“Going at the invitation of the people...”

Speaking to former MPs of his party, President Erdoğan explained the reason for his country being in Syria with the words: “I said sorry, we did not go there at the invitation of Assad. We went there at the invitation of the Syrian people.”

“Is history repetitive?”

So who are those who have the history repeated?

When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, it said it went there “at the invitation of the Afghan people”. Ayatollah Khomeini, who had just recently seized power in Iran, reacted, “What does it mean to go to a country at the invitation of the people? How is that possible?” It is possible for one state to invite another state into its own land, politically it may be normal for some part of the world and abnormal for the other part, and there is no ambiguity here. If one country tries to invade the land of another country, then the armies of the states are fighting, and this is normal. But who are the “people” who invite the army of another state to their lands? Of whom these “people” are composed? Do they have the authority to invite any governing body and management and another country to its borders? Although a dictatorship prevails, if the Syrian state continues to be officially recognized by the UN, who are these “people” who invite Turkey to its borders and Turkey is going to war with the official state in those lands? Erdoğan is trying to justify why his country is in Syria with the counter-arguments by saying, “What are Iran and Russia doing there?” So, from the point of view of Iran and Syria, the reasons for their presence there are clear: Iran, a Shariah state, is there to pursue a sectarian policy and to give Lebanese Hezbollah more support. Russia is there not only for its two military bases – Khmeimim and Latakia. It is there to prevent the “Muslim Brotherhood” from coming to power in Syria, while “Alawi al-Assad”, who is in the minority, is the only figure that fits Moscow’s interests. Because it knows that the coming of “Al-Qaeda” or the “Muslim Brotherhood” to power in Syria will shake Turkey, this shake will turn the North Caucasus and Central Asia into an area where radical Sunnism will go on the rampage, and the outcome of all will worry Russia, it does not only take a step back from this paradigm, what is more to the point, it considers its priority task to combat radical Sunni terrorism in Syria, with the invitation letter of Damascus and the authorization of the UN Security Council. On the other hand, those who follow these things know that Russia is in Syria to protect its military bases there and to lay the groundwork for the safety of two natural gas pipelines that it plans to cross over Turkey. That is to say, both economic and ideological factors.

So what is the purpose of Erdoğan’s Turkey, claiming it is there “at the invitation of the Syrian people”? Looking at the existing table, it is not hard to see that Erdoğan is there, above all, due to ideological reasons. The semantics of Erdoğan’s “Syrian people” or “My brothers” are Sunnis, which constitute the majority sect in Syria. The first reason for the situation in Idlib today is to establish a “Sunni state” (under the auspices of Turkey) albeit in that small corner of Syria; the second reason is to disrupt Russia’s bases in Khmeimim and Latakia from that small “state” territory with missile strikes and give no respite to the Russians in the region.

On Turkey’s own behalf?

No...