Turkish Parliament Approves Military Attack on Syria

The Turkish Parliament authorized on Thursday to send troops to Syria. The motion was debated yesterday after the death of five people in a Turkish village by falling shells from Syrian territory. The Syrian government had already apologized for the attack, but such an apology wasn’t enough for the Turkish leadership which was waiting for the slightest sign of an attack to justify its intervention in Syrian internal affairs.

The decision was approved with 320 votes in favor from the government’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the opposition MHP, and 129 against from the social democratic and pro-Kurdish BDP CHP .

Tensions between Syria and Turkey, which supports Syrian insurgents, publicly entertained the idea of an attack yesterday during a meeting held by the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and two other members of his cabinet. The Turkish army had already bombed Syrian territory in response to the attacks, even though it is not clear who launched such attacks against Turkish neighboring towns. For all it is known, the attack on Turkish land could very well be a false-flag carried out by Turkish supported rebel groups in an attempt to justify a stronger military intervention against the Syrian people.

Syrian Minister of Information, Omran Zoabi, had announced the opening of an investigation into the origin of the border bombing and offered its condolences “to the families and friends of the Turkish people.” However, Turkey decided to launch air attacks on Syrian territory, which resulted in the murder of soldiers, reported the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH), a government opposition group. Some of the deaths occurred at a military checkpoint in the province of Al REQA.

The attacks launched from Syrian territory caused an immediate response from friends and foes of Bashar al-Assad. Russia immediately demanded that Syria confirmed that the killing of Turkish people was not an act of Syrian troops. “We have made contact with the Syrian side through our ambassador. We have ensured that (…) what happened was a tragic accident and that measures will be taken to avoid new accidents,” said Russia’s Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov.

Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, called the attacks an “outrage” and said it was “very, very dangerous” because violence was spreading across Syrian borders. Along with Clinton, the European Union’s High Representative, Catherine Ashton, said that “these violations of the sovereignty of Turkey can not be tolerated” before impinging on the incident illustrates the spillover effect of the Syrian crisis. Ms. Ashton did not have an opinion regarding Turkey’s role in the continuous attacks against Syrian territory. She did not condemn the coordinated attacks carried out by rebels supported by the United States, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, whose terrorist groups operate directly from Turkish territory.

The politically weakened German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, called for restraint on both parties, but made it clear that his government is “on the side of Turkey”, with which it maintains close contact. So Merkel supports terrorism as long as it not carried out against Germany’s allies in the region. Another accomplice of western colonialist forces is France, whose Foreign Minister meanwhile considered the attack launched from Syria, a “serious threat to peace and international security.”

Laurent Fabius said that “the international community can not accept that the Syrian regime continued their acts of violence both inside and outside its borders. He then called for military intervention by the west by saying that it is an issue that needs to be dealt with as soon as possible.

The British Foreign Minister, William Hague, called the attack “outrageous” and added that Syria’s deterioration — which is being caused by terrorist groups supported by the western nations such as France, the United States, and England — poses a real danger to the region.

Perhaps Mr. Hague should then call for an immediate end of the attacks carried out by western and eastern allied forces on Syria, which is what keeps the country on fire up until today.