From: SMITH ANNETTE
Sent: 08 December 2015 20:45
Subject: Fwd: Turk-US complicity in Syria terror
---------- Original Message ----------
From: DON HANK
Date: 05 December 2015 at 17:50
Subject: Turk-US complicity in Syria terror
Killing Christians is a "Western value." After the US "won" in Iraq, the
Christians were immediately killed, persecuted, their churches burned and most
fled to the West.
Washington could truthfully say: Slaughtering Christians is what we do.
Don Hank
http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2015/12/03/massacre-proves-turk-washington-complicity-in-syria-terror.html
Massacre Proves Turk, Washington Complicity in Syria Terror
<http://www.strategic-culture.org/authors/finian-cunningham.html> Finian
CUNNINGHAM | 03.12.2015 | 00:00
<http://www.strategic-culture.org/images/news/2015/12/03/s35278.jpg> On the
morning of March 21, 2014, the Syrian village of Kessab was attacked with a
combined force of Islamist jihadists and the Turkish army. Among the irregular
militia were brigades belonging to the Free Syrian Army, Turkmen tribes and Al
Qaeda-linked Al Nusra and the self-proclaimed Islamic State. All were working
in tandem in the resulting massacre. And the evidence shows that the Ankara and
Washington governments were fully complicit in the atrocity.
The dawn assault on the mainly Armenian Christian village of 2,000 inhabitants
began with heavy artillery fire from Turkish army positions across the border
in Turkey’s Hatay Province. Turkish army helicopters were also used to strafe
Kessab homes and farms. The village is located in the Jebel Al-Aqra mountains
overlooking the Mediterranean Sea only a few kilometres from the Turkish border
in Syria’s Latakia Province.
After the initial salvos from the Turk army, the village was then attacked with
thousands of militants who streamed across the border in pick-up trucks. Among
the assault force were nationals from Chechnya, Afghanistan, Tunisia, Morocco,
Saudi Arabia – as well as British and Australian, according to survivors.
Most of the Kessab residents managed to escape in panic from the advancing
jihadists in cars and other vehicles to the southern city of Latakia, which is
about an hour’s drive away and is under the control of the Syrian government.
But what transpired in the next days was a massacre of villagers who were left
stranded. In total, 88 mainly elderly residents were slaughtered. Thirteen of
the victims were beheaded. One young man, 21-year-old Kevork Djurian, was
executed in front of his parents. The killers just laughed at his father
Papken’s anguish. The jihadists refused to let the father bury his son, saying
that he was «an Armenian dog».
Kessab was occupied by the jihadists for nearly three months before theSyrian
Arab Army finally routed the militants and retook the village in mid-June 2014.
Today, it still remains under Syrian government control.
Two witnesses to the slaughter have separately told this author of the event
and its aftermath. One is an American citizen who has lived in Syria for more
than 20 years. She is a medical professional who has a family home in Kessab.
On the morning of the opening assault, she was in Latakia, but she tended to
the survivors who fled to the main Armenian church in Latakia for sanctuary. As
well as caring for the traumatised people, some of whom were her neighbours and
friends, she carefully noted their accounts of how the initial attack unfolded.
When the Syrian army later retook Kessab in June, the American medic returned
to the village and witnessed the devastation that the jihadists had inflicted
on homes, public buildings and churches.
Another witness is Irish peace activist, Dr Declan Hayes. He also managed to
reach Kessab in the days following its recapture by the Syrian army. Hayes
interviewed survivors and recorded the scenes of looting and destruction left
behind by the fleeing anti-government militia.
«I interviewed the man whose son was slain in front of his eyes», says Hayes.
«The jihadists left the young man’s bloodied corpse lying on the ground for
three days outside the family home just to torment his parents».
Without exception, all the villagers said that the assault began with artillery
fire and raids by helicopter gunships from Turk territory. «The border is
heavily militarised with Turk army positions everywhere on the Turkish side.
There is no doubt that this attack was launched with the direct involvement of
the Turkish government in Ankara», adds Hayes.
Kessab is in the same mountainous location where Turkish F-16 fighter jets last
week shot down a Russian Su-24 bomber, which had been carrying out raids on
jihadist groups. The Russian plane came down in Syrian territory and one of its
pilots was murdered as he parachuted to the ground by Turkmen militants. The
Turkmen are Syrian citizens who are ethnically related to Turks across the
border.
The American-Syrian woman (whose name has been withheld by this author on
request) says that the Turkmen played an important role in the slaughter of
Kessab. «They know all the roads, trails and paths into and out of Kessab. They
were the ones who led the attackers into the village», she says.
Churches and a cultural centre in the village were desecrated. The attackers
moved from house-to-house killing terrified dwellers and then they looted
everything that was not nailed down or even those possessions that were nailed
down. Money, jewellery, televisions, fridges, doors, windows, furnishings and
farm equipment were systematically plundered and hauled back in trucks to be
sold off across the border in Turkey.
Adding to the crimes, a group of about 30 elderly village folk were then
abducted by the marauders and taken to the Turkish town of Vakifli some 20
kilometres across the border. They were held there by armed militants for
several weeks before they were flown by the Turk authorities to the city of
Tripoli in Lebanon. From there the people were able to make their way back to
the sanctuary of Latakia. The circuitous route was chosen by the Turk regime in
order to conceal its involvement in the crime.
During their abduction, the group was visited by an official American
delegation that included the then US ambassador to Turkey, Francis Ricciardone.
Ricciardone introduced himself through an interpreter. The
petrified Kessab folk pleaded with the American official to intervene for their
release. But he left them in their plight. What he wanted to know through his
questioning was if any of the people from Kessab were American citizens.
As the American medic pointed out to this author: «There are a few US citizens
like me who live in Kessab. There is a big diaspora community of Armenian
Syrians in the United States and many of them have homes back in Syria. It
seems that the American ambassador was worried that if any US citizens were
among the Kessab survivors this would rebound badly for the American government
if that news got out».
As noted, once the US ambassador established that there were apparently no
American citizens involved in the aftermath of the Kessab assault, he duly left
them to their fate of captivity in Turkey.
What that encounter illustrates is that Washington must have been fully aware
of what went down in Kessab. How else would the US diplomat know to show up to
question the abducted villagers?
In the days following the attack on the village, Samantha Power, the US
ambassador to the United Nations, issued a perfunctory, bland statement about
Washington’s «concern» over the violence. But Washington did not specify who
the guilty parties were, nor did it issue any censure of the Turk government of
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who was the prime minister at that time. He is now the
president.
In fact, a subsequent statement issued by State Department official Victoria
Nuland claimed that the Turk government had no involvement in the Kessab
incident. However, the Russian, Syrian and Armenian governments did make
explicit condemnations of the massacre.
The Turkish government claimed that it had no role in the attack. In an
official release, the Erdogan regime said: «The allegations by some circles
that Turkey is providing support to the opposition forces by letting them use
its territory or through some other ways during the conflict which have
intensified recently in the Latakia/Kessab region are totally unfounded and
untrue».
But the testimonies cited in this article show that the Turk authorities were
directly involved in the military assault and the orchestration of jihadist
militants. The Ankara government’s denials of what happened in Kessab are thus
barefaced lies.
On April 1, 2014, 12 days after the assault began, Ahmed Jarba, the leader of
the Western-backed Syrian National Council (SNC), arrived in Kessab. The SNC is
the exiled political wing of the Free Syrian Army. Jarba, who is a protégé of
the Saudi regime, went there to inspect the occupation and congratulate the
militants on their successful breach of government-held territory in Latakia.
The breach of territory to the Mediterranean coast was considered a significant
victory for the militants. The following month, in May, Jarba was received in
the White House by President Barack Obama. He was also greeted by Obama’s
National Security advisor, Susan Rice.
The «rape of Kessab», as Dr Declan Hayes has called it, was fully conducted by
fighters belonging to the Western-backed FSA, along with jihadist brigades
comprising Turkmen tribesmen and Al Qaeda-linked Al Nusra and Islamic State.
The incident serves as a microcosm of the entire four-and-a-half-year-old
Syrian conflict. The mainly Armenian Christian village of Kessab is home to all
religious sects that reside in Syria, including Alawite and Sunni Muslims. The
farming community has lived peaceably together for centuries and has never been
persecuted by the Syrian government of President Assad. The only previous
persecution was a century ago, in 1915, when the Turk Ottoman empire carried
out the Armenian genocide, when 1.5 million Armenians were exterminated.
Tragically, many survivors of the Kessab massacre last year are descendants of
that first genocide.
On the morning of March 21 last year, the community of Kessab was plunged into
an orgy of barbarism carried out by Western, Turk and Saudi-backed jihadists.
The whole notion contrived by Western governments and their mainstream media
that the West is backing «secular, moderate rebels» in Syria fighting against a
sectarian, despotic regime is thus exposed as a vile charade, as the carnage at
Kessab shows.
Of particular import is the criminal role played by the Turk government of
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, not only in the orchestration of the slaughter at Kessab,
but, more generally, throughout the entire Syrian conflict.
Erdogan has this week flatly denied claims made by Russian President Vladimir
Putin that Ankara is complicit in fuelling the conflict in Syria by supporting
terrorists through an industrial-scale campaign, involving the smuggling of oil
for weapons. Erdogan has even said that he will resign if it is proven that his
regime is complicit. His arrogant confidence seems to stem from his regime’s
brutal suppression of Turk media publishing verifiable articles that Turkish
state intelligence has indeed been running truck-loads of weapons into Syria.
Previously, by way of attempting to absolve the Turk state from charges of
terrorist collusion, Erdogan claimed that weapons were being sent to help
Turkmen «brothers» to defend themselves from the Syrian army. Following the
brutal murder of the Russian pilot by Turkmen jihadists last week, Erdogan this
week changed his tune and claimed that weapon convoys into Syria were allegedly
being sent to the «Free Syrian Army».
But, as the Kessab massacre demonstrates, the so-called «moderate» FSA is an
integral and indistinguishable component of the proxy terrorist army that
Ankara and its Washington ally are supporting to overthrow the elected
government of President Assad. Any difference is patently just a figment of
imaginative propaganda.
Obama, while at the Paris climate change summit this week (appropriately, a
«hot-air» conference of world leaders), has this week reiterated calls on
Russia to focus its military campaign on the Islamic State and to halt its
aerial attacks on «moderate rebels».
The American president and his Turk ally are in no position to lecture anybody
about «terrorists» and «moderates». They are all part of the same criminal
gang, and that gang includes Obama and Erdogan.
