Two Views on… The Middle East Today

Turkish Review

As the world witnesses a reshaping of the Middle East, Turkish Review discusses developments in the region with two experts: Andrew Hammond, policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) and author of ‘The Islamic Utopia: The Illusion of Reform in Saudi Arabia,’ and Dr. Rola el-Husseini of the Middle East and Middle Eastern American Center (MEMEAC) and author of ‘Pax Syriana: Elite Politics in Postwar Lebanon’
Turkish Review: How would you evaluate the state of the Middle East today?

Andrew Hammond: It is the midst of a painful process of reconfiguration. The post-colonial regimes lasted a long time, partly because they had honed their legitimacy discourses internally, perfected police state oppression and knew how to win, sooner or later, Western support. All three factors interacted to keep them in place beyond their sell-by date. Things reached a climax with the Arab uprisings. Their obituary has been written by everyone and their mother -- everyone has an opinion -- but who expected such a historic upheaval to pass easily, just like that? Four years into the French Revolution the fun was just beginning. Historical processes are convoluted by their very nature. In this case, the political and financial powers involved, and the regional and international interventions, are really massive. Since we’re dealing with deformed Frankenstein states -- products of colonialism and its effort to not just maintain borders and regimes but, since the 19th century, mangle their experience of modernity through on the one hand chastising political backwardness while on the other holding back economic and industrial development -- it’s no surprise that the interests involved in keeping regimes chugging along as before 2011 are throwing everything they have at saving their skins. Who would have imagined: A Gulf-backed coup in Egypt, Gulf countries funding their favorite militias in Libya and engaging in air raids, and regional connivance in destroying Syria -- where it’s not just Iran and Russia to blame as cheerleaders and facilitators, it’s Saudi Arabia and Qatar, too.

TR: You mention Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Why do you think such states have been involved unexpectedly in the conflict? What has prompted their involvement?

AH: In the conflict in Syria? It happened in both cases in stages. In Qatar’s case, there was a conviction -- particularly under Sheikh Hamad (who stood down in 2013) -- that Qatar had a role to promote revolutionary change, but one: outside the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), and two: Preferably if the Muslim Brotherhood or its allies around the region could be a beneficiary. The Qataris issued public advice to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to listen to his people when the protests first started but when he didn’t, it was striking how Qatar and its [television] channel Al Jazeera immediately turned on him -- and he had been a friend of the emir. In Saudi Arabia’s case, the government’s first and natural reaction was to support the Syrian government in the face of street protests since Saudi Arabia did not want such a thing to happen on its own turf. But by the summer of 2011, after months of extreme violence by the Syrian government, Saudi Arabia switched and issued a statement condemning the “killing machine” of Assad. The Saudis saw a chance to hit back at Iran after losing its ally, former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak -- after “losing Egypt,” as they saw it. They could have a war against Assad in Syria, bring him down and, while they were at it, help bury the Arab Spring in blood and chaos. So one wanted to be the Arab Spring hero (Qatar) for its own ends, and the other saw an opportunity to kill the Arab Spring for its own ends.

TR: What is the source of the conflict in Yemen? Was it expected?

AH: I don’t think Saudi intervention on this scale and at this point in time was expected. I think the disintegration following the removal of former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh and the dismantling of the network of the interests involved in his rule should have been expected, and probably was in some way by most who thought about it. Yemen inherits a complex situation historically -- a socialist system inheriting the British colonial territories in one part, a system of tribes in another and a relationship between Zaydi and Shafi social and religious organizations stretching over 1,000 years, then a secular republican effort to synthesize all of that which quickly dissolved into something else under Saleh’s long rule, with Saudi support. It’s a cliché, but the richest countries in terms of culture, history and human potential were not blessed with the resources to match; or rather, the resources that lead to overnight wealth and power were in the hands of others. Those others could have done so much to make Yemen a different country. There is something obscene in seeing one of the richest countries in the world -- or let’s say, to be more precise, one of the richest regimes -- bombing one of the poorest. Instead of helping Yemen, the Saudi regime has sought to weaken it, consistently, over decades.

TR: How would you evaluate the Saudi-led coalition’s air strikes against Shiite Houthi rebels? What do you think the strikes could achieve?

AH: Without a political resolution soon, the air strikes will generate resentment against Saudi Arabia and sympathy for the Houthis as representatives of the nation. There’s kind of a Hamas-Israel psychology here. To a degree there are domestic reasons for this that need to be factored in for the operation to make sense, just as with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Few thought he would bring down Hamas, or that he thought he would bring down Hamas, so perhaps he had other calculations in mind. You have a new branch of “The Family” in charge; despite all attempts to shove the Arab Spring under the carpet, we are very much living in the Spring era -- there is domestic discontent, many people from rights or political backgrounds have been thrown in jail with outrageously long terms and the war in Syria has so far failed to bring down Iran’s ally. Saudi King Salman has decided to ditch former King Abdullah’s framework of liberal reform, which had its roots in the Sept. 11 debacle for Saudi Arabia, for a conservative back-to-basics Salafi conservatism as the color in which he wraps his rule. The billionaire gerontocracy, to use Juan Cole’s phrase, has decided that that’s the best PR slogan to ensure its safety for the coming period. Killing some Rafida in Yemen fits with that scheme; it keeps the Wahhabi Salafi base happy.

TR: Is current Yemeni President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi a legitimate leader?

AH: His legitimacy suffers from being taken under the Saudi wing and run out of the capital and run out of the country. The narrative depicting the Houthis as puppets of Iran could help him survive and rebuild his status in the event of a Saudi-engineered return. But while Iranian links to the Houthis exist, it’s hard to tell at what level exactly amid the cacophony of paranoid propaganda from Saudi mouthpieces, plus the Houthis seem to tap into something in the north so the idea of excising them as a military, social and political force and then reinstalling Hadi without resistance seems naïve.

TR: A Houthi official reportedly warned the coalition that it risks provoking a wider war. Do you see this outcome as likely?

AH: Houthi backers are likely to play their cards carefully, to wait out the results of this round of fighting and take it from there. So in that sense I don’t see a wider war; I see a series of conflicts, of which this one is just another chapter.

TR: How would you evaluate the possibility of the Islamic State getting involved in the Yemeni conflict?

AH: They would like to, as various videos going around indicate. The “other” group is already there. At first, they would have been waiting to see if the Saudi air strikes change anything politically on the ground, whether through negotiations or by bombing the Houthis into irrelevance. The Saudi campaign has transpired to be an opportunity for Jihadi Salafism in Yemen, and Saudi Arabia is happy with that -- to have a militia against the militia (Houthis). And if “their” militia also happens to despise Al Saud, that doesn’t matter for now. It’s manageable.

TR: The self-proclaimed ‘state’ in the Middle East, the ‘Islamic State,’ has been widely criticized and condemned, with the UN, various governments and mainstream Muslim groups refusing to acknowledge it. Is there a possibility that it could gain legitimacy by the will of people or by force?

AH: I very much doubt it. It is a product of many things but one of them is ungoverned space. As long as instability reigns in Syria and Iraq it will have room to be and do something. Islamic State has provoked a huge amount of commentary -- it has provoked and sustained a whole industry --but I suspect much of it will be seen in the light of history as misplaced. In the meantime, it provides hours of fun for neo-Orientalist dissecting of Islam and modernity.
TR: Would you elaborate on this idea of ‘neo-Orientalist dissecting of Islam and modernity’?

AH: Islamic State has provoked a huge amount of comment on the nature of Islam; is it a modern religion, does it have a fundamental “problem” of violence and texts incompatible with modernity, is Islamic State “Islamic,” is Islamic State more “Islamic” than anyone else, do all Muslims need to condemn Islamic State … There are so many problems with all of this. If it’s Islamic or not doesn’t matter -- they can be Muslims but be in the wrong; there’s no need this for this obsessive discussion, which operates on the assumption that if we can’t prove they are not Muslims, then they must represent Islam more than anybody else. The discussion also reflects a kind of text-fetishization that implies that if a text says “A” or “B,” then all Muslims must believe it and act on it. Doctrinal division and argumentation within the tradition we call Islam is huge.

The reality of Muslims all over the world is so incredibly diverse. And do they all even have to take their Islam as the first element in their identity? In the West, these discussions assume that the Muslim is the guy with the beard and the woman with the veil. What about all those who don’t dress like that, or who do not demonstrate any public -- or even private -- signifiers that they are Muslim? Plus, the factors that lead someone to Syria and Islamic State could include many things, not just their religion. Why does anyone have to prove to a non-Muslim that they are civilized by condemning Islamic State? I would assume anyone was against the group unless told otherwise. I would expect some of these assumptions from some people who have jumped into this huge global free-for-all about a major world religion, in all its historical and cultural diversity and richness, because they don’t know that much about it, but from some others it has been a surprise; scholars who should have known better, or who seem a little too tied to Islamic trends like Salafism that are so desperate to claim a monopoly on Islam to say that they represent normative Sunni Islam at least.

***
TR: How would you evaluate the state of the Middle East today?

Rola el-Husseini: In the aftermath of the Arab uprisings, the Middle East is undergoing major changes in the composition of the states and their elites. The demise of authoritarian regimes has not, in the majority of countries, led to the emergence of democratic regimes. We can distinguish three types of states in the aftermath of the so-called “Arab Spring”: States where we saw regime change, such as Egypt and Tunisia, and that started a transition to democracy; states where regime change led to a collapse of order and civil war -- Libya and Yemen; and states where regime change did not take place because of foreign intervention -- Syria and Bahrain.

TR: Among the states you’ve mentioned, Tunisia seems to be the only success story following a regime change. What reasons would you see behind it?
RH: Tunisia remains the only success story of the Arab uprisings. Egypt’s transition was aborted through a counter-revolution with the coup d’état of Field Marshal Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in July 2013. These two countries are the ones with the most homogenous populations, whether ethnically or religiously, and they are the ones with a strong sense of national identity. In many ways, they are true nation-states, having developed in the 19th century under the rule of the Beys in Tunisia and the Khedives in Egypt. The location of these countries on the periphery of the Ottoman Empire allowed them to develop autonomous rule. Simultaneously, they remained at least nominally vassals of the sultan. While French and British rule, direct or indirect, from the late 1800s to the mid-20th century might have disrupted the long-established clerical bureaucratic traditions in these countries, the fact remains that they developed strong state institutions.

One of the most important of these institutions is the military, especially as officers were often behind the coups or revolutions that led to independence. Indeed, they often used revolutionary legitimacy to strengthen their claim on power. Military rule has therefore been prevalent in the region since independence, even when on the surface a civilian is in charge. However, many of these leaders have “civilianized” at the symbolic level, such as dropping military titles and getting out of uniform.

Arab armies were originally looked upon positively, especially by Western observers: They were seen as a modernizing force and an instrument of change. It was believed they could bring out a sense of citizenship and encourage modern values such as secularism. In retrospect, that did not happen: Arab states were unable to create common national values. Allegiance to the state competes with primordial ties (clan, communal, religious solidarity). This obstructed the armies’ attempts to create a national ideology and unified political culture.

In the past few decades, armies have grown considerably in size. Defense also accounts for a large part of the state budget (not counting special expenditures). The military devours the budgets of most Arab states. The military proportion of GDP is one of the highest in the world. During that period, we saw some states develop paramilitary forces -- usually drawn from the minority groups in power and used to control sectors of the civilian population not incorporated in the political bargain.

The role of the military in Arab uprisings cannot be understated. Indeed, the survival of authoritarian regimes facing domestic uprisings usually depends decisively on the loyalty of the military. In the cases of Tunisia and Egypt, the military refrained in general from outright repression of the mass protests and maintained in general a non-interventionist attitude. In these cases, the military’s allegiance was to the state, not to the regime itself.

TR: Would you tell us more about the military’s role in Egyptian society and how it stepped in to overthrow the democratically elected President Mohamed Morsi, even though it had to relinquish power to Morsi first?

RH: After independence in Egypt, the military became the most important state institution, with a budget of about 25 percent of state expenditure from the mid-1960s to the mid-1990s, with spikes during periods of war and a personnel of over 400,000 men, making it one of the largest armies in the Middle East. All Egyptian presidents since the revolution of 1952 have been former military officers. The military serves as an important socialization agent in the Egyptian society, providing the soldiers with a sense of identity and creating a sense of national loyalty. The military also owns a good portion of the industry, and has always been a powerful force in the country’s economy. Economic experts estimate the military’s holdings at anywhere between 10 to 40 percent of Egypt's entire economy.

The role of the Egyptian military after the toppling of Hosni Mubarak consisted of attempts to replace rather than remove the previous regime. Many of the pillars of the Mubarak regime were initially kept by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), headed by Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, who had served as minister of defense under Mubarak. The SCAF only relinquished power after the election of Morsi to the presidency. The Morsi presidency lasted one year only, and the coup of July 2013 did not come as a surprise for many observers of the Egyptian political scene: When the military felt its interests threatened, it quickly stepped in and overthrew the democratically elected president. It is important to point out here that President Morsi was overreaching. Had he been a savvier political actor, he might have been able to coexist peacefully with the military until he had consolidated his party’s hold on power, as Recep Tayyip Erdoğan did in Turkey in his first few years in the premiership.

TR: How do the dynamics of Tunisia differ?

RH: In Tunisia, the military was not as important an institution. Former President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali did not have deep roots in this organization, despite his stint as a staff officer. Ben Ali had transformed the country into a police state and mainly relied on the security and intelligence forces to suppress opponents and secure his hold on power. Perhaps his career in the Military Security Department, which he established and ran for 10 years, and then his time as general director of national security, had convinced him of the primacy of the security apparatus over the military. Ben Ali deliberately weakened the army, subordinated it to the security apparatus and cut it from the patronage networks. It is therefore not surprising that the army sided with the demonstrators because it had no stake in the survival of Ben Ali’s regime.
TR: Was it the weakness of state institutions in Libya and Yemen that made them vulnerable to division?

RH: While some of the other uprising states have successfully undergone regime change, in Libya and Yemen the overthrow of the autocrats has shown the weakness of state institutions and the inability of these states to maintain their monopoly on the legitimate use of force. It is important to note that the armies of both these countries were divided during the uprising. In these states, the loyalty of the army was to the regime, not the nation-state, which is why these armies were divided along sectarian, tribal and regional cleavages once the regime was ousted.

The Libyan army disintegrated almost immediately after the start of the uprising because of deep divisions and rapid large-scale defections. Indeed, four months into the uprising, the Libyan military had allegedly shrunk to somewhere between 10,000- 20,000 soldiers, from its original 51,000 men. The military reacted in three ways to the uprising: Individual desertions, especially of rank and file soldiers; unit disintegration, as whole units defected to join the revolutionaries; and continued allegiance to the regime. The majority of Libyan soldiers chose the first option. Those who remained loyal to the regime were mainly members of the so-called Khamis Brigade, commanded by Muammar Qaddafi’s son Khamis Qaddafi.

TR: So, you weren’t surprised by the breakdown of the armed forces in Libya…

RH: The breakdown of the Libyan armed forces was not a surprise. The Libyan state had suffered through over 40 years of Muammar Qaddafi’s rule, who -- as a former military officer --understood the danger the army represented to his government. He therefore made sure to coup-proof his regime by quickly purging all officers above the rank of colonel in the first few years following his accession to the presidency. This, however, did not prevent a coup attempt in 1975 by two members of the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC). After that event, Qaddafi’s relationship with the military remained ambivalent and after he started the implementation of his vision for the Jamahiriya (republic of the masses), he abolished the RCC in 1977.

This so-called “popular rule” applied only to areas that were not crucial for state survival. The armed forces, the police, the petroleum sector and foreign policy remained under Qaddafi’s immediate control. The regime also soon developed a parallel structure to popular rule, the revolutionary committees, whose primary purpose was to protect the regime. These revolutionary committees soon infiltrated the military -- a move that proved prescient as four coup attempts were staged between 1983 and 1993. In the 1990s, the regime resorted to the Revolutionary Guard Corps rather than the military to suppress any form of popular dissent. The regime also followed the Arab dictator’s playbook by creating parallel security structures to counter the threat of the army and by promoting officers linked to the leader through tribal or regional origin.

These actions show not only Qaddafi’s fear of the military but also how he resented the state and sought to undermine if not abolish it. The Jamahiriya was certainly his attempt at de-institutionalizing the Libyan state.
 
TR: What was the situation in the Yemeni army during the uprising?

RH: The Yemeni army was divided during the uprising, with the defection of many of Yemen’s most senior generals who sided with the protesters. This brought the country to the brink of civil war. However, conflict was avoided with the GCC deal that gave former President Ali Abdullah Saleh immunity and paved the way for a transition to a new regime. In August 2012, key state institutions were restructured and significant changes in the military and security sector took place in an attempt to purge these institutions of loyalists to the previous regime. The relatives and allies of toppled President Saleh were removed from key positions in the military and security forces. It is important to note that Saleh had followed Saddam Hussein’s model and built a range of parallel organizations, the majority headed by his relatives. The most important of these paramilitary organs was the Republican Guard, which had been commanded by Saleh’s eldest son since 1999.

TR: In two countries that saw large-scale demonstrations, namely Bahrain and Syria, were the majority of people demanding regime change?

RH: No, they weren’t; however, the popular demands quickly changed after the brutal reaction of the regime. These countries are still ruled today by regimes that have lost legitimacy among large swathes of their populations. These are minority-controlled regimes whose armies remained loyal and have so far been successful in ensuring the survival of the regime.

In Bahrain, a Shia-majority state ruled by a Sunni royal family, the Shia are not allowed to hold jobs in the army and security apparatus, nor are they able to access senior government positions. This exclusion from public sector jobs is an institutionalized form of discrimination that has led to resentment on the part of the Shia community. Inspired by the events unfolding in Tunisia and Egypt, Bahrainis took to the streets in February 2011 and congregated around Pearl Roundabout in a peaceful protest.

Although the majority of the protesters were Shia, this was not initially a sectarian protest and the demonstrators were mainly demanding political and social reform. The security forces’ heavy-handed responses and the killing of numerous peaceful demonstrators infuriated the protesters. While the protesters in Bahrain were not originally demanding the overthrow of the regime, the brutality of the suppression quickly morphed the protesters’ demands, who then started calling for regime change. A month after the start of the mass protests, Saudi-led GCC forces crossed the King Fahd Causeway from Saudi Arabia into Bahrain to offer support to the ruling family in Bahrain. Popular dissent was therefore brutally repressed.

The king of Bahrain then commissioned an official report to look at accusations of human rights abuses. The investigation was led by Cherif Bassiouni, an Egyptian-American human rights expert. The resulting report condemned government troops for use of excessive force and suggested that torture was deliberately used as a tool to quell protests by several government agencies.

The reaction of the security forces in Bahrain, which was very different to the actions of the armies in Tunisia and Egypt, was not surprising. The Bahraini armed and security forces are mainly composed of foreigners, Sunni Arabs and Pakistanis, who are directly beholden to the ruling family, which pays their salaries and has in some cases effected “political naturalizations” of these mercenaries.

TR: In Syria?

RH: In Syria the regime has been led by the Alawi minority and the Assad family since the corrective movement in 1970, a coup that toppled the traditional leaders of the Baath Party and brought two Alawi officers, Hafez al-Assad and Salah Jadid, to power. Assad became the sole ruler of Syria in 1971 when he incarcerated Jadid until his death in 1993. Assad’s rule was based on an alliance between the Alawis and other minorities on one hand and rural Sunnis on the other.

When Assad passed away in 2000, he managed a feat that other Arab dictators -- such as Saddam Hussein, Qaddafi and especially Mubarak -- started dreaming of afterward, namely, creating a ruling dynasty in a state that is nominally a republic. Bashar al-Assad succeeded his father as president of Syria and as commander in chief of the Syrian armed forces, a position that he had to acquire an overnight promotion to field marshal to be able to assume.

In his first years in power, Assad flirted with political reform. This encouraged the opposition to present its demands and between 2000-2001 Syria saw a brief period of political opening that came to be known as the “Damascus Spring.” This opening was soon shut down and Bashar moved from presenting himself as reformer to projecting instead the image of a modernizer. Like his father, Bashar’s rule is based on a social contract between the Alawis and other small minorities on one side and some segments of the majority Sunni population, especially the mainly Sunni business elite. However, while the Sunnis were given free rein over the economy, Assad and his circles maintained their command of the institutions that could threaten Alawi power over the state, namely the armed forces and the security apparatus.

The Syrian army is made up of conscripts and career soldiers. At the start of the Syrian uprising, active personnel in the armed forces were estimated at 300,000, with an additional 300,000 men in the reserves. Paramilitary forces were estimated to be around 100,000 men. The majority of conscripts are Sunnis, but Alawis are estimated to make up 70 percent of the career soldiers and 80 percent of the officer corps is Alawi. In addition, the paramilitary forces were also mainly composed of Alawis. For example, the Republican Guard, established by Hafez al-Assad in 1976, was tasked with the protection of the regime and guarding against internal threats. The Guard’s officers and soldiers are today almost entirely Alawi; however, the Guards included Sunni leadership at the outset of the conflict. The Special Forces also serve as a regime protection force; however, the relatively consistent level of defections from the Special Forces in 2011-2012 suggests that they included a large percentage of Sunni soldiers and junior officers.

Bashar al-Assad’s reliance on a small core of trusted military units limited his ability to control all of Syria but he hedged against defections and loss in areas under government control by deploying only the most loyal troops against the rebels. However, defections and attrition have plagued the army, now in its fifth year of combat. The number of defectors allegedly reached 100,000 men per year later and the defections led to the creation of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) in July 2011. In February 2015, the FSA was estimated to comprise 40,000-60,000 men. Nevertheless, the emergence of the Islamic State group marked the beginning of the end for the FSA, which is disintegrating. The FSA was never successful because it did not receive the financial or military support it was promised by the international community.

To balance against losses to the FSA and other opposition groups and to reinforce the army, Assad has used pro-government paramilitary groups or militias. The most well-known is the Alawi shabiha, led by extended members of the Assad family. In addition, local defense forces supported by the Syrian military, known as Popular Committees, are taking on an increasingly important role in the country’s conflict. These were organized initially as neighborhood defense organizations to protect pro-government or politically neutral neighborhoods. They are generally armed with light weapons and unlike the shabiha are not generally deployed in battle outside their area of residence.

There is no kinetic solution to the Syrian conflict. It looks like Syria will remain mired in civil war for the foreseeable future and that the Assad regime will be unable to assume control over the entirety of Syrian territory. For now, Syria is roughly divided into areas controlled by the opposition, areas ruled by the so-called Islamic State and areas controlled by the Assad government. These include the north western part of Syria and the areas around Damascus, in addition to the strategic central corridor which links Damascus to Homs and Hama. Control over the corridor is accomplished with help from regional allies including Hezbollah and Iran.

TR: In conclusion, what do you think the uprisings have shown in the region?

RH: The uprisings have demonstrated the weakness of the state in the region.
Many reasons are offered for this weakness; however, the most important is probably the role of colonial powers and their policies in the days before these newly formed states gained independence in the 20th century. The colonial powers’ policies of divide et impera played on ethnic, tribal and sectarian divisions to secure colonial rule and these schisms are still playing out today. Societal cleavages based on tribal (Libya) or ethnic (Syria, Bahrain) or a combination thereof (Yemen) have emerged to the fore in some of these countries because these societies lack institutionalization and are mainly based on systems of patronage.

Scholars like Ussama Makdisi have argued that sectarianism in the region is not primordial but constructed by European colonialism and Orientalism. This sectarianism is rearing its ugly head in a new format after the Iraq invasion of 2003. It is now an apparent Sunni-Shia split and while mounting Sunni-Shia hatred in the region might be increasingly clear at the popular level, I believe that the division actually hides jockeying for power on the part of important regional players including Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

In addition to an increasingly intensifying Saudi-Iranian rivalry, regional and international interference is being played out through proxies on the territories of some of these states, further demonstrating their weakness. While Bahrain has stabilized for the moment, Syria and Yemen are undergoing events that will lead to major restricting of their polities in the postwar period. The interference of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the Lebanese Hezbollah on the side of the Assad regime in Syria and the Saudi-led Operation Decisive Storm against the Houthi rebellion in Yemen show that both countries are fragile states, if not already failed states.

Netanyahu Names New Head of National Security Council

JewishPress

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu nominated Wednesday evening, February 24 Brig Gen. (ret.) Avriel Bar-Yosef to head the National Security Council and to act as national security advisor to the prime minister.

Bar-Yosef, 62, is married with four children and three grandchildren. He filled the position of deputy head of the National Security Services from 2009 until six months ago.

Prior to that, between 2004-2009, Bar-Yosef led the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee of the Knesset as well as the Committee for the Defense Budget.
He served in the IDF for 25 years and was discharged with the rank of brigadier-general. During his most recent posting, Bar-Yosef headed a Naval Force division responsible for military equipment.

Bar-Yosef holds a B.A. in mechanical engineering from the University of Glasgow and an M.A. in engineering from the University of Michigan.
Netanyahu praised the experience of Bar-Yosef and expressed confidence in his abilities to deliver results in his new position.

“Brig. Gen. Avriel Bar-Yosef is extremely experienced in security and state matters in both the IDF and the National Security Services. He will know how to translate his experience and qualifications for the good of Israeli security,” Netanyahu said.

Bar-Yosef also expressed gratitude to the prime minister for the nomination: “I am grateful to the prime minister for the faith that he has placed in me. I am grateful to be able to widen my responsibilities and confront the challenges that stand before us. I will do all that is required in order to succeed in my post for the sake of the State of Israel.”

A Brief History of the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan

"The Invisible Wounds of War," by Marguerite Guzman Bouvard, gives an inside look into the lives of soldiers returning from the longest wars in U.S history.


The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have a long and complicated history that must be told in order to better understand the sacrifices of our volunteer army.
For many of our returning veterans, there's no real homecoming from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Invisible Wounds of War (Prometheus Books, 2012) reveals the lingering impact that the longest wars in our nation's history continue to have on far too many of our finest young people. In this excerpt from Chapter 1, Marguerite Guzman Bouvard provides the horrific and complex historical backdrop to the conflicts that continue to this day. 

A Volunteer Army

In the United States, the army is a volunteer army. It is carrying the burden and experiencing the dreadful consequences of two long wars, the longest in American history: Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) and Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) in Afghanistan. Most of the soldiers have been redeployed many times to make up for the low number of troops. One marine was redeployed six times despite having sustained injuries. Because these wars are fought by a volunteer army, few Americans have any personal stake in them or even know about what is happening in Iraq or in Afghanistan. Previous wars were covered extensively by the media, but only in the past few years have the efforts of US soldiers on the ground been made public. Returning soldiers should be honored and respected for their sacrifices. Learning about the hidden wounds they carry home with them is a matter of human rights, not only because their suffering is unseen but also because so many of them receive neither adequate mental healthcare nor the support they need to regain social trust and to become reintegrated into society.

People enlist in the army for a number of reasons. For example, one woman wanted to get a job and thus get away from an abusive husband. Another woman was dissatisfied with her work and thought the army might be a good place for her. For yet another young man, becoming a soldier was a way out of a dangerous neighborhood; he hoped to build a better life.

Many young people enlist for socioeconomic reasons. They are promised that they will be able to retire after twenty years. They see the military giving them money or college opportunities that once only seemed like distant possibilities. Some young men and women enlist because their parents asked them to leave home and get a job. Many who just graduated from high school are looking for a purpose in life. A number of young people enlist to get away from dysfunctional families and seek a better life.

Among those who enlisted were many young men, like Noah Charles Pierce and Alexander Hohl, who had dreamed of joining the army since they were very young because they wanted to serve their country. A young man, a classics major at Dartmouth College, decided to join the Marines in 1998. It never occurred to him that he would end up in a combat situation. He felt he should join because he was privileged. There were young men who wanted to become heroes, and many of them did, but in ways that they never expected.

The impact of 9/11 was a major factor in increasing the number of volunteers, although, contrary to the claims of the Bush administration, there was no connection between 9/11 and Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq.

Though many of those who joined the military had high hopes and a sense of purpose, a large proportion of those who came back were disillusioned and suffering from severe trauma.

National Guard units and reserve forces called up to active duty have drawn heavily on first responders. Those who volunteered often wanted to benefit from the education recruiters had promised them and that they couldn’t afford otherwise. The use of the United States National Guard for overseas combat is a new role for this branch of the military. It has traditionally been used as a civil-defense branch of the armed forces, helping in domestic crises or national disasters. Yet more than 50 percent of US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan have been drawn from the National Guard forces.  These weekend warriors generally had full-time jobs, families, and ties to civilian communities. They were older and had a stable income before leaving for battle. But at the same time they may have lacked the intensive combat training, unit camaraderie, and strong leadership from nonactive-duty commanders. Also, in comparison with active-duty soldiers, a greater percentage have suffered from combat trauma when they returned from Iraq and Afghanistan.

For some soldiers, being in the military is a career. Perhaps over time, during the Iraqi war, some lost the sense of national purpose or sacrifice that might have helped them mitigate the hardships they experienced. But many of them were proud of what they accomplished even though the justification for the war shifted over time from hunting for weapons of mass destruction to overthrowing Saddam Hussein. In the end, they helped establish a supposedly democratic government, but one in which there is still a struggle for power among opposing Shiite groups, Sunnis, and Kurds. The prime minister of Iraq, Nour Kamel al-Maliki, is a Shiite, and the parliament does include Sunnis and Kurds, but Iraq is still suffering from recurring terrorist bombings because these factions remain at odds. Also, American influence is waning, as the military withdrew by the end of 2011, even as units of the highly secret Special Operations Forces were brought in and the American embassy is being rebuilt and protected by security forces. Meanwhile, the Iraqi prime minister has expanded his power and undermined the fragile democracy America tried to help create. These developments have affected the attitudes of some of the soldiers who served in Iraq in the final years of the war.

But for others, like the author-soldier Shannon Meehan, what prompted service in Iraq was a desire to put their officer training into practice and exercise leadership. Meehan’s father had been in the military in several conflicts and had instilled in him a yearning for honor ever since he was a child. For a professional soldier like Paul C. Rosser, it was his duty to defend his country. And for the noted writer Brian Turner, who came from a military family, it was the desire to be part of that endeavor.

The War in Iraq

Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was dominated by elite security units of the army, such as the Republican Guard, the Special Republican Guard, Fedayeen Saddam, and a paramilitary force, all of which were part of the huge Baath Party. The soldiers were well trained, well armed, and politically loyal, and few of them died in the war. At the beginning of the US occupation, L. Paul Bremer, the president’s executive director of the Coalition Provisional Authority, fired all the Baathists and disbanded the Sunni-led soldiers. That left them jobless, and it helped foment a Sunni insurgency that continues today. In so doing, Bremer helped empower the deeply religious Shiite parties that eventually came to power. He paid no attention to the intelligence reports warning that the Iranian secret police were working in Iraq. He didn’t appreciate that the open border with Iran was a problem, either. Yet, Sadr City, on the outskirts of Bagdhad, became one of the most dangerous places for US troops. It was named after Muktar el-Sadr’s father, the Shiite leader who was killed in 1999 by Saddam Hussein’s regime. There were many unemployed young men there who were placing explosive devices on the roads that US soldiers traveled. The city had a huge population that was oppressed under the Sunni regime, as well as many Iranian fighters who crossed the border to join in the battles. And there were many Shiite death squads.

Fallujah was another hostile place. Jaysh-al-Mahdi (JAM) is one of the major terrorist groups that operated there and in Diyala. It has close ties to Iran and is affiliated with the radical cleric Muktada al-Sadr. It infiltrated the local government and rose to positions of power. The mainstream media never covered it, while al Qaeda in Iraq, which was responsible for open, violent attacks, received substantial press coverage. Although there were other, smaller, groups, JAM and al Qaeda were responsible for the killing of thousands of civilians and Iraqi government officials.

There was yet another terrorist group the US Army had to deal with, the People’s Mujahadin of Iran (Mujahadin-e Khaliq or MEK). They were Iranian ex-patriots who fought with Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War to bring down the ayatollah of Iran. Although the MEK is Shia, its main objective is to control Iran. Thus its enemy is JAM because of its connections to the Iranian military. As a consequence, it aligned itself with al Qaeda to limit Iran’s influence in Iraq, which helped to destabilize both countries.

From the start of the occupation, the US Army was confronted with the country’s dire need for basic services, including water and electricity. But it had insufficient troops available even to prevent the widespread looting that occurred everywhere. Soldiers looked on as people emptied hospitals, homes, museums, libraries, and universities of anything they could carry away, including ammunition and even copper wires and electrical wiring ripped from the walls. The capital city was plagued by weeks of utter lawlessness while American soldiers stood by and watched helplessly because they were stretched too thin to intervene.


Read Full http://www.utne.com/politics/history-of-the-wars-in-iraq-and-afghanistan-ze0z1210zsau.aspx 

Military-Funded Study Predicts When You’ll Protest on Twitter

PATRICK TUCKER

Ever get angry, go to Twitter, and shoot off a protest tweet tagged #Arabspring, #AppleVsFBI, #syrianconflict or something else in solidarity with a cause? Whether the tweet is part of a violent movement, a peaceful action, or simply a response to a debate, military and national security types have an interest in predicting how big any given protest movement might become. A new study by researchers at Arizona State University, Texas A&M, and Yahoo, funded in part by the Office of Naval Research, can predict with 70 percent accuracy the likelihood that your next tweet will be part of a protest.

It’s no simple problem for the obvious reason that the telltale heart beats but for the guilty. “The ways in which protest-related events affect a person are not observable, resulting in a lack of knowledge of factors operating at that time causing his next post to be a declaration of protest,” the researchers write in their study, published as part of the proceedings of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence conference earlier this month.

The researchers collected 2,686 posts related to the Nigerian general election that took place between February and April of last year, an election that was marred by political violence in the form of the Boko Haram insurgency and that was beset by accusations of voting irregularities. So what predicts when someone begins protesting on Twitter? It’s not your personal history so much as your Twitter history of interacting with people who are part of that movement.

“The interaction we study is how users mention each other,” researchers Suhas Ranganath and Fred Morstatter wrote to Defense One in an email. “In the model, the probability of the future post expressing protest increases if: 1) The post mentioning the user is related to the protest. 2) The author of the post mentioning the user is interested in the protest. We dynamically learn [or teach] the model by testing how each of the previous status messages of the given user are affected by the recent posts mentioning him. We then use the model to predict the likelihood of the user expressing protest in his next post.”
Their accuracy threshold of 70 percent is because what might seem completely unpredictable is in fact part of a pattern, albeit one that’s incredibly complex. The researchers employed Brownian motion theory to design the formula, a theory that usually is employed to track the movement of particles, as well as model stock market fluctuations and other highly complicated systems.

“Brownian Motion for fluid particles models change in the direction of the particle movement on collision with other particles. We take each ‘particle’ as a social media user. We relate collision with other particles, other users mentioning him, and the change in direction to change of the user’s inclination to express protest in his next post. We then use the models of Brownian motion to relate the two quantities. We mainly employ this to model the dynamic change in user behavior resulting from interactions over time,” Suhas told Defense One.

Could you apply it to ISIS? Yes, so long as you had a good window into how, say, a pro-ISIS Twitter user is interacting with someone else. “This can be applied to scenarios when the complete spreading mechanism is not known. In these scenarios, we go into the history of the user and see who have tried to interact with him and the nature of the interactions. So the individual user’s response to the attempt of organizations like ISIS to interact with him can be modeled using the proposed method,” the researchers told Defense One.
The government has a big interest in stopping the spread of ISIS on social media. Last month, the State Department announced that they would be opening up a new “Global Engagement Center” to combat ISIS online and recruited Michael Lumpkin, then assistant secretary of defense for special operations/low-intensity conflict, to run it. The goal of the new operation goes beyond just winning the Twitter war to destroying the allure of ISIS in the Middle East and beyond.

The researchers caution, however, that predicting a protest tweet is a bit different than predicting the moment of actual radicalization, and one is not just a proxy for the other. “In this paper we attempt to find users expressing protest, which is ultimately the expression of an opinion. Radicalization is the development of an opinion, not necessarily the expression. This makes it a very different problem than what we study,” they told Defense One in an email.
Ranganath and Morstatter’s paper is part of a $750,000 grant from the Office of Naval Research to study how crisis manifests itself in social media. The paper follows years of similar government-funded research into measuring protest dynamics on social media. Perhaps the best known program is the 2011 Open Source Indicators project from the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency, or IARPA, which correctly predicted several protest events in Central and South America in real time.

The most recent effort used only open source data so it doesn’t have any legal or ethical implications for privacy. Nevertheless, some critics, such as writer Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, have argued that such tools are often used to target peaceful protesters and dissidents.

The real value, according to the researchers, lies in predicting how big a political storm could be before it hits. “Social media provides a platform for people to declare protest on various sociopolitical issues. In scenarios where the spread of protest is not available, predicting if the next post of a given user will be a declaration of protest will help in estimating the number of protest participants,” they write.

INTERVIEW: Bashar al-Assad: “80 countries support the terrorists in Syria”

EL PAÍS interviews the Syrian leader at a crucial juncture in the conflict in the country

Next month marks five years since the uprisings that plunged Syria into one of the bloodiest wars that can be remembered in the history of the Middle East. At least 260,000 people have died in the conflict, according to the United Nations. Five million have sought refuge abroad. Europe has taken in a million of them, in what is one of the worst humanitarian crises of the last century. Three thousand people have drowned trying to cross the Mediterranean in the past year.

Bashar al-Assad, who became president of the country following the death of his father in 2000, soon lost control of a good part of the country in the conflict, as large cities such as Homs and Aleppo fell into the hands of the rebel militias. He has recently managed to recover these opposition strongholds and his army has launched an offensive to cut off the rebels’ access and supply routes from Turkey, supported by Russian aerial bombardments, which have proved decisive since they began in September.
The Syrian president on Saturday received EL PAÍS in a Damascus residence amid heavy security measures. He gives this interview at a time when he is now talking about retaking the entire country and winning the war, just four days before peace talks are due to be renewed in Geneva and with it not yet known whether a ceasefire announced by the United States and Russia on February 12 will have an effect after the deadline to implement it expired on Friday without success. He says that his next mission is to pursue Islamic State (ISIS) in the heart of its operations, in its self-proclaimed capital in Raqqa.

The Syrian president tells the refugees that they can return to the country without fear of reprisals and accuses the Islamist governments of Qatar and Turkey of having promoted the war in Syria – a stage on which, he admits, not only the interests of a state are being measured, but also those of an entire region, with Saudi Arabia and Iran as powers in the conflict.
Question. This week you have allowed humanitarian aid to go into seven besieged areas. Some claim there are at least 486,000 people living in those areas, some for even more than three years. Why did this happen so late in the conflict?

Answer. Actually, it hasn’t happened recently; it’s been there since the beginning of the crisis. We never placed an embargo on any region in Syria. There’s a difference between an embargo and the army surrounding a certain area because of the militants, and that’s natural in such a security case or military case. But the problem with those areas is that the militants themselves took the food and the basic needs of those people, the people there, and gave it to their militants or sold it to the people at very high prices. As a government, we never prevented any area from having assistance, including the areas under the control of ISIS, like Raqqa in the north that’s been under their control, and before that the Al-Nusra Front [the local branch of Al Qaeda], for nearly three years now. We’ve been sending them all the salaries for the retired people, all the salaries for the employees today, and we send them vaccines for the children.

Q. So, food and salaries even still go into Raqqa and other ISIS strongholds?
A. Exactly. So, if we send it to Raqqa, which is under the control of ISIS, because we think as a government that we are responsible for every Syrian person, how can we not do it in other areas? That’s not realistic, that’s a contradiction. So, that’s why I said it’s not recently; we never stopped allowing the assistance or food.

Q. It will continue to happen?
A. Exactly.

Q. A truce was announced by Russia and the United States. Is the Syrian government willing to respect the cessation of military operations in Syria?
A. Definitely, and we announced that we’re ready, but it’s not only about announcing, because maybe the other party will announce the same. It’s about what you are going to do on the ground. A ceasefire is about – if you want to say ceasefire, it’s not the correct word, because a ceasefire is between two armies or two countries – it’s better to say cessation of hostility, or, let’s say, stopping the operations. It’s about, first of all, stopping the fire, but it’s also about other complimentary and more important factors, preventing the terrorists from using the ceasefire or the cessation of hostility to improve their position. It’s about preventing other countries, especially Turkey, from sending more recruits, more terrorists, more armaments, or any kind of logistical support to those terrorists. There is a United Nations resolution, or Security Council resolution, regarding this point that’s not implemented. If we don’t provide all these requirements for the ceasefire, it will be against the stability; it’s going to make more chaos in Syria, it may lead to a de facto division of the country. That’s why if we want to use the ceasefire, it is positive providing these factors.

Q. So, there will be still some fighting even though there’s this ceasefire, at least against some of the armed groups?
A. Yes, of course, like ISIS, like Al-Nusra, and other organizations or terrorist groups that belong to Al Qaeda. Now, Syria and Russia have announced four names: Ahrar al-Sham and Jaysh al-Islam [Army of Islam] and Al-Nusra and ISIS.

Q. Your forces have surrounded Aleppo. It’s one of the big strongholds of the opposition. When do you expect to fully regain control of that city?
A. Actually, we are in the middle of the city, so, yes, a large part of the city is under the control of the government, and most of the inhabitants of the other parts emigrated from the militants-controlled area to the government-controlled area, so it’s not about recapturing the city. Actually, it’s about closing the roads between Turkey and between the terrorist groups. That is the aim of the battles in Aleppo now, and we succeeded recently, we could close the main roads. Of course, it’s not a complete seal, let’s say, between Aleppo and Turkey, but it makes the relation between Turkey and the terrorists much more difficult. That’s why Turkey has been shelling the Kurds recently, for that reason.

Q. What comes after Aleppo? Is the Syrian Army even willing to go into Raqqa, the so-called capital of ISIS?

A. In principle, we should go everywhere, but now we are fighting on more than 10 fronts in Syria. Recently, we advanced towards Raqqa, but we’re still far from it. So, as a principle, yes, we are moving to Raqqa and other areas, but the timing depends on the results of different battles now, so we cannot tell the timing exactly.

Q. Russia has started an aggressive campaign of aerial bombings here in key opposition strongholds. This has been a turning point in the conflict. Some claim that you have the upper hand now. Do you think you could have made it without foreign help?

A. Definitely the Russian and the Iranian support were essential for our army to make this advancement. To say that we couldn’t have made it is a hypothetical question, because it’s an “if,” so nobody knows the real answer of the “if.” But we definitely need that help for a simple reason: because more than 80 countries supported those terrorists in different ways, some of them directly with money, with logistical support, with armaments, with recruitments. Some other countries supported them politically, in different international forums. Syria is a small country. We could fight, but in the end, there’s unlimited support and recruitment for those terrorists. You definitely need international support. But, again, this is a hypothetical question I cannot answer.

Q. Regarding these Russian aerial bombings, are you concerned about civilian casualties? On Monday, there was a bombing in a hospital and 50 people were killed. The United States has claimed that the Russians caused it.
A. Some other officials in the United States said they don’t know who did it, that’s what they said later. These contradictory statements are common in the United States, but no one has any proof about who did it and how it happened. But regarding the casualties, of course this is a problem in every war. Of course I feel very sad for every innocent civilian who dies in our conflict, but this is war. Every war is bad, you don’t have a good war, because you always have civilians, and you have innocent people who are going to pay the price.
Q. So, how do you explain to your people, to the Syrians, that there is a foreign army carrying out operations here that can cause civilian casualties?
A. No, no. We don’t have any evidence that the Russians attacked any civilian targets. They are very precise in their targets and they always attack, every day, the bases or the targets of the terrorists. Actually, it’s the Americans who did this, who killed many civilians in the northeastern part of Syria, not the Russians. Not a single incident has happened regarding the civilians so far, because they don’t attack in the cities; they attack mainly in the rural areas.


Q. Talking about foreign armies, how would you react if Turkey and Saudi Arabia follow through with their statements that they plan on sending troops here to allegedly fight the Islamic State?
A. As you said, allegedly. But if it happens, we’re going to deal with them like we deal with the terrorists. We’re going to defend our country. This is aggression. They don’t have any right to interfere, politically or militarily, in Syria. This is a breach of international law, and as Syrian citizens, the only option we have is to fight and defend.

Q. Turkey has started bombing from their territory into Syria.
A. Exactly, and before that bombing, Turkey was sending the terrorists, it’s the same, the same goal, the same effect, in different ways. So, Turkey has been involved in Syria since the very beginning.

Q. Saudi Arabia tried to unify the opposition in a conference in Riyadh. Some people linked to Al Qaeda were present in those meetings. Do you recognize any of the rebel groups as a legitimate party with whom you can negotiate in the whole opposition?
A. You mean the rebels who are fighting on the ground?

Q. Yes.
A. No. Legally and constitutionally, everyone who can hold machine guns against the people and against the government is a terrorist, in your country, in my country, in every country in the world. You cannot say they are legitimate. They could be legitimate when they give up their armaments and join the political process. This is the only way in every country to rebuild your country or to change whatever you want to change, whether the constitution or the laws or the government, everything, you can do it, but through political process, not through armaments.

Q. So, all those who are fighting, you deem them terrorists?
A. Unless they announce that they are ready to join the political process. Then we will not have any problem with them.

Q. So those people who have been fighting, who take away their ideals or their intentions, if they lay down arms, can they come back?
A. We’ll give them amnesty, and that happened, it has happened during the last two years, and it’s accelerating recently. Many of them give up their arms and some of them have joined the Syrian Army now and they are fighting ISIS with the Syrian Army, and they get the support of the Syrian Army and the Russian airplanes.

Q. So if, as you just stated, those who have taken up arms against the government here are all terrorists, with whom are you exactly negotiating in Geneva?
A. I’m talking about the recent Geneva, Geneva III, that failed. It was supposed to be a mixture of the people who are trained in Saudi Arabia, a mixture of terrorists and extremists or their supporters, and some of them Al Qaeda, and the other, let’s say, independent or other opposition who live outside or inside Syria. So, we can negotiate with those Syrians, with those patriotic Syrians who are related to their country, but we cannot negotiate with the terrorists – that’s why it failed.

Q. What about those opposition activist leaders who have been imprisoned since before the conflict in 2011?
A. All of them left prison a long time ago, and most of them are in the opposition.

Q. All of them?
A. All of them. We don’t have any of them. Before 2010, all of them left. Including some of them who were terrorists, but they were sentenced for a few years, let’s say five or whatever, and when the crisis started, they joined the terrorist groups again.

Q. You have proof of that?
A. Yeah, of course. One of them was the one who was killed, Zahran Alloush; he was imprisoned for several years, because he was Al Qaeda-affiliated. When the crisis started, he formed his own terrorist group, and this group is one of those four that I mentioned that we consider terrorist groups.

Q. Some claim that there are 35,000 foreign jihadists. Four thousand came from Europe. The Spanish government has stated that there are some 300 who hold a Spanish passport. What will happen to these people if the Syrian Army captures them?
A. The Spanish?

Q. In general, the foreign jihadists.
A. First of all, we are dealing with them like any other terrorist. When you deal with them as terrorists on a legal basis, there’s no distinguishing between the nationalities, but if you want to talk about, let’s say, sending them to their countries, or extraditing them to their governments, it should be through relations between the institutions in the two countries.

Q. Regarding this, what do you think attracts so many foreigners into Syria right now?
A. Mainly the support they’ve been sent. It’s active, not passive, it’s actually active from the outside. Saudi Arabia is the main financier of those terrorists. They put them in airplanes, send them to Turkey, and through Turkey to Syria. The other attractive factor is the chaos; when you have chaos, this is very fertile soil for the terrorists. The third factor, the ideology, because they belong to Al Qaeda, this area, in our religious culture, in the Islamic culture, has a special place after Mecca and the other holy places and Jerusalem. They think that this is where they can come and create their own state. Of course, they’re going to expand later to other places, but the thought is that they can come and fight and die for God and for Islam. For them, this is jihad.

Q. Regarding what would happen if the Syrian government claimed control of all the territory. Would you start a political process? Would you be willing to go to elections again?
A. The natural thing, first of all, is to form a government, a national unity government where every political party can join if they have the will. This government should prepare for the new constitution, because if you want to talk about the future of Syria, because if you want to discuss with different parties how to solve the problem, the internal problem – now I’m excluding the external support of terrorists – you need to discuss the constitution; you want to change it, you want to keep it, you want to change the whole political system, that depends on the constitution. Of course, the Syrian people should vote for that constitution. After the constitution, according to the new constitution, you should have early elections, I mean parliamentary elections. Some mention presidential elections. If the Syrian people or the different parties want to have elections, it will happen. Ultimately, solving the political aspect of the problem has nothing to do with my personal opinion.

Q. Where do you see yourself in 10 years?
A. The most important thing is how I see my country, because I’m part of my country. So, in 10 years, if I can save Syria as president – but that doesn’t mean I’m still going to be president in 10 years. I’m just talking about my vision of the 10 years. If Syria is safe and sound, and I’m the one who saved his country – that’s my job now, that’s my duty. So that’s how I see myself regarding the position, I’m talking about myself as a Syrian citizen.

Q. Would you still like to be in power in 10 years?
A. That’s not my aim. I don’t care about being in power. For me, if the Syrian people want me to be in power, I will be. If they don’t want me, I can do nothing, I mean, I cannot help my country, so I have to leave right away.

Q. Let me read from a United Nations Human Rights Council report that was published on February 3, and it said “detainees held by the government were beaten to death or died as a result of injuries sustained due to torture.” They say war crimes have also been committed. What do you have to say to this?
A. That’s based on what the Qataris made about a year ago or more, when they forged a report made of unverified pictures of injured people and unverified sources and sent it to the United Nations, and this is part of the propaganda against Syria. That’s the problem with the West and propaganda; they use unverified information to accuse Syria and to blame it and then to take action against it.

Q. The whole world was shocked by the image of little Alan Kurdi, the Syrian refuge, three years old, who was washed ashore dead on a Turkish beach. How did you feel when you saw that?
A. This is one of the saddest parts of the Syrian conflict; to have people leaving their country for different reasons. But beside the feeling, the question for us as officials that has been asked by the Syrian people: what are we going to do? What action has been taken either to allow those refugees to come back to their country or not to leave at all? You have two reasons here. The first one that we have to deal with, of course, is the terrorism, because those terrorists not only threaten people, but those terrorists deprive the people of the basic needs of their lives. The second reason is the embargo that has been implemented on Syria by the West, mainly the United States, of course, that caused more difficulties for the people to live here, especially in the health sector. So, we need to deal with these reasons in order to prevent this tragedy from being dragged on for a long time.

Q. You mentioned that some of those refugees are running away from ISIS, but some of them also claim that they are running away from the government, or from the campaigns of the government in some areas in Syria.
A. I can give you the contradicting facts that you can see while you are in Syria: that the majority of the people who live in the area controlled by the terrorists have emigrated to the area under the control of the government. So, if they want to flee from the government, why do they come to the government? This is not real. But at the same time, whenever there is a battle, shooting, a fight between the government and the terrorists in a certain area, it is natural for the majority of the population to leave that area to go to another area, but that doesn’t mean they escaped from the government. Some of the families who emigrated to the government-controlled areas are the families of the fighters themselves.

Q. Almost five million refugees have fled Syria according to international counts. One million have crossed into Europe. What guarantees do those people have that they can come back freely without fear of any reprisals?
A. No, of course they can come. It is their right to come back, unless somebody is a terrorist or killer. Some of them, and I think a good number of them, are government supporters who didn’t leave because they’re afraid of the government, but, as I said, because of the standards of living that have deteriorated drastically during the last few years. So, of course they can come back without any action being taken against them by the government. We want people to come back to Syria.

Q. What can the Syrian government do to stop that flow of refugees that has caused so many people to drown in the Mediterranean Sea. What can be done?
A. As I said, it is not only about Syria, it’s about the rest of the world. First of all, Europe should lift the embargo on the Syrian people; they don’t have an embargo on the Syrian government, it is against the Syrian people. Second, Turkey should stop sending terrorists to Syria. Third, as a government, we have to fight the terrorists, definitely, and we have to keep the living moving forward by any means in order to allow the Syrians to stay in their country. This is the only way that we could bring those people back or convince them to come back to their country. And I’m sure the majority of them want to come back to Syria. But, as I said, in the end you need to have the basic or minimum requirements for living.

Q. When you came to power, you promised democratic reforms; those times came to be known as the Damascus Spring. Some people claim that if those reforms had come faster, a lot of lives would have been spared. Other people claim, mainly the opposition, and also the United States, that if you had stepped down, a lot of lives would have been saved. What do you have to say to that?
A. The question is: what is the relation between what you have mentioned and Qatar sending money and then sending armaments and supporting terrorists directly? What is the relation? What is the relation between that and the role of Turkey in supporting terrorists? What is the relation between that and the existence of ISIS and Al-Nusra coming to Syria? So, the link is not correct. If you want to change the president or the prime minister or any system in your country, in any other country, you only have the political process to move through. You cannot use armaments. It is not an excuse to have armaments to say that I want to change the system or I want democracy. Democracy wouldn’t happen through armaments. And the experience of the United States in Iraq is still telling. The same in Yemen. President Saleh left because of the same allegations. What happened in Yemen? Is it better? That is not correct. There is no relation. We can achieve democracy through dialogue, but at the same time through the upgrading of the society towards the democracy, because democracy is not only the constitution or the president or laws and so on. These are tools or means to achieve it. But the real democracy, as a base, should be based on the society itself. How can we accept each other? This is a melting pot area; you have different ethnicities, different sects, different religions. How can they accept each other? When they accept each other, they can accept each other politically and this is where you can have real democracy. So, it is not about the president. They tried to personalize the problem just to show that it is a very simple problem: remove the president and everything will be fine. No one can accept it.

Q. In these five years since the conflict started, do you think as you see the country now, with many heritage sites destroyed, a lot of lives lost, that you would have done anything differently?
A. In general, if we want to talk about the principles, from the very beginning we said that we’re going to fight terrorism and we’re going to make dialogue. We open dialogue with everyone except the terrorist groups. And we allowed the terrorists at the same time, we opened the door for them, if they want to lay down their armaments to go back to their normal life to be offered with full amnesty. So, that’s the principle of the whole solution. Now, five years later, I cannot say that was proved to be wrong, and I do not think that we are going to change those principles. Implementing the policy is different sometimes, because it depends on different officials, different institutions, different people, individuals. Anyone could make mistakes, and that would happen. So, if you want to change something, if you can change those mistakes that have been made in different places, that’s what I could have done, if I turn back the clock.

Q. So, from your perspective, from the very beginning you labeled those protests that were in Daraa and Damascus as terrorism, as infiltrated by foreign powers. How do you view those first demonstrations against the government?
A. At the very beginning, you had a mixture of demonstrators. First of all, Qatar paid those demonstrators in order to put them on Al Jazeera and then to convince the international public opinion that people are revolting against the president. The highest number of those were 140,000 demonstrators all over Syria, which is nothing, as a number, that’s why we weren’t worried. So, they infiltrated them with militants to shoot at the police and to shoot at the demonstrators, so you have more revolts. When they failed, they moved to send the tools to support the terrorists. But do we have demonstrators who demonstrated honestly, who wanted change? Of course we have, of course, but not all of them, you cannot say all of them, and I cannot say all of them are terrorists.

Q. You visited Spain twice. Both Presidents José María Aznar and José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero visited Syria while in office. How have the relations been with Spain ever since?
A. Spain is against any adventurist solution in Syria. This is something we appreciate. They didn’t support any military action against Syria, they said that’s going to make it more complicated. They didn’t talk about deposing the president or interfering in our national affairs. They said everything should happen through a political solution or political process. This is very good. But at the same time, Spain is part of the EU, of the European Union. That makes Spain restrained by the decision of that union. We expect Spain to play that role, to convey the same message and its political point of view regarding our conflict to the EU.

Q. And in Latin America, where have you had the most support, do you feel?
A. Generally, and that’s strange, and maybe sometimes unfortunately, that those countries very far away from Syria have a much more realistic vision about what is happening in Syria than the Europeans, who are much closer. We are considered the backyard of Europe. I’m talking about the formal and official level, and about the popular level. They know much more, and they support Syria politically in every international forum, and they haven’t changed their position since the very beginning of the crisis.

Q. Brazil has one of the biggest Syrian communities abroad. How have relations been with the government of Brazil?
A. We have natural relations with them, we have natural relations with Argentina, with Venezuela, with Cuba, with all those Latin countries we have normal relations. It hasn’t been affected by the crisis, and they understand more and more, and they support Syria more and more. This contradicts with the European position.

IRAN: IRGC to test new military hardware in massive drills

Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Major General Hassan Firouzabadi said the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) plans to test its recently developed weapons and military equipment in the upcoming wargames.
“The large-scale drills will be staged within the framework of the Armed Forces’ stated goals: training, testing and using new products,” Firouzabadi told reporters in Tehran on Sunday.

He said that the defense ministry tests its weapons and equipment in advance as part of a routine training cycle designed to improve defense.

Elaborating on the IRGC drills, Firouzabadi said the excercises are meant to improve cooperation and coordination, prepare the Armed Forces for any possible attack, and contribute to their qualitative military edge.

Earlier this month, Firouzabadi announced plans by the IRGC to hold missile drills in the final days of February.

“The IRGC missile wargames have been communicated to be staged in the first half of (the Iranian month of) Esfand (February 11-March 5),” Firouzabadi said.

“Testing and evaluating precision-striking capabilities and power, increasing the Armed Forces’ preparedness, and strengthening the missile deterrence power are among the main goals of the drills,” he added.

Iranian Armed Forces recently test-fired different types of newly-developed missiles and torpedoes and tested a large number of home-made weapons, tools and equipment, including submarines, military ships, artillery, choppers, aircrafts, UAVs and air defense and electronic systems, during massive military drills.

Defense analysts and military observers say that Iran’s wargames and its advancements in weapons production have proved as a deterrent factor.
The officials have always underscored that the country’s defense program cannot be affected by the nuclear deal clinched between Iran and the world powers on July 14 and the UN Security Council resolutions.

On October 11, Iran successfully test-fired the country’s new precision-guided long-range ballistic missile that can be controlled until the moment of impact. Emad carries a conventional warhead.

“This missile (Emad) which has been fully designed and made by Iranian Defense Ministry’s scientists and experts is the country’ first long-range missile with navigation and strike controlling capability; it is capable of hitting and destroying the targets with high-precision,” Defense Minister Brigadier General Hossein Dehqan told reporters after the successful test of Emad missile.

The Iranian Defense Minister reiterated that the manufacture and successful testing of Emad missile is a technological and operational jump in a strategic field, and said, “We don’t ask for anyone’s permission for boosting our defense and missile power; we resolutely continue our defense programs, specially in the missile field, and Emad missile is a conspicuous example.”

General Dehqan felicitated Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei, Armed Forces and nation on the successful testing, and appreciated the scientists and experts of the Aerospace Industries Organization of the Defense Ministry.

The Iranian Defense Minister reiterated that the mass production and delivery of Emad missile to the country’s Armed Forces will considerably increase their power and tactical capabilities.

IRGC Lieutenant Commander Brigadier General Hossein Salami announced in December that the IRGC operational units had been supplied with Emad missile.

“Emad missile systems were delivered to the IRGC operational units,” Salami told FNA.

He also said the missile will likely be used in the upcoming wargames.

STATEMENT: KURDISH GENERAL COMMAND OF YPG

Kurdish Blog


The General Command of YPG (People’s Defense Units) has released a statement in response to Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu who blamed the YPG for yesterday’s attack in the Turkish capital Ankara.
YPG said they have no links to the attack, remarking that Davutoğlu put forward this accusation to pave the way for an offensive on Rojava and Syria.

“We would like to reiterate our message to the peoples of Turkey and the world; We have no links to this incident. It is not specific to this case alone, as we have never been involved in an attack against Turkey. The Turkish state cannot possibly prove our engagement in any kind of attack on their side because we were never involved in such an action. Turkish Prime Minister Davutoğlu’s remarks "Ankara attack was conducted by YPG” is a lie and far away from the truths. With this statement, Davutoğlu wants to pave the way for an offensive on Syria and Rojava, and to cover up their relations with the ISIS which is known to the whole world by now.“

Decision looms for Army sergeant who protected Afghan boy

Fox News

A decorated Army sergeant who protected an Afghan boy from a child molester could find out any day whether his actions will end his career in the military.
Sgt. First Class Charles Martland, a Green Beret with an 11-year Special Forces career, was stationed in Afghanistan in 2011 when the boy's mother came to him and said she'd been beaten and her son raped by a local police commander. Martland and another soldier summoned the police official and, when the man laughed at them, threw him off the base. Martland and Daniel Quinn were both disciplined for their actions.

Last year, amid military cuts, the Army Human Resources Command recommended Martland be discharged in part based on his disciplinary record, but an official decision by U.S. Army brass is expected by March 1.
“Charles did the right thing in Afghanistan by standing up to a child rapist and corrupt commander, and now it’s the Army’s turn to do the right thing and reverse the decision to expel him from the service,” said Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., whose office has been assisting Martland. “Permitting Charles to continue serving is in the best interest of the Army and the nation.”

Supporters mounted an online petition backing Martland and separately, 93 members of Congress have called for an investigation into the military's silence in the face of rampant sexual abuse of children in Afghanistan.
While Quinn left the military voluntarily, Martland, who graduated in 2006 from Special Forces Qualification Course, has always seen himself as a lifer.

After a deployment to Iraq in 2008, he deployed to Afghanistan in January 2010 as part of a 12-man unit. He and his team found themselves fighting large numbers of Taliban militants in the volatile Kunduz Province.
Martland was awarded a Bronze Star with Valor for his actions. According to one evaluation, he also was praised by Gen. David Petraeus, then commander of U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan.

http://country-facts.findthedata.com/l/4/Afghanistan

The 2011 incident occurred at the remote outpost where Martland was stationed. The 12-year-old boy and his mother showed up at camp, and the boy showed the Green Berets where his hands had been tied. A medic took him to a back room for an examination with an interpreter, who told them the boy had been raped by a man identiffied as Afghani Police commander Abdul Rahman.
Rahman allegedly beat the boy's mother for reporting the crime after learning that they went to the Army outpost. This led Martland and team leader Daniel Quinn to confront Rahman.

According to reports of the incident, Rahman confessed to the crime and laughed it off. This led Martland and Quinn to shove the smug police official to the ground

Rahman reported the incident to another Army unit in a nearby village, which led to Quinn and Martland being pulled from their assignments.
One year ago, the Army conducted a "Qualitative Management Program" review board and called for Martland - among thousands of other soldiers with prior disciplinary issues - to be "involuntary discharged” by Nov. 1, 2015.

Martland appealed the decision and a final ruling on his discharge has been delayed until now. With the deadline rapidly approaching, other legal advocates have come to his aid, and even garnered over 300,000 signatures in a petition calling for the decision to be overturned.

"After acting to protect a child from sexual assault from an Afghan commander, SFC Martland was punished and could be kicked out of the military at any time," said Jay Sekulow, of the American Center for Law and Justice. "What's equally disturbing are reports that the military has allowed Afghanistan forces to sexually abuse young children on U.S. bases.”

Time for immediate action for Syrian refugees in Turkey

Metin Çorabatır 01 November 2015
The humanitarian aspect of the Syrian crisis has made Turkey the world’s largest refugee-hosting country and has turned the tragedy into the most serious European refugee crisis since the end of World War II. The impact of this emergency on the EU’s migration policies has been tremendous. Both the Schengen Agreement and the Dublin Regulation need to undergo serious review and this is what the EU is now trying to do

There is no doubt that the root cause of the crisis is the failure of the international community to stop the violence raging in Syria since 2011. With its 2.3 million Syrian refugees, Turkey has also become the main source country for a secondary population movement toward Europe, particularly in the summer of 2015. It is increasingly becoming a transit country for refugees who risk their lives to cross the Aegean Sea and reach the EU. At least half a million Syrian refugees arrived in Greece by sea in 2015.  This essay examines the reasons Turkey has become the second source country for refugees after Syria, and what measures Turkey and the EU should take to stop innocent people of all ages drowning at sea in 2016.

To understand recent developments, one first needs to look at the main characteristics of its asylum tradition, before examining how this is applied -- or not -- in the case of Syrian refugees. Turkey is a state party to the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. This convention is the main legal base of modern international refugee law. It provides: (a) The definition of the term “refugee”; (b) lists the rights of refugees; (c) determines the conditions for ending refugee status; and (d) sets limits for those who do not have the right to become a refugee. International refugee law was further developed by a series of conventions, declarations and human rights instruments, such as the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, the African Union’s (AU) Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa, the European Convention On Human Rights, and so on.
“International protection” is the key term in international refugee law. The process of being a refugee starts when a state is not willing or is unable to protect its citizens. When the state’s protection of the basic rights of a citizen ceases and as a result the person flees to another country to seek protection, this must be provided by the host country. Refugee status is an extraordinary status and international protection thus entails durable solutions -- durable in the sense that actions by states must form part of wider international protection mechanisms.

When a refugee -- a person who is under the protection of the international community due to the fact that their own state is violating her basic human rights -- willingly or unwillingly finds protection again from any state, international protection ceases. This can happen in three ways. First, the conditions resulting from human rights violations in the country of origin disappear and the refugee returns to the protection of the country of origin. This is called a “cessation of refugee status” and entails repatriation. A second durable solution is a situation in which such a return home is not possible. In this case, the country where the refugee seeks international protection is obliged to recognize the rights of the refugee as listed in the 1951 convention and the refugee starts to build a new life there. This durable solution is described as “local integration.” In some situations, the host country provides only temporary protection by accepting the refugee in its territory but refusing to recognize the rights described in the convention. In such a situation, the international community has to find a third country that may be willing to accept the refugee and allow the person to build a new life there. This is described as “resettlement.”

Turkey signed the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees “with geographical limitation.” With this limitation, it limits its obligations to recognize the rights of refugees to those coming from European countries. The international protection Turkey provides for refugees fleeing countries outside Europe is limited to a temporary stay on Turkish territory, without enjoying many of the rights needed to help refugees build a new life. Therefore, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) finds third countries in which to resettle Turkey’s non-European refugees. In short, the refugee and asylum system in Turkey works on the assumption that it will always be possible to resettle refugees in other countries and Turkey has, therefore, never developed experience in developing legislations and policies governing local integration.

When the first anti-government demonstrations in Syria started in March 2011, Turkey was in the middle of drafting its first ever asylum law, having received strong support from the UNHCR office in Turkey. This process started in 2007, when the Turkish government appointed two senior civil servants from the Interior Ministry to a new unit to lead the reform of the Turkish asylum system. In November 2007, when the unit was created, the total number of persons of concern to the UNHCR in Turkey stood at 19,000. The drafters decided to combine four original components of reform -- namely a law concerning foreign citizens, an asylum law, a law for the establishment of Turkey’s first civilian migration/asylum institution and a law for mass influx situations -- into one law called the “Draft Law on Foreigners and International Protection.”

The first group of 250 Syrian refugees fled to Turkey on April 29, 2011, amid the legal vacuum described above. The Turkish government was quick to announce its policy on Syrian refuges on the day of the arrival of the first group of refugees. The government said that Turkey will keep its borders open to Syrian refugees, meet their basic needs and respect the principle of non-refoulement and thereby not force them to return to Syria. This policy, applauded by the international community, had no domestic legal justification. At that time, a regulation  from 1994 was still in force, which establishes a rule of keeping refugees outside the territory of the country. In the absence of the new law, the government called the Syrian refugees “guests of Turkey.” From the very beginning until the law came fully into force in March 2014, the Syrian refugees remained in Turkey as “guests” without any legal status.
In practical terms, Turkey responded to the influx of Syrians by establishing refugee camps close to border cities. The Turkish Prime Ministry’s Disaster and Emergency Management Directorate (AFAD) was tasked to run the camps. In order not to jeopardize the camp system, refugees are not permitted to make individual asylum applications. Such an application would open the door for resettlement to a third country through the UNHCR, due to the geographical limitation Turkey maintains to the 1951 convention. Since the middle of 2012, in addition to the number of camps and refugees, the number of Syrian refugees living outside the camps has increased very rapidly and by the end of summer 2015, had reached almost 2 million. Institutionally, Parliament adopted the Law on Foreigners and International Protection, and a new institution called the Directorate General of Migration Management was established in March 2014.

The new law, however, did not lift the geographical limitation and therefore maintained the temporary character of asylum in Turkey. As a consequence, those drafting the law had to invent new categories of international protection such as “applicant” and “conditional refugee,” which do not have an equivalent in international refugee law. Furthermore, the law makes a distinction between “applicants,” “refugees,” “conditional refugees” and “persons under subsidiary protection” on the one hand, and “persons under temporary protection” on the other. What distinguishes “persons under temporary protection” from those who are considered “persons under international protection” is the way they enter Turkey. Temporary protection is given to those who flee to Turkey in large groups, while those who are considered “persons under international protection” are supposed to arrive in Turkey individually or in small groups.

Turkey applies the 1951 convention only to a small number of refugees who come from European countries and refuses to grant other refugees that name. As a result, refugees who come to Turkey from non-European countries do not enjoy the rights of the Convention and local integration has therefore not been a durable solution for them. Historically, they are supposed to be resettled by the UN to third countries. By contrast, those who come to Turkey in large groups are put under “temporary protection” and are not allowed to apply for international protection. The durable solution for them, therefore, is to return to their home countries as soon as the conflict that forced them to leave ceases. Today, as a result of the huge numbers involved, neither resettlement nor return is an option for those who qualify under the individual asylum procedure or who are under temporary protection. Many have been obliged to live in refugee camps in Turkey since fleeing Syria, without the protection of refugee status.

This lack of refugee status is the main cause of the poor economic conditions of the 2.3 million Syrian refugees in Turkey, as well as the 270,000 other refugees from countries such as Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Somalia. In interviews, many such refugees have said that this lack of status and subsequent absence of hope for the future is cited as the main motivation for undertaking risky journeys to Europe.

What has not been done?

Although it has kept its borders open to victims of war and serious human rights violations in Syria and has spent almost $7 billion on the hundreds of thousands of refugees in its camps, Turkey has been unable to significantly improve the lives of the much larger group of urban refugees, with the exception of providing health and to a lesser extent educational support. Now, both the European and Turkish systems are on the verge of collapse and many refugees are determine to reach the EU, even at the cost of their lives.
In Turkey, it is not only the government’s policies but society in general that has failed to adequately manage this crisis. From the beginning of the Syrian crisis, opposition parties denied that the arrivals from Syria were refugees, and it remains the unfortunate case that some in Turkey are not prepared to extend support for the new arrivals due to racial prejudice. The leader of the main opposition party even went as far as to declare that accepting Syrian refugees into Turkey was the government’s biggest crime to date. In border cities where many of the refugees live, reports have emerged of violence targeting refugees, including peer-group bullying of children. In addition, there is a widespread myth that the government provides the refugees with TL 800 per month, further exacerbating hostility. Refugees have frequently been exploited by the business community as cheap undocumented labor. Meanwhile institutions like the Housing Development Administration of Turkey (TOKİ) have failed to provide solutions for the acute accommodation shortage.

What needs to be done?

The refugee crisis offers new opportunities for cooperation. The agreement between Turkey and the EU on an action plan, first discussed between German Chancellor Angela Merkel and senior Turkish political leaders in İstanbul in late October 2015, is one example of an attempt to jointly address the issue. The agreement aims to first support refugees in Turkey and the host Turkish community and second, to control irregular migration flows from Turkey to Europe via Greece. One mechanism designed to this end is an agreement by Turkey to readmit Syrians who have arrived in Greece after dangerous and irregular sea journeys.

An effective implementation of this agreement would require more cooperation between Turkey and the EU in fighting people-smuggling. Smugglers are reported to charge $1,000-1,500 for each person who wishes to go to Greece; multiplied by half a million, this constitutes a hugely profitable temptation. Turkey needs to improve its institutional capacity and legislation against people-smuggling and enforce readmission arrangements by opening new, orderly and legal channels for people to be resettled in Europe under various programs. Turkey should be supported in this by new EU funds to lift the “geographical limitation” and adopt a comprehensive integration law as soon as possible by recognizing the rights in the convention as a whole for all refugees. Turkey, the EU, the UN and refugees should all participate in new contingency planning and discuss what is needed, who can find money for these services and how to effectively implement the plans.

In that sense, the EU-Turkey agreement should be seen as a joint search into how to address the humanitarian tragedy, rather than a bargaining process full of inappropriate proposals. The prospect of opening new chapters of the EU accession acquis communautaire would offer a further incentive for courageous steps by Turkey to lift the limitation since one chapter to be opened could be Chapter 24 on asylum and migration, given that it has been many years since Turkey was first asked to lift the “geographical limitation” and apply the 1951 convention fully to allow refugees to live a dignified new life in its territory.

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) press release, Oct. 19, 2015. Accessed Oct. 19, 2015, http://news.yahoo.com/over-500-000-migrants-reach-greece-arrival-rate-100045052.html?soc_src=mediacontentstory&soc_trk=fb.
Yabancılar ve Uluslararası Koruma Yasası, 6458, April 4, 2013.