rid of Davutoglu soon.

For some time now, Davutoglu has been the target of sharp attacks by opposition parties and many media analysts, who blame him for the dismal failure of the Turkish policy in Syria, as he is the one responsible for devising and selling it to the prime minister.

Here, many cite the Turkish stance on Libya, where Erdogan had strongly opposed intervention by NATO and the West, and said that Turkey would not stand for it.

But a week later, the prime minister reversed course, after the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made a phone call to Davutoglu, and somehow managed to convince him to stand on Washington’s side in return for “large rewards” for Turkey and the Justice and Development Party (AKP).

Shortly thereafter, Ankara hurriedly set up camps for the Syrian refugees on its border, even before any had fled to Turkey.

Yet the biggest surprise came when Erdogan’s government gave the go-ahead to the Syrian opposition to hold its first conference in the city of Antalya, at the beginning of the uprising.
In fact, the Turkish involvement in Syria started in conjunction with Qatar and Saudi Arabia also entering the fray. Clearly, the Qataris and Saudis had lied to Davutoglu from the outset about the intricacies of the internal situation in Syria and their predictions for the regime’s impending collapse...

http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/davutoglu-betting-fall-assad