Syria's new national security force pledges loyalty to Turkey
A video of a new police force in Syria trained and equipped by Turkey shows the troops chanting Islamist and nationalist slogans, casting doubt about Ankara's claims that it has no designs on its former Ottoman dominion.
When Turkey intervened in northern Syria five months ago, it claimed it had no designs on its former Ottoman dominion and that its only goals were to cleanse its borders of the Islamic State and to eliminate what it called the terrorist threat posed by the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the US-allied Kurdish militia that is paradoxically the most effective force against the jihadis.
But Syrians who saw a video of a new police force trained and equipped by Turkey might very well think otherwise.
The video shows rows of armed men in blue uniforms emblazoned with the word “Polis” chanting “Allahu akbar” ("God is great"), “Yayha Turkiya” ("Long live Turkey") and “Yahya Erdogan,” ("Long live Erdogan").
The scene is reminiscent of another video clip published by the pro-government daily Yeni Safak that showed Turkish special police forces chanting Islamist slogans during a training session in Istanbul.
