In his now-anthological speech on April 20, 1981, marking 1,411 years since the birth of the Prophet Muhammad, addressing all Muslims, the great Iranian and Islamic leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, said:
“We need a caliph who will cut off hands, slit throats, and stone people in the same way that the Messenger of God cut off hands, slit throats, and stoned people.”
Khomeini’s call for brutal killings has recently been answered by pro-Turkish terrorists who have occupied Syria, committing an unprecedented crime against the small Shiite community in Syria—the Alawites. In the massacre of the Alawites, the European public does not recognize genocide against people but rather sees the death of Assad’s followers in a conflict with the new government. Of course, the “new government of Syria” is merely a euphemism behind which lurks the global terrorist organization Al-Nusra and all the neo-Ottoman remnants revived and mobilized by Erdoğan’s Turkey.
TERROR AND GENOCIDE AT THE HEART OF ISLAMISM
A war of extermination and the geopolitical goals of two neighboring states have, over the past few decades, turned Syria—the cradle of ancient civilizations—into a devastated land with millions of displaced people. At the same time, the Western military-political factor has been given the opportunity to carry out unpunished aggression. With a manufactured economic crisis and the presence of numerous terrorist and Islamist groups, a battlefield has been created for various global and regional powers. In these circumstances, Turkey’s genocidal policy treats the “American favorites”—the Kurdish units—very carefully while tolerating Israel.
Thanks to Turkey’s deliberate restraint, the Kurds have reached the outskirts of Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city, while Israel has fenced off its security buffer zone in Syria, which it continues to expand. In doing so, Turkey has opened space for eliminating potential Iranian support in Syria.
IN LEAGUE WITH TERRORISTS – HTS AND SNA
The West has written off the Alawites, and the genocidal terrorist actions of Turkey and HTS Al-Nusra have been warmly received. HTS is, in fact, Jabhat al-Nusra, which means it is also Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. The only protection for civilians at this moment is provided by Russian soldiers stationed at their bases in Tartus and Latakia. It did not take long for Turkish banks to open, for the illegal circulation of the Turkish lira to begin, and for the Turkish flag to be raised on Syrian government buildings. The outcome is that from now on, the Turkish curriculum will be legally implemented in Syrian schools, and the commanders of what was once the Free Syrian Army—now the Syrian National Army—will pose with maps of the Ottoman Empire. Although some trends suggest that Turkey’s foreign policy influence has weakened, its recent successes in Syria and Nagorno-Karabakh call for caution before making final assessments. Erdoğan’s victorious campaigns today are perfectly aligned with Israeli interests—a forewarning of all kinds of atrocities, particularly against Kurds and Arabs.
SECRET TRAINING AT THE “BUCCA” MILITARY CAMP
The question remains: how will the campaign of the “21st-century sultan” end? The West’s response to Turkey’s invasive policy primarily depends on the newly re-elected U.S. president. During his first term, Trump’s peaceful withdrawal from the region and focus on Iran created space for Turkey. However, with active American engagement and a potential crackdown on Syrian Kurds, Turkey’s neo-Ottoman, aggressive foreign policy could face serious limitations. This reality explains why Turkey is strengthening its alliance with Al-Qaeda and ISIS terrorists, expanding it through the splinter group known as Al-Nusra. These three global terrorist organizations have placed Golani—a Jew who trained with Israeli special forces on the Golan Heights—at their helm. He also gained experience through U.S. training alongside the future ISIS leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, at a military camp called “Bucca,” located on the Iraq-Kuwait border.
Golani has remained loyal to the U.S., Israel, and Turkey—an alliance that seems impossible. With the support of the Turkish army, his terrorist structures have brought an American-style “democracy” to Syria. Following an interview on the American PBS television network, the public learned that his jihadist military name is Abu Muhammad al-Golani, or “Muhammad from the Golan,” but that he was born as Ahmed al-Shara.
SUPPORT FROM THE MUSLIM (BROTHER)HOOD
The division of Syria between Turkey Israel and America along with the relatively weakened position of Russia in the Middle East and the Mediterranean and the destruction of Iran’s regional power does not seem to be a topic that disturbs Muslims in the Balkans who have supported the arrival of terrorist democracy in Syria Golani as the founder and military commander of the anti-Syrian military alliance Hayat Tahrir al-Sham has been supported by “muhajir” units and military factions participants in the war in Syria against the government. Groups known as Jabhat al-Nusra Jaysh al-Sunna Ajnad al-Sham Kataib Ashida and others form the core of the alliance and among the signatories of the declaration of joining the Muhajir Units Alliance were also Bosnian jihadists led by the Wahhabi leader from Maoča Nusret Imamović Bosnian Muslims more than 500 of them traveled to Syria with the support of Western countries through the airports in Sarajevo Vienna Zagreb and Istanbul then to Diyarbakir and with the help of Turkish military-intelligence structures straight to the battlefield. Among them the signatories of the “refugee” or “muhajir” declaration were the Turkistan Islamic Party represented by Emir Abu Omar Turkistani the Tawhid wal-Jihad Battalion Emir Abu Salah Uzbeki the Muhajirin wal-Ansar Brigade Emir Abu Muhammad Dagestani the Albanian Battalion Emir Abu Qatada Albani director of the Tahrir al-Sham Military Academy the Sunni Muhajir Movement of Iran represented by Emir Abu Safiya the Saudi Meali Network member of the fatwa council at Tahrir al-Sham Mu’tasim Billah al-Madani and Abu Walid Kuwaiti the Maldivian Battalion represented by Emir Abu Ayyub Maldivi the Moroccan Sham al-Islam Movement Emir Abu Jabir Maghribi. Apart from them as part of the command are Sheikh Abu Fath shura member and member of the fatwa council Mukhtar Turki military commander of Tahrir al-Sham Abu Hussein Urduni head of defense of Tahrir al-Sham Abu Hajir Tunisi leader of the muhajirs of Tahrir al-Sham and Abu Abdurahman Zubayr Ghazi military wing judge of Tahrir al-Sham.
INTELLIGENCE SUPPORT FOR ISLAMISTS
The direction of Erdoğan’s military-political actions was evident as early as when Egyptian security services revealed that the explosive used on the flight from Sharm el-Sheikh, which killed 225 Russian tourists, was the work of Turkish intelligence operatives. A senior Egyptian official stated on October 9, 2015, that the Turkish intelligence service was providing the Islamic State with satellite images and other data. This time as well, intelligence data was essential for the ten-day invasion and occupation of Syria, where Erdoğan’s neo-Ottoman ideology regained U.S. alliance and found new partners in Zionists with whom it would share the spoils of rapid geopolitical victories in the Middle East. But this is not the end of wars—rather, it is only the beginning of a new phase in a process that has been ongoing since the end of the Cold War. Even Al-Qaeda, from its inception, was allied with the West, as was admitted by Jake Sullivan, the National Security Advisor in Joe Biden’s administration. During Barack Obama’s presidency, Sullivan was the chief aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. According to documents published by WikiLeaks, Sullivan sent a message to Clinton in 2012 stating: “AQ is on our side in Syria,” using AQ as an acronym for Al-Qaeda.
A STEP TOWARD SAUDI ARABIA
The leader of HTS and Al-Nusra, Ahmed al-Shara, became interim president. However, HTS has not yet managed to establish control over the entire territory of the country—it controls a strip in western Syria, from Idlib south to Damascus, while large areas of the country remain outside HTS-Al-Nusra’s control.
On the other hand, the United States has around 900 troops in Syria and supports the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), led by the Kurds, who control the northeast and east of the country. This group includes the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG). According to some sources, the SDF has between 40,000 and 60,000 fighters, of whom between 20,000 and 30,000 are YPG members.
The southern regions of Syria, home to a large Druze community, are controlled by militias such as the Southern Front and the Southern Operations Room. However, Dr. Salem notes: “Druze villages have largely accepted HTS rule.”
The first country Shara visited as interim president was Saudi Arabia. It is clear that Gulf states—Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE)—remain highly skeptical of Shara and HTS due to their terrorist past and close ties with Turkey and Israel. However, they clearly state that they want Syria to be rebuilt, reintegrated into the Arab region, and no longer serve as a military-political proxy for Iran.
MASSACRE OVERSEEN BY TURKEY
For this reason, Turkey is encouraging Al-Nusra terrorists to carry out mass killings and ethnic cleansing in the Latakia region. The killing of civilians, women, and children—the massacre of war and political prisoners in the coastal areas of northwestern Syria, driven by Turkish actions—will not stop. The forces under the direct control of the Turkish state, the Syrian National Army (SNA), formerly known as the Free Syrian Army (FSA), number around 60,000 armed supporters and are backed by 30,000 Turkish soldiers stationed in Syria. The latest bloody clashes in Latakia erupted after the propaganda narrative that fighters loyal to the ousted Assad had ambushed forces in Jableh, a coastal region of Latakia, triggering a wave of retaliatory attacks, including assaults on Alawite civilians. The fighting has recently flared up again around the power plant in Baniyas, Latakia.
REINFORCEMENT OF JIHADISTS
To suppress the rebellion, Syria’s terrorist government (Al-Nusra and Turkey) called for reinforcements, and thousands of jihadists arrived at the coast from various parts of the country. Many Muslim militias and Sunni jihadist movements responded to the call for the “final expulsion of Iran from Syria” and the killing of Alawites.
A longtime strategic partner of Al-Qaeda, Al-Nusra, and other Syrian terrorists, Rami Abdel Rahman, along with his secretary, revived the British intelligence center, known for over a decade as the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), and reported that more than 1,000 people had been killed in the clashes, including:
- 745 civilians
- 125 members of Al-Nusra, i.e., the so-called Syrian security forces
- 148 Assad supporters
Another organization, also based in London, the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR), denied this report, claiming that Assad’s forces had killed 148 civilians, while the government’s Syrian security forces had killed 327 civilians and captured fighters. Since the Syrian government has not released its own casualty data, The Guardian stated that the death toll could not be independently verified.
EXPECTED CHALLENGE?
The Syrian interim president and commander of Al-Nusra, Ahmed Hussein al-Shara, called the unrest an “expected challenge” and then called for national unity. After the partition of Syria into a Kurdish-American, Israeli-Golan, and Turkish zone, along with some unclear areas controlled by the Islamic State (ISIS), Western media portrayed HTS as “pro-Turkish forces” and their leader, known by the war name “Muhammad from the Golan” (Abu Muhammad al-Golani), was referred to as Julani, Jolani, and even Jevlani. This refined jihadist, who has sparked “new hope” in the West, presented new biographical details in his first interview with the American television network PBS, stating: “I was born as Ahmed al-Shara.” Previously, reports claimed he was born in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, or even in Deir ez-Zor, Syria, both of which turned out to be false. As for Erdoğan, he has never hidden his militant spirit, built on the foundations of radical Islamism, nor the political essence of neo-Ottomanism, which he has embraced and developed. This fusion of Islamism and neo-Ottomanism was not recognized by the neoliberal West as a potential adversary. On the contrary, in the dismantling of the Arab world, Erdoğan became its useful ally.
THE MARCH TOWARD MECCA AND MEDINA
There is no doubt that the political processes following Desert Storm (1991), the War on Terror (2001), and the Arab Spring (2011)—which were, in reality, wars of occupation and invasions—show no signs of ending. Military strikes on Iran are now more likely than ever before, and the positions of Israel and the U.S. are such that neither restraint nor fear of Iranian retaliation will deter them any longer. Neo-Ottoman Turkey will not remain neutral, and the Arab states will silently tolerate its support for these attacks. The dilemma Erdoğan faces is how to conquer the hereditary Arab monarchies, theocratic states, and small caliphates—how to enter Mecca and Medina and take control of the Kaaba. There is also the question of how to justify such actions to the Muslim masses, the mujahideen, and the Salafists. In any case, the next target—though not immediately and certainly not while Trump remains in office—will be Saudi Arabia. The bloody hunt for the Alawites and genocide in full view of the public is merely the final stage of Turkey’s genocidal policies, its geopolitical interests, and the projection of Western power.
