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Seymour Hersh gets it wrong on Turkey

Seymour Hersh’s claims that Turkey is supporting Jabhat al-Nusra are more fantasy than reality.
A U.N. chemical weapons expert, wearing a gas mask, holds a plastic bag containing samples from one of the sites of an alleged chemical weapons attack in the Ain Tarma neighbourhood of Damascus August 29, 2013. A team of U.N. experts left their Damascus hotel for a third day of on-site investigations into apparent chemical weapons attacks on the outskirts of the capital. Activists and doctors in rebel-held areas said the six-car U.N. convoy was scheduled to visit the scene of strikes in the eastern Ghouta s

The latest article of Seymour Hersh, printed in the London Review of Books, is being widely debated in Turkey.

In an article in the same periodical in December, Hersh claimed it was not the Syrian regime but the country's opposition forces that used chemical weapons. That article, too, generated intense reactions and was criticized for not paying heed to the UN's report and other credible evidence. Now, Hersh has added a sensational dimension to those allegations by claiming that the chemical weapons attack was planned by Turkish intelligence and carried out by Jabhat al-Nusra.

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