Erdogan’s Syria policy under scrutiny
An article by Seymour Hersh is putting the spotlight on Turkey’s alleged support for the al-Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra fighting the Syrian government.
If the article hadn't had a Seymour Hersh byline, it wouldn’t have dropped like a bomb in Turkey, despite all the upheaval and polarization there over Syria.
“The Red Line and the Rat Line,” published in the London Review of Books, alleges that the source of the sarin gas used against the Ghouta suburb of Damascus on Aug. 21, 2013, was Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. According to the piece, Erdogan arranged supplies of the gas to jihadist groups to create the impression that the gas was used by the regime of President Bashar al-Assad and to goad US President Barack Obama into military intervention in Syria.
It is a sensational piece of writing for lovers of conspiracies. Interestingly enough, the number-one subscriber to conspiracy theory in Turkey is Erdogan himself and his close associates. It is as if Hersh’s piece, which surely sounds like a top-rate conspiracy theory, boomeranged and smashed back into Erdogan and his Syria policy.
Claire Berlinski, a resident of Istanbul, Manhattan Institute scholar and biographer of the late Margaret Thatcher, tweeted on Hersh’s piece: “I’m no great fan of [Erdogan]'s Syria policy, but if you think he launched a Sarin attack on Syria's civilian population, you're losing the plot.”
