2-Mar-13 World View-Syria conflict turning into a proxy war

[John]

2-Mar-13 World View -- Syria conflict turning into a proxy war

Euro zone unemployment rises to record level

** 2-Mar-13 World View -- Syria conflict turning into a proxy war
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/cgi ... 02#e130302



Contents:
Report: Turkey and Israel might be headed for reconciliation
Turkey's Erdogan calls Zionism a 'crime', and retracts it
U.S. and Turkey's objectives in Syria appear to be diverging
Euro zone unemployment rises to record level
Personal income plummets, but spending rises anyway


Keys:
Generational Dynamics, Turkey, Israel, Recep Tayyip Erdogan,
Avigdor Lieberman, Mavi Marmara, Gaza, Benjamin Netanyahu,
Ahmet Davutoglu, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iran, Iraq,
Spain, euro zone

[Reality Check]

On Friday, Turkey's Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu claimed that the U.S. and Turkey have exactly the same objectives for Syria. However, evidence is growing that American and Turkish objectives are diverging. In particular, Turkey is providing support to Islamists and even jihadists in Turkey, and would like to see a Sunni Islamist government replace the regime of Syria's president Bashar al-Assad. He ( Turkey's Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu ) is showing no sympathy at all for the Alawite, Christian and Kurdish communities. Turkey is thus aligned with Saudi Arabia and Qatar, who are reportedly supplying weapons to opposition fighters. America and the West, however, want to support only non-Islamist opposition fighters, and fears that any support given to jihadists will eventually be used against the West. Tensions are building throughout the Mideast over the situation in Syria, which is increasingly appearing to be a proxy war involving the West ( on one side ) versus Turkey + Saudi Arabia + Qatar ( on a second side ) versus Russia + Iran + Iraq + Hezbollah + the al-Assad regime ( on the third side ) .

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Syria is a complex place - and a take over by a Sunni Islamist government would likely be accompanied by a revolutionary redistribution of land and resources resulting from ethnic and religious cleansing. As in Iraq the very large Christian community would likely be the hardest hit, followed by the Alawites, and the non-Sunni and non-Shia Muslim sects present in substantial numbers in Syria. Out migrations of, and/or the deaths of, millions of refugees from these major Syrian minority groups would be quite possible.
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Christians can attempt to escape to Europe or the United States.
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The millions of Alawites have no other country where their community exists in any significant numbers.
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As someone on the Generational Dynamics site pointed out, most of the civilian deaths occur in the ten years after the end of a war that turns a country upside down. A state security apparatus with a monopoly on violence finds it much easier to evict, relocate and kill unarmed civilians on a massive scale, and then cover it up from those outside the country, than do armed factions within a country during a civil war.
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Such a Sunni Islamist take over does appear to be the goal of not only the Sunni Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia, but also the Egyptian government which backs the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood ( which is a major Sunni Islamist militant group in Syria ) and in addition Turkey which backs Sunni Arab Militant Islamist groups for many reasons, not the least of which is the hope they will use force to suppress Kurdish autonomy in Syria. Turkey is itself ruled by a Sunni Islamist government which uses virtually unlimited state power to discriminate against very large minority communities of non-Sunni Muslims, and also to discriminate against a very large secular minority in Turkey.

http://generationaldynamics.com/forum/v ... f=5&t=1833

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/ ... YE20130220