By Theodore Shoebat

The United States military will now be patrolling Syria with Turkish soldiers on their sides. For all of you fools out there that fell for the hype that ‘American troops could get into a fire fight with Turkish soldiers in Manbij,’ here you go:

Turkey and the United States have almost completed work on joint patrols in northern Syria’s Manbij area and those patrols and joint training will begin soon, Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said on Friday.

In a news conference with journalists, Kalin said that Turkey expected the international community to contribute to the political process in Syria. (from Reuters)

Turkey is bringing back the caliphate, and NATO is helping them to accomplish this.

According to some prominent politicians in the Turkish parliament, there is a plan being conspired by Erdogan and his ilk to bring back the Caliphate to the center of the religious and political paradigm of the Islamic world. Cem Toker, the former head of the libertarian Liberal Democratic Party in Turkey, recently warned in an interview:

“There will be another referendum in the next four years… There is one more referendum left to come. I believe that Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is assertive (on this point). My guess: the caliphate. We will ask the nation, ‘shall we bring back the caliphate or not?”

When asked by the interviewer on whether or not he was certain of what he was saying, Toker responded: “It’s a very, very great possibility, yes …March 3, 2024 is the hundredth anniversary of the abolition of the caliphate…”

The interview was done on the Turkish private television station, KRT, which is known for being opposed to Erdogan’s Islamist aspirations. It is thus not surprising that the Turkish regime has been working to have the station shut down. In January of this year, Cem Küçük, who is a mouthpiece commentator for the Erdogan regime, demanded that the station be shut down. Lawyer Fidel Okan announced on Twitter that the station will be closing down.

Meanwhile, there are very prominent officials in the American government working to help Turkey gain the military technology it needs to have a conquering force. 

There seems to be an internal struggle taking place within the United States government on whether or not to allow Turkey to obtain F-35 fighter jets. But there are very influential officials lobbying to permit the defense company Lockheed Martin to sell F-35s to the Turks. Meanwhile, in the NATO summit, NATO countries have affirmed that they will back Turkey against the Syrian government, which thus gives further leeway for Turkey’s geopolitical agenda of expanding its military into Syria. 

In its most recent meeting in Brussels, NATO backed Turkey against Syria, declaring in a joint statement that Syria poses a national security threat to Turkey. “We remain concerned that Turkey has been hit three times in the last four years by missiles launched from Syria. We continue to monitor and assess the ballistic missile threat from Syria,” the declaration said.

“The increasing threat posed by the proliferation of ballistic missiles in the vicinity of the south-east border of the Alliance has been and remains a driver in NATO’s development and deployment of a ballistic missile defense system, which is configured to counter threats from outside the Euro-Atlantic area,” it added.

The NATO alliance also vowed “tailored assurance measures” for Turkey against Syria:

“Tailored assurance measures for Turkey to respond to the growing security challenges from the south contribute to the security of the Alliance as a whole, and will be fully implemented …We have increased the strength of the NATO Response Force, and the Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (VJTF) is ready to deploy on short notice”

Pointing to a missile threat or to Kurdish separatists is simply a way of justifying enabling Turkey to expand its hegemony into Syria. Erdogan claims that he wants Turkish forces in Syria to crush the YPG, but remember what he said back in 2016: “We entered [Syria] to end the rule of the tyrant al-Assad who terrorizes with state terror. [We didn’t enter] for any other reason”. Turkey wants to enter Syria to replace the government and conquer the land. And the United States is giving Turkey the green light to expand into Syria. As a Whitehouse press statement pointed out early this year: “President Trump stressed the need to intensify cooperation with Turkey with respect to shared strategic challenges in Syria.”

What this statement signifies is what we at shoebat.com have been warning about for years: that the US will see Turkey as a force of stabilization in Syria, and will allow the Turks to conduct its military expansion in the region. As shoebat.com wrote as far back as 2012:

“Syria will be the first nation to go under Turkish rule because of its closeness, and the expediency of invading such a country, on account that Turkey is trusted by the West, and that Syria will voluntarily allow itself to be under the power of Turkey to fill its absence of a strong enough government.” 

Moreover as we wrote in 2013:

“Turkey is fiercely accentuating and intensifying their call for military intervention against Syria. …  expect Turkey to find an excuse to justify an attack on Syria.”

We have been warning on a Turkish invasion of Syria for years, and now we are seeing this prediction coming into reality. People in the media were talking about a possible clash between Turkish and American forces over the area of Manbij, where there is a heavy US military presence. But as we said in two of our prior articles (read here and here), there is going to be no clash in this context because, in this situation, the US is allowing Turkey to expand into Syria.

In January of 2018, Trump spoke with Erdogan in a phone conversation, in which, according to a Whitehouse document:

“President Trump invited closer bilateral cooperation to address Turkey’s legitimate security concerns. The leaders discussed the need to stabilize a unified Syria that poses no threats to its neighbors, including Turkey.”

There is your Trump. Another powerless puppet.

This is another evidence as to what we said above: Turkey is expanding into Syria with American superintendence. One Turkish source very close to Turkish politics, Emre Dogru, wrote in an email correspondence with Stratfor back in 2011 that Turkey had a plan to invade northern Syria, and that such a measure was already known by the Americans, and that it would be done only with American and NATO involvement. Dogru also said that Turkey would not invade Syria unless the Syrian civil war causes a migrant crises. As we read in the email which can be found in the Wikileaks archives:

“But Turkey has a very-well developed contingency plan that may be implemented should the need arise according to the events that take place in Syria. The plan was elaborated back in March 2011, and revised in June 2011. Turkey’s allies, including the US, are aware of this plan. The plan includes creating a buffer-zone in northern Syria (I sent specifics of this plan in another insight before – pasted below) only if the unrest or civil war in Syria 1) Creates a massive refugee crisis 2) Threatens the border security 3) Provides PKK with an opportunity to attack on Turkey more easily. But Turkey does not have any intention to take an action on Syria unless these conditions occur. Turkey will not act without US/NATO involvement anyway.”

2011 was the year that the Syrian civil war started, and this email was written on 2011. Which means that the Americans, Turks and Europeans had this plan of a Turkish invasion of Syria all along, from the beginning of the US’, Turkey’s and NATO’s involvement to destabilize Syria.

In other words, Turkey’s invasion of Syria is part of a long term plan. As we wrote on shoebat.com last year, plans to destabilize Syria to overthrow the Assad regime can be found going as far back as the 1980s. In one CIA document from 1986, entitled, Syria: Scenarios of Dramatic Political Change, it states that “widespread violence among the populace could stimulate large numbers of Sunni officers and conscripts to desert or mutiny, setting the stage for civil war.” Remember, “widespread violence amongst the populace” is exactly what has taken place from the beginning years to now of the Syrian revolution. The carnage, cruelty and brutality that the world has been witnessing taking place in Syria, is all part of the plan of the militarists and industrialists. 

There is another line from the document that reflects the US plan to overthrow the Shiite Alawite Assad regime and replace it with a Sunni government to end Russian influence over Syria: “If the Sunnis gained power, Moscow’s position would be weaker because of Sunni resentment of Soviet support for Alawis.” Which country is the most powerful of the Sunni nations? Turkey. Which is why they are allowing the Turks to invade Syria. 

One CIA document from 1951, entitled, Turkey’s Position in the East-West Struggle, talks about a future Soviet invasion of Turkey, and states that Turkey, with strong Western support, would be able to hold a defense against such an incursion:

“Against a Soviet attack, the Turks could probably maintain organized resistance for two or three months and — with substantial Western assistance — could hold for some time a redoubt area in Southern Turkey against Soviet forces.” 

Now the Soviet Union is no more, but this does not change policy, and it does not change American competition towards Russia. Even before the Soviet Union was established, the US conducted policy against Russia, such as what the United States did when it pulled out all of its troops from Korea so as to enable Japan to invade the country. Under the Theodore Roosevelt administration, the United States would help Japan become the powerful adversary it would fight against in World War Two. Roosevelt practically gave Korea to Japan with the full intent of having the Japanese rule over the Koreans, saying,

“Korea should be entirely within Japan’s sphere of interest.”

Foreknowing that Japan was going to invade, the king of Korea, Gojong, asked the United States for protection, but as is typical of how America treats its allies, the Americans ordered all of their troops to pull from Korea, and convinced the Western powers to withdraw their forces as well. Korea was a helpless victim. The Japanese swallowed all of Korea, completely deprived it of independence, and threw the king out. Within a very short time, the Japanese hung thousands of Korean nationalists from the gallows. (See Bradley, Flyboys, ch. 3, p. 31)

The United States is doing a similar policy with Syria. As it did with Japan — allowing Japanese troops to invade Korea –, the US is allowing Turkey to invade Syria.

The United States supported Japan because it saw it as a force that would keep Russia and China in check. The Americans began to see Japan as a tool to be used to go against Russia after seeing what casualties the Japanese were able to inflict on Russian troops in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905). In the Battle of Tsushima, only a one day naval battle (May 27-28, 1905), 6000 Russian fighters were martyred, while the Japanese had only 600 causalities. (See James Bradley, Flyboys, ch. 3, p. 31) President Theodore Roosevelt praised the Japanese for their slaughter of the Russians, and at the same time expressed his contempt for the Chinese:

“Bad as the Chinese are, no human beings, black, yellow or white, could be quite as untruthful, as insincere, arrogant — in short as untrustworthy in every way — as the Russians under their present system. I was pro-Japanese before, but after my experience with the peace commissioners I am far stronger pro-Japanese than ever.” (H.W. Brands, T.R.: The Last Romantic, ch. 20, p. 540)

Roosevelt believed that he could now control a “civilized race” to dominate their neighboring Asian countries, and essentially dominate Asia so the United States would not have to, “with, of course,” said Roosevelt, “a paramount interest in what surrounds the Yellow Sea” (See Bradley, Flyboys, ch. 3, p. 31). 

When it comes to American geopolitics, parties change, but policies do not. The only thing that changes is the face. Once, the Russian czar was the enemy, and then it was the USSR, now it is just Russia that is the boogyman, used to propagate reasons for proxy wars and backing other countries, like Turkey or Ukraine. The militarists in the United States government, just as they saw Japan under Theodore Roosevelt, sees Turkey as a key country against Russia. Russian troops are currently in Syria, being cogs in the machine of Russia who is rivaling with Turkey over the region.

The United States, seeing this struggle between the two countries, is backing Turkey. A lot of this goes back to the Cold War, in which the CIA saw Turkey as one of the most important countries against the USSR. In the same 1951 CIA documented quoted above, it reads:

“Turkey is one of the strongest anti-Communist countries on the periphery of the USSR and the only in the Near East capable of offering substantial resistance to the Soviet aggression.”

The United States does not vie with Russia because of its communist history — since it was working against the Russians years prior to the Bolshevik Revolution. The United States hates Russia because it is the only country that it cannot control. Right now there is a rivalry between Russia and the US over Syria, and who is America’s biggest NATO ally in Syria? Its Turkey. In May of 2017, John Bolton, who is now the National Security Advisor for the Trump administration, implied that the United States needs to keep Turkey as an ally or else Russia will take Turkey as its ally, saying: “As POTUS meets with Erdogan, It’s important to keep in mind that Putin would like nothing better than to separate Turkey from #NATO.”

As @POTUS meets with Erdogan, It's important to keep in mind that Putin would like nothing better than to separate Turkey from #NATO.

— John Bolton (@AmbJohnBolton) May 16, 2017

We are not arguing that Russia is innocent, though. When Turkey invaded Afrin, Russia, in the words of one report, turned “a blind eye on the military offensive. Russian forces were withdrawn from the area just before the operation began and Turkish jets were allowed to use the Afrin airspace, controlled by the Syrian government and Russia.” The Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), which has been traditionally supported by Russia, is furious at what it sees as a betrayal on the part of Russia. The PYD released a statement saying:

“We know that, without the permission of global forces and mainly Russia, whose troops are located in Afrin, Turkey cannot attack civilians using Afrin airspace … Therefore, we hold Russia as responsible as Turkey and stress that Russia is the crime partner of Turkey in massacring the civilians in the region. … We agreed with Russia to observe Afrin on the peaceful principles, but it now allows Turkish warplanes to attack Afrin. It means Russia has betrayed us”

Ahmet Berat Conkar, an MP from the AK Party, and head of the Turkish delegation to the NATO parliamentary assembly, in fact praised Russia for its allowing of Turkish forces to invade Afrin, stating:

“Russia understands the sensitivities of Turkey, whereas Washington supports and delivers weapons to the terrorist group PYD/YPG … Russia respects Turkey’s request not to have this group at the negotiation table in the Astana process.”

However, its possible that Russia permitted Turkey to invade Afrin as part of some sort of deal to contain Turkish expansionism. This is at least the opinion of Professor Akgun, who told Al Jazeera that Russia wants to guarantee that Assad gets included in a resolution to the Syrian conflict once the war in Syria is over, and that by allowing Turkey to invade Syria, the Turks would not overthrow Assad. Remember what Erdogan said back in 2016: “We entered [Syria] to end the rule of the tyrant al-Assad who terrorizes with state terror. [We didn’t enter] for any other reason”.

So it looks like if the Turks take control of Syria — which it appears that they will — Assad is going to get thrown under the bus by the Russians. This reminds us of an historical event in the beginning of the 20th century. After the Japanese devastated the Russians in 1905, and after the Russian Revolution that took place that same year, Russia was out of action.

On October of 1908, the Austrians declared that they were going to annex Bosnia-Herzegovina. Russia was Austria’s biggest rival in the Balkans, and yet Russia’s foreign secretary, Alexander Izvolsky, initially did not protest Austria’s grabbing of Bosnia-Herzegovina. This was because the Austrians made a deal with the Russians, that they would take Bosnia-Herzegovina, and in exchange would negotiate with the Ottoman Sultan to allow the Russians free passage for their navy to move through the Anatolian Straits and Constantinople. The Austrians lied. They took Bosnia-Herzegovina and there was no free passage given to the Russians by the Ottomans. Russia rightfully saw Austria’s move as expansionist.

The Russians allowed for the Austrian annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina with the vain hope of an agreement with the Ottomans over free passage in their maritime territory. In our own time, Russia allowed Turkey to invade Afrin for, it appears, a deal with Turkey to protect its ally Assad so as to maintain Russian political leverage in Syria. If this is indeed the case, then Russia is only pursuing another fruitless deal, as it did with Austria, and as it was then, war will be the denouement of these human plans, with the final end of it all being determined by the Almighty.

After the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie were murdered by the Serbian nationalist, Gavrilo Princip in 1909, Austria’s chief of Staff, Conrad, asked his German counterpart, Moltke, what Germany would do if Austria invaded Serbia and by this provoked Russia to intervene. Moltke replied that Germany would get involved militarily, regardless of the fact that Austria would be the aggressor. (See Fromkin, Europe’s Last Summer, ch. 11, pp. 71-75) 

The end result of all of these machinations was “the Great War” — and there was nothing great about it — with Britain, France, Italy and Russia fighting against Germany, Austro-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire. Russia, until the Bolshevik takeover, devastated the Turks, especially in the Battle of Sarikamish in 1915 in eastern Anatolia. In the Great War, the Germans provided the Ottomans with a very efficient artillery weapon — the howitzer —, and also gave Turkey two powerful naval ships, the Goeben and the Breslau. They also backed Turkey with their U-boats with which the Germans devastated the British and French navies in the battle over the Dardanelles, enabling the Turks to vanquish the British in the same area.  

The relationship between the Turk and the German goes back centuries, to the Protestant Reformation when Protestants — Anglicans, Calvinists and Lutherans — helped the Ottomans fight the Catholics. This collaboration was seen most clearly in the Thirty Years War which lasted from 1614 to 1648 (truly the first world war), in which German Protestants conspired with the Ottomans to invade Catholic Poland. Heinrich Bitter, the envoy of Bohemia, travelled to Constantinople to gain Ottoman support against the Hapsburg king, Ferdinand II. In July of the same year, the Ottoman ambassador Mehmed Aga visited Prague where he told Bohemians that the Ottoman empire was willing to send an army of 60,000 men to invade Poland.

The collaboration between the German and the Turk never really ended. In 1898, Kaiser Wilhelm II did a tour across the Turkish and Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire. While he was in Damascus, Syria, the kaiser proclaimed: “May the Sultan and his 300 million Muslim subjects scattered across the earth, who venerate him as their Caliph, be assured that the German Kaiser will be their friend for all time.”

The kaiser wanted to strengthen the alliance between Germany and the Ottoman Empire. One of his hopes behind this aspiration was to get the 100 million Muslim subjects under the British empire to go against Britain and be on the side of the Germans. One of the goals with the kaiser’s trip to the Ottoman Empire was to vie against British monopoly in the Middle East. One of the ways that the Germans went about this was the creation of a railway linking Berlin with Baghdad.

After the kaiser’s visit, Germany gained the permission to build a railway across Turkey to Basra on the Persian Gulf en route to Baghdad. Construction of the railway system began in 1903, and by 1914 it connected Istanbul with Ankara and linked the Mediterranean coast near Adana. This was the Berlin-Baghdad railway. By the First World War it would be used as the main vehicle to transport Armenians to their extermination. Today, the Turks, the Azerbaijanis and the Austrians have been working to establish a railroad network connecting Europe and Asia, as shoebat.com wrote about last year.    

A year before World War One erupted, the Ottomans sought after the Germans to reform their military (which was in inferior conditions in comparison to Western militaries). Kaiser Wilhelm II nominated the Prussian general, Otto Liman von Sanders, to reform the Ottoman military, a commission which he accepted. When the Great War sparked in the summer of 1914, the Ottomans knew that such a conflict would enable the Russians to invade Anatolia and take Istanbul, which the Russians wanted not just for secular reasons, but for religious ones, the city being originally Constantinople, the holy city of Eastern Orthodox Christianity. In this most tense situation, the Ottomans debated on who to ally with so as to protect themselves.

The triumvirate of the Ottomans —Enver, Talat and Cemal — were somewhat split on who to side with. While Cemal wanted to join the Allies, believing that the Entente would control Russian goals, the other two, Enver and Talat, wanted to side with Germany. The last two got their way. The kaiser was enthusiastic about an Ottoman alliance in the war. He instructed his ambassador to Istanbul to accept the Turkish request, saying: “A refusal or a snub would amount to her going over to Russo-Gallia … and our influence would be gone over to Russo-Gallia”. (See Rogan, The Fall of the Ottomans, ch. 2, pp. 34-40)  The Ottomans needed the Germans for their firepower, which was demonstrably helpful for the Turks in their victory over the British in the battle over the Dardanelles.

The Germans, on the other hand, needed the Ottomans to neutralize British control and influence in the Middle East, and in the Muslim world in general. This latter plan was not really that successful, with many Muslims in the Arab speaking world, siding against the Ottomans with the British (as was witnessed in numerous battles, such as the Battle of Shaiba, the Battle of Basra and the battle over the Hijaz).

There is a geopolitical pattern here. The Germans wanted to join the Ottomans in the fear that if they didn’t, the Turks would join the Russians and the French.

Today, the Americans are giving the green light to the Turks to expand into Syria, with the fear that, in the words of John Bolton, “Putin would like nothing better than to separate Turkey from NATO.” We are not equating America with Germany, only comparing the strategies. Germany today, as it did in the past, also is latching onto Turkey as a geopolitical force in the Middle East.

In January of 2018, it was confirmed that Germany had been supplying Turkey with Leopard 2A4 tanks for its offensive against Afrin. The public outcry over this was so loud that Germany announced that it would suspend a request by Turkey for German arms manufacturer Rheinmetall to upgrade the tanks to make them less vulnerable to explosives. But this was all a show, since Germany has never ceased its supply of tanks to Turkey. As we read in a report published last week:

“Germany continues to authorize the export of weapons to Turkey despite criticizing the country’s offensive in the Syrian enclave of Afrin, German public broadcaster ARD reported Thursday.

The German government has approved the export of military equipment worth €4.4 million ($5.4 million) since January 20, when Turkey launched its offensive against Kurdish militia in Afrin, ARD said, citing a response from the Foreign Ministry to a question by the Left party.

The value of the approvals in the month preceding the offensive was almost €10 million.”

Pervin Buldan, the Co-leader of Turkey’s opposition Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), in a speech addressed to a Kurdish audience in Germany, expressed her protest against the German government, saying: “We know [you] are giving Turkey tanks and artillery”, and describing this arms supply as “dirty deals”.

The German Leopard 2A4 tanks that Turkey is using have not gone through the upgrades that Germany is currently undertaking. Turkey also used the Sabra tank, which was manufactured by Israel Military Industries (IMI), a weapons manufacturer owned by the government of Israel. But the Sabra also has its weaknesses, and is not immune to the Kornet Anti-Tank Guided Missiles, which the Kurds used against the Turks in the battle over Afrin. Realizing that they cannot get the upgrades that they want for their tanks (due to the political controversy involved) the Turks have turned to one of the most Nazi sympathizing countries of our time: Ukraine.

Turkey wants to equip its main battle tanks with the ‘Akkor Pulat’ Active Protection Systems (APS) developed in Ukraine. According to one report, the Akkor Pulat “is the Turkish version of the new, light version (Zaslon-L), to be produced under license by Aselsan”, one of the biggest defense companies in Turkey. The same report goes on to say that the Akkor Pulat “is effective against RPGs, recoilless guns, and ATGM. The localization of the Ukrainian system was done by Aselsan in accordance with the technical and export liaison agencies of the two countries, the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK) and Ukrainian UkrOboronService. … The system developed by the Kiev-based Microtec development center in Ukraine acts as a ‘barrier’ – a close-in active countermeasure protecting the vehicle from short range anti-tank rockets, guided missiles, recoilless guns and tank rounds, and kinetic tank rounds (with limited effect).”  Ukraine today has a lot of Nazi sympathizers in both its society and government. The Ukrainian paramilitary organization, Azov, is by far the most armed and organized neo-nazi militia in the world.The current president of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, called one Azov terrorist a hero back in 2014, the year the fighting in Ukraine began. 

Turkey is going to be pushing forward in its expansionist aspiration. In the autumn of 2018 Turkey will be having its presidential election. Erdogan wants to continue to fan the flames of his nationalist and Islamist constituency, and having a vanquishing militarism with his image will establish him as a conquering hero. An article from Time Magazine states:

“Erdogan dreams of positioning Turkey as leader of the Muslim world. To do that, Turkey must play a critical role in the Syrian post-conflict negotiations, both for symbolic reasons and to isolate the Kurds.” 

With the rise of Turkey there is also a rising Iran, which wants to make Syria into a Shia outpost bordering right with the Golan Heights. Saudi Arabia is terrified of Iran, since there is no country in the Middle East that hates Saudi more than Iran. The Persians will destroy Saudi Arabia, and “the Arab will no longer pitch his tent there” (Isaiah 13:20). 

All of the players of World War One are entering this conflict. France just sent troops into Syria. France has its own agenda. Lets remember that France, too, had its own empire. During the First World War, France had its eye on Syria, and already had plans to take the country, foreseeing the fall of the Ottoman Empire. When Hussein bin Ali, the Sharif of Mecca during the First World War, was in discussion with Henry McMahon on the creation of an Arab state, Ali expressed his desire to rule Syria. McMahon told Ali that there was no way that the British could facilitate the giving of Syria to the Arabs because the French wanted that land. France is pursuing its old imperialist regime. Macron wants to bring back a compulsory military draft to the French society. He said during his campaign that he wants to give all young people “a direct experience of military life with its know-how and demands”.

The world is preparing for war.

Remember Operation Gladio: to spark nationalism in Europe and Turkey. Part of the Gladio operation was arming Turkey and making it the second most armed country in NATO. German militarism is increasing, Turkish imperialism has already started. Things are coming to plan.

Russia is involved in Syria. Turkey is involved. Germany is supplying Turkey with tanks. All of the countries of the Great War, are coming back. Remember the words of the wise Solomon: “The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.” (Ecclesiastes 1:9)