Thursday, June 12, 2014

How do you say 'finally' in Turkish? Nihayet!

"... Despite such indirect acknowledgements of Jabhat al-Nusra’s status as a terrorist group, it took nine months for Ankara to finally designate it as a terrorist organization by a government decree published in the Official Gazette.The question arises as to why the Erdogan government decided to blacklist Jabhat al-Nusra now, after having resisted doing so for so long. The simple answer seems to be that its Syria policy is in tatters, after all the horses it bet on lost one by one.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has proved to have staying power, and his latest election gambit shows that he will remain in place for the foreseeable future. In the meantime, it has become apparent that there will be no direct Western-led military intervention against the Syrian regime, which continues to get major backing from Russia and Iran.
The Erdogan government has no choice at this point but to also accept that as far as the United States and Europe are concerned, the emphasis in Syria has shifted from toppling Assad to combating the al-Qaeda-affiliated jihadist groups in that country..."

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