By Nalliah Thayabharan

 The role of Turkey to have al-Qaeda rule over Syria is pretty interesting. Of course, Erdogan has a long history in the Syrian Dirty War where he had openly backed the fundamentalist forces. Erdogan has now created a multinational terrorist organization and was able to organize them under one command to have al-Qaeda rule over Syria.

It’s interesting though that Erdogan had very good relations before with the Syrian president. In fact, he and his wife would go on vacation with the president of Syria and his wife. Their relations were closer than Iranian-Syrian relations.

Then Erdogan turned against Syria. He did it in coordination with the Israelis and the Americans so that they would support him to have al-Qaeda rule over Syria. So it’s a win-win situation for Erdogan and Netanyahu. They both win by having al-Qaeda rule over Syria which was the only country that was resisting Israel.

When Syria is broken, then Lebanon is surrounded and therefore it makes things a lot easier for the Israeli regime to end the resistance.

Islamic extremism has nothing to do with Islam. Islamic extremism is created by the US, NATO and Western countries. What we have now in Syria is Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), but before Hayat Tahrir al-Sham was Al-Nusra Front and before that was Al-Qaeda. The names change, but the organization is the same.

The Turkish government, which continues to send cheap Baku oil to Israel for the lat 14 months but never sent any relief to Gaza, and never gave Lebanon any support during the recent Israeli attacks.

Erdogan and Netanyahu decided to invade Syria, which was supporting Lebanon, hosting 500,000 Lebanese refugees and helping the Lebanese resistance.

New developments in Syria where Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) terrorists launched a large-scale attack on government forces and captured the country causing the largest shift in the balance of power since 2020 in the country where more than a decade of war has taken place. Battling Iran and the Russian backed Assad government, the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in a lightning offensive captured Syria.

It is important to note what happened in Syria in 2011, when the US had made a decision to overthrow the Syrian government.

The US used weapons from Libya when they overthrew the Libyan government and sent them to Istanbul to give them to their Al Qaeda allies in Syria. When Al Qaeda in Syria was receiving these arms, Iranian intelligence was stating very early on about this, but Western media and Western politicians were ridiculing the Iranian intelligence. But later, thanks to WikiLeaks, Jake Sullivan, who is now the US National Security Advisor, said in an email on February 12, 2012, that in Syria, Al Qaeda is on the US’s side.

So the US was using the terrorist organization that according to the US carried out 911, 10 years later to overthrow the Syrian government and also to overthrow the government in Libya where they were more successful.

Later on, Al Qaeda split into two groups. Now Al Qaeda is being supported by NATO countries. Foreign fighters were coming in from across the world, including Europe and North America, but also across the Arab world and Central Asia. The United States, the Europeans were also using an extraordinarily large amount of funding from oil and gas rich countries in the Persian Gulf. But the command centers for Al Qaedawere in Amman, in Jordan, and most importantly in Turkey.

In late 2011 Alister Crook who was an advisor to the head of the foreign policy head of the EU, said that the West is behind the dirty war in Syria because all the people who he knew in Pakistan who were commanding the events in Afghanistan are now in Istanbul. So the people who are involved in Afghanistan through Pakistan are now involved in Syria through Turkey. The US Defense Intelligence Agency document of 2012 that was released said that US allies in the region wanted to create a Salafist entity between Syria and Iraq to break the path between Syria and Iraq and isolate Syria even more.

What was that Salafist entity? It was ISIS. ISIS was a part of al-Qaeda. Until it broke away because of differences over how to organize. ISIS wanted the Islamic State of Iraq, created the Nusra part of the group, and then when it declared itself the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, then Nusra didn’t accept and they broke away.

So they had the same ideology and the current head of Hayat Tahiri Sham was in Al Qaeda and ISIS, and when he was the head of the Nusra Front, which changed the name to Hayat Tahir Rasham. They are not a part of Al Qaeda for public diplomacy purposes, for CNN purposes and so on.

So the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, later in an interview on Al Jazeera said that the US government supported this policy. Obama supported this saying what regional countries wanted to do to create a Salafist entity between Syria and Iraq.

So when people speak about Islamic extremism, this has nothing to do with Islam. Islamic extremism was created by the US, NATO and Western countries. Islamic extremism has nothing to do with Islam and it’s not indigenous to Islamic culture.

Then in a leaked audio, the US Secretary of State Kerry, said the US allowed so-called Syrian opposition troops ISIS to advance on Damascus. The fact is that ISIS and al Qaeda and their affiliates were a part of a dirty war by the West to undermine Syria. Back then, the Western media and Arabic media was demonizing the Syrian government. And also these al Qaeda groups carried out false flag operations, chemical weapons operations, and the West tried to blame Syria because they were with these terrorist groups. But there’s very good investigative journalism carried out by a number of people. Aaron Mate did a very good piece describing how this was a false flag operation and how the OPCW, which is a UN organized affiliated organization that deals with chemical weapons there, experts went to Syria. And the analysts who were in Syria said that the evidence doesn’t show it was the Syrian government. But when they went back to their organization, the politicians moved them from the team, from the report writing, and they wrote the report blaming Syria. There’s a lot of evidence for this, and please read Aaron Matthey’s work on this matter to know about this. But in any case these extreme terrorist groups were supported by the West, but the Western media was supporting them and the Arabic media was supporting them because the Arabic media is owned by these oil rich regimes for the most part.

And the White Helmets, which was created by British intelligence, were working side by side with Al Qaeda, the Nusra and Hayat Tahir al-Sham. What we have now is Hayat Tahir Sham, but before that Nusra and before Nusra that was Al-Qaeda. The names change, but the organization is the same. They keep changing the label, but it’s the same thing. So the so-called white helmets that the West was always speaking about and in Hollywood they were trying to promote them. Their office was right beside the central office in Eastern Aleppo, when they occupied Aleppo as Hayat Tahrir al-Shamur, the Al-Qaeda group.

So the West created a huge public diplomacy apparatus to support these al Qaeda and ISIS terrorists and their affiliates because of Israel since all U.S. policy in southwest Asia is centered around Israel. That’s why they can carry out a Holocaust in Gaza and get away with it. That’s why they can carry out genocidal attacks on Lebanon.

Nothing happens. No one is punished. No one is sanctioned. No country is sanctioned because everything is being done for the sake of Israel, basically. Netanyahu was the chief promoter of the war on Iraq, and the United States invaded Iraq, and the United States, as a result, Spent trillions of dollars, wasted trillions of dollars and killed over a million people. But since Israel wanted it, they didn’t.

These Al Qaeda extremists are Western backed. These extremists are very cruel and dangerous people. They have a horrific background. They
slaughter innocent people. They consider everyone who does not think like them to be worthy of death. And they would carry out very ugly executions. And they have done some already on this occasion, even though they’re trying to promote themselves in a different way, but they’re the same people.

So what happened recently? There’s a war going on in Gaza. Not a war, but a genocide supported by the West. Day and night, women and children are slaughtered. The axis of resistance was trying to stop the genocide – Ansarullah in Yemen, who blocked the Red Sea so that to put pressure on the Israeli regime to stop it, and the Iraqis who fire missiles and drones at the Israeli regime to put pressure on them to stop the genocide. But the third was Hezbollah. Hezbollah began on October the 8th when they knew that the Israeli regime was about to carry out a genocide. They began to attack Israel because the Israelis were saying we’re going to cut off the water for everyone, the food, the electricity, the fuel. That’s what the Minister of Defense said. We’re going to cut off everything. We’re going to starve them. And then the Prime Minister called the Palestinians Amanik. which in biblical terms was a tribe which was completely wiped out, including their children and animals. And the president said that there are no innocents in Gaza. So it was obvious that the intention was genocide from day one.

And all the lies about Israeli children being beheaded and the rapes of Israely women, all was that these lies were there, were carried out in order to enable this genocide. So Hezbollah saw this coming and they began attacking Israeli troops on the border to draw away part of the army from Gaza to prevent them from wiping out the population. And they did this for a year until the Israeli regime attacked Lebanon and sought revenge. So Hezbollah was in a very painful war where every time they’d win on the battlefield, the Israelis would bomb cities. We saw that they destroyed southern Beirut. They destroyed Baalbek. They destroyed towns and villages, especially communities that were supporting the resistance.

Hezbollah would hold them on the border. The Israelis failed to make any inroads into Lebanon, which was extraordinary. And the biggest heroes in this whole year and two months is Hezbollah because they willingly made sacrifices to save the children in Gaza.

So when there was finally a ceasefire in Lebanon and the Americans put pressure and Netanyahu needed a ceasefire because the Israeli army was exhausted and they had many casualties, the next day this attack on Syria began.

Netanyahu said that we need to deal with the so-called Iran threat, and the Israelis constantly threatened Syria. Before this assault by Al Qaeda, which was organized by Erdogan, the Israelis bombed all of the connecting routes between Lebanon and Syria so that Hezbollah couldn’t go to the aid of the Syrian people against these groups. And then the assault began.

So the Israeli regime carries out the genocide with oil coming through Turkey and they do trade and they have diplomatic relations. And when the Israeli regime was thinking about attacking Lebanon, the president of Turkey, Erdogan, said we will send troops to Lebanon to support Lebanon. But he never sent troops, he never sent anything. He did trade with his friends and then he invaded Syria. So what does that say about Erdogan? The Turkish government, which was cooperating with the Israeli regime decided to invade Syria, which was supporting Lebanon, which was hosting 500,000 Lebanese refugees and helping the resistance.

Turkey will have a very difficult time with Syria, with Al Qaeda in the realm. It will create great difficulty, and not just in Syria, but across the region. It will have implications that will be very difficult for countries across the region. But Turkey for first and foremost, first of all, Al Qaeda is not going to improve the lives of the Syrians. Maybe Qatar will give them some money to do some things because they are also supporting the terrorists.  Paying terrorists is one thing, but running a state is another, especially when it’s under such severe sanctions by the United States. And the United States is not going to remove sanctions, even for Al-Qaeda. Why? Because the United States doesn’t want a strong Syria since Israel doesn’t want a strong Syria. It doesn’t matter who’s in charge. They want a broken and fragmented Syria. They want a broken Lebanon. They want a weakened broken Jordan. That’s why Jordan is so weak. That is why Egypt is so weak.

So Syria, which was the only country that was resisting Israel,has to be broken. And of course, if Syria is broken, then Lebanon is surrounded and therefore it makes things a lot easier for the Israeli regime to end the resistance.

So in a sense, the fall of the Syrian government is great news for for both Israel and for Erdogan. But it would be terrible news for the region, even though there are quite a few people who are now supporting these terrorists, because they’re influenced by Arabic media in the region, which is trying to give a positive image of these terrorists to the public.

Having an al-Qaeda rule over Syria is part of the original Netanyahu plan who laid out seven countries in the Middle East and across Africa which should be toppled. And later General Wesley Clark confirmed that it was Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Iran. Iraq, Sudan, Yemen, these were the countries that should go.

The northeastern part is held by Kurdish nationalist forces backed by the US, but these forces are opposed by Turkey. Of course Turkey wants to use Al Qaeda to balance them kind of some kind of balance of forces game there.

The US is illegally occupying 30% of Syria and stealing the oil and the grain for years. The US is starving the Syrian people by stealing their oil and grain. It is extraordinary that American soldiers in northeastern Syria protect oil wells so that the oil can be taken out of Syria and sold. And the Syrian people are under extreme sanctions and starvation and their oil is being openly stolen by an illegal U.S. presence.

Erdogan is responsible for murders of hundreds of thousands of Syrians. The West likes to say that Assad killed hundreds of thousands of his own people. No, it was Erdogan who’s killed more, who’s more responsible for the death sentence here than any individual, even the Americans and Israelis, because it was done through his territory. It was done through his border. He cooperated. There was a Lebanese journalist, Serena Shim, who was investigating how near Einul, the Turkish government was sending ISIS troops and ISIS weapons, through World FoodOrganization trucks into Syria.  Then Turkish intelligence said that she’s a terrorist or she’s a spy and murdered her. She was an American Lebanese with two kids. The American embassy did nothing.

No investigation, no call for investigation. Why? Because she was reporting what was back then being hidden from the world, that Turkey was supporting ISIS and Al Qaeda.

Now Erdogan decided to go ahead with invading Syria once again. Repeating what he did in 2011, 12 and 13.

In Syria, Sunni people are influential in the private sector. Aleppo is a Sunni city. They’re Christians. They’re Druze. The Shia is actually the smallest group – not a significant number – 1 % to 2%. And then there are the Kurds. Syria is a mixed country with a great deal of diversity.

But these terrorists don’t accept diversity. They’re ISIS. They killed more Sunnis in Iraq and Syria than any other community. They’ve slaughtered Sunnis.

The reason why the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces came in to support the Syrian government was because Turkey and Jordan, with the help of NATO and others, brought in tens of thousands of foreign fighters.

Hezbollah entered the battle in Syria in mid 2013. By that time, there were already tens of thousands of foreign fighters brought into Syria, and then Iran began to get involved. And then in 2015, the Russians began to get involved.  This has nothing to do with Shia and Sunni. Otherwise, the key issue in the region is the Palestinian people who are Sunni. All the sacrifices that the resistance is making is for the sake of the Palestinian people. Otherwise, Hezbollah, they can just live their lives in Lebanon and ignore the Palestinians. Ansarullah could have cut a deal with the Americans in Yemen. Hezbollah could have cut even a better deal with the Americans. So no, it doesn’t make any sense.

And the bulk of the martyrs of Syria who fought against these extremist groups were Sunni. These groups are NATO backed. They are the people that NATO created, and Wahhabism is not traditionally central to Sunni Islam. It was an ideology that was predominant in an area in the Arabian Peninsula called Najd. But because of oil wealth and because of the Saudi-US alliance, it was promoted by the Saudis, and that’s what they were promoting in Afghanistan. In fact, the University of Nebraska, Omaha, they were the first ones to publish Takfiri literature for school children in Afghanistan. When, first of all, the Americans supported extremist groups in Afghanistan to induce a Soviet invasion. Many people don’t know that. They gave funding to these extremists in Afghanistan in order to encourage the Soviet Union to invade the country. So they sacrificed Afghanistan in order to create Vietnam for the Soviet Union.

The first books that were published, school books for children, Takfiri books were published in the United States by the United States, an American university. And then of course the Saudis came in and began to spend more money and the madrassas became. And then, this extremism became a problem, not just in Afghanistan, but in Pakistan, a very moderate Sunni country, conservative, moderate Sunni. But. When you have all of this oil wealth coming in, when you have these mosques, brand new mosques with all this oil money, whether in Pakistan or anywhere else in the world, how can other Muslim organizations compete with this oil money coming from the Persian Gulf?

So in any case, the point is that this is not Sunni Islam.  ISIS does not represent Sunni Islam. Al Qaeda does not represent Sunni Islam. And that is why they’re sponsored by the West. There is a famous photograph of Mujahideen leaders from Afghanistan going to the White House during the Reagan administration. This was back in the days where communism had to be toppled, and so the Mujahideens were trained. They never knew they were to later turn against the Americans.

Not all the people who resisted in Afghanistan were extremists. When the Soviet Union invaded, they were legitimately people legitimately defending their country. But there are those who are getting money from the CIA. There are those who are getting money from the Western intelligence agencies.

What happened in Syria is an illegitimate terror organization that is being promoted by Erdogan and his allies. And the West will not do anything in Syria or in the region that goes against Israeli regime interests.

The recent article in the Wall Street Journal where they cited some of their leading think tank scholars, who think this is a Saigon moment for Russia and Iran.

And the foreign minister of Russia also said that Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) is a terrorist organization. Now Turkey and Israel helped to have al-Qaeda rule over Syria. And the West is trying to legitimize this. They’re trying to present them as moderate.

Well, it’s quite clear that the West stands with al-Qaeda, Israel stands with al-Qaeda, and Erdogan stands with al-Qaeda. And those who are supporting Erdogan in the region are either very naive people who believe this propaganda and who don’t know the backstory and they don’t have the information, or they are Sinister people, and there are quite a few of them, but ordinary people can not be fooled.

It’s difficult to say where this will go at this stage because Western media and regional media is on the side of Al Qaeda, but also it’s very clear that social media is being manipulated by the United States to spread the voices of Al-Qaeda and their supporters.  It’s quite clear how the psychological warfare is being carried out and also how the voices are being exaggerated.  We’ve seen how social media has been used as a tool against Iran, Russia, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh in the past.

When there’s unrest in Iran, Iran would be at the top of the global news, it would be trending across the world. Obviously, it was intensified by Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

And then when you have the Holocaust in Gaza, it often not even there wouldn’t be trends even though people are speaking about it every day. So it wouldn’t be trending. So it’s obvious that Western media, social media and regional media owned by these oil and gas rich regimes that are close to the United States are with this and of course. in Turkey because Erdogan is his partner in the government is a right wing fanatical party. And they believe in reviving the Ottoman Empire, that he is a sort of contradictory person. On the one hand, he’s speaking of Islam and on the other hand, he’s speaking about Turkish nationalism, the both did not work together. They’re like oil and water.

The Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) also is now talking about Syrian nationalism. Yes, exactly. So terrorist groups from Uzbekistan and Tajikistan and elsewhere and speaking about Syrian nationalism. So you have these extraordinary contradictions at play.

But it’s still too early to say what will happen.

Given Trump’s new appointment to the Middle East, Mike Waltz as the national security advisor who is an extreme Zionist is a very racist hawk. He blames Iran about the assassination plot for Donald Trump, but he’s also has said that Israelis should go on and finish the genocide so that Iran can be taught a lesson.

And Trump is not more pro-Israel than Biden. Biden called himself a Zionist. And the people who run the US government,  foreign policy for sure, are the Secretary of State, a Zionist supremacist, and Jake Sullivan, these two people, their loyalty is to Israel, not to the United States. They’re the ones in charge. Their ideology is clear that their top priority is Israel, not the United States. So Trump cannot be more extreme than them, but he’s no better. But people voted for Trump because he was speaking against the wars.

The United States that we see today is just this regime that carries out war after war, that supports genocide after genocide, that supports terror, death and destruction across the world, and preaches to us as it does it.