Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu delivered a speech regarding the Middle East in general and Syria on Apr 24. His remarks were quite interesting and decorated with “foreign policy values of today’s world”. During all of his speech he emphasized that his government absolutely does not pursue religious, ethnic and sectarian differences. Again, he explained that they do not intend to change the regime. It was exciting.
The speech has got a series of messages for both the international and domestic public. I want to focus on two subjects regarding the speech. After all, like Davutoğlu said “a new order is being set - we are setting a new order in the Middle East” and we are witnesses to this.
The argument used by Davutoğlu to criticize the opposition at parliament was the first thing that drew my attention. He accused those who criticize his party’s policies of being the Turkish version of Ba’ath ideology. Implicitly but openly for a Sunni, he needed to base his critics on sectarian identities. Even though this is a pleasing attitude for voters with “Sunni world” perception, remarks made through “values” have lost their meaning all of a sudden.
The second striking issue for me was about the function of the United Nations Supervision Mission. He means that mission should make arrangements for vulnerable insurgents instead of helping a cease-fire. This “bright” idea implies that the operational area for the Assad government must be narrowed, while the insurgents are being reinforced. Davutoğlu has described this task under three titles.
“The first one is that the Syrian Army has to withdraw from cities into their barracks, completely clearing all doubts and quit posing a threat,” he said. In other words, the insurgents must be provided the ability and opportunity to finish their preparations. They must be organized and be ready to resist effectively in cities.
“The second is the United Nations Supervision Mission – 300 people are not enough – it has to spread all over the Syrian territory with much larger numbers,” Davutoğlu said. To me this means that the Assad regime must be repressed everywhere, taken under control so that Assad will lose control and the insurgents must be able to spread all over the country.
“As for the third one – basic test lies here – an environment must be provided for free to hold peaceful demonstration.”
According to Davutoğlu, insurgents could manipulate people to gain the authority in the cities and towns easily.
As seen above, to my understanding, Davutoğlu draws a picture of a preparation committee for insurgents under the title of UN Supervision Mission so that this committee will free everyone from all problems. And also “neighbors” who do not want to be involved in risky businesses like organizing the insurgents, giving arms, providing logistics and a safe heaven get out of a jam, while the necessity for an international military intervention is removed. Thanks to this bright idea, it by itself would contribute greatly to “insurgency” history.
Since “revolution will occur permanently ” in the Middle East, then relevant problems can be solved easily by deploying “UN Supervision Missions” instead of military.
This commentary was published on 03.05.2012 in Hürriyet Daily News.
