21st Century Wire says…
With the steady advance of the Syrian Army now signalling imminent fall of terrorist-held East Aleppo, a number of NATO-aligned actors are starting to break ranks from their previously restrained political speech. Apparently, this suits Turkey’s own Sultan of Swing, who is now back to his usual block and tackle diplomacy games, this time openly pitching for ‘regime change’ in Syria.
Earlier in the week, sensing the huge blow that the fall of East Aleppo will mean to his 5 year project to destabilize and designs on partitioning neighboring Syria, fiery President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (image, left) dropped a geopolitical bombshell when he stated that the reason his Turkish Military Forces had invaded Syria on Aug 24, 2016, was to ‘End the rule of President Bashar Assad,’ apparently exposing an open call from Ankara for ‘regime change’ by force. This, of course, would place Turkish actions in direct violation of every UN charter law and Geneva Accord (not that any of this matters to this Turkish government who is already in violation of such laws).
“We entered [Syria] to end the rule of the tyrant al-Assad who terrorizes with state terror. [We didn’t enter] for any other reason,” said Erdogan at the first Inter-Parliamentary Jerusalem Platform Symposium in Istanbul, as quoted by Hurriyet daily.
More than likely, this caustic rhetoric is designed to conceal Turkey’s territorial ambitions in Syria, cloaked in the typical humanitarian tropes such as, ‘ we just want to hand over power to the Syrian population.’
As expected, the US is completely mute on the issue, but Moscow is demanding some answers…
The Kremlin said on Wednesday that Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan’s statement that his forces in Syria were there to topple President Bashar al-Assad had come as a surprise to Moscow and that it expected an explanation from Ankara.
In a speech on Tuesday, Erdogan condemned what he said was the failure of the United Nations in Syria and cast Turkey’s incursion in August, when it sent tanks, fighter jets and special forces over the border, as an act of exasperation.
“We are there to bring justice. We are there to end the rule of the cruel Assad, who has been spreading state terror,” Erdogan said.
“The announcement really came as news to us,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on a conference call…
Continue this story at Reuters
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