{"id":104787,"date":"2018-09-27T10:16:06","date_gmt":"2018-09-27T14:16:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=104787"},"modified":"2018-09-27T10:16:06","modified_gmt":"2018-09-27T14:16:06","slug":"turkey-now-controls-syrias-jihadists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=104787","title":{"rendered":"Turkey Now Controls Syria\u2019s Jihadists"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

ERIC ZUESSE<\/p>\n

Because of the US Government\u2019s repeated threats to start World War III against Russia on Syrian territory if Russia will assist Syria\u2019s Government to eliminate the jihadists who control Syria\u2019s Idlib province,\u00a0Russia\u2019s Government agreed, on September 17th, with Turkey\u2019s Government, that Turkey\u2019s Government will control Idlib, which is Syria\u2019s most jihadist-friendly province<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Consequently, the threatened US-and-allied bombing campaign\u00a0to overthrow Syria\u2019s Government and replace it with one that would be controlled by the royal family of Saudi Arabia (the Sauds)<\/a>\u00a0has been placed on hold, because such a bombing campaign would now mean the US going to war against not only Syria\u2019s Government and Russia\u2019s Government and Iran\u2019s Government, but also against Turkey\u2019s Government, which is a NATO member and (because of its location) has been an essential part of the American Empire.<\/p>\n

Turkey is thus now balanced on a knife\u2019s edge, between the US and its allies (representing the Saud family) on the one side, versus Russia and its allies (representing the anti-Saud alliance) on the other.<\/p>\n

Historically, the Sauds have competed against the Turkish Government for leadership of the world\u2019s Muslims. Gradually, the Sauds came to ally themselves first with the British Empire, and then with the rising American Empire, which two Empires merged into one right after World War II.<\/p>\n

Turkey was the head of the Ottoman Empire \u2014 that was actually the\u00a0Turkish\u00a0empire \u2014 and Turkey became defeated in World War I by the British side, including the leader of the Saud family. As a result of the epoch-making September 17th<\/sup>\u00a0agreement about Idlib, Turkey, which for nearly a hundred years was an important ally of America, no longer is a US ally, but is vacillating between alliance with Russia, versus alliance with the US<\/p>\n

The Historical Background<\/strong><\/p>\n

Some historical background is helpful for understanding where we\u2019re coming from, and where we are heading to, here:<\/p>\n

In 1811, the fundamentalist-Sunni Wahhabis of Arabia, led by the Saud family, revolted against the non-fundamentalist Sunni Ottoman Turks, and were crushed by the Ottomans<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In 1830,\u00a0\u201cThe Great Game\u201d<\/a>\u00a0started, in which the British Empire unsuccessfully tried to colonize Afghanistan next door to the world\u2019s most natural-resources-rich land, Russia, but Britain gave up in defeat in 1895, and therefore Afghanistan remained neutral.<\/p>\n

As British historian Martin Ewans wrote in his 2002\u00a0Afghanistan: A Short History\u00a0<\/em>(p. 12)<\/a>, “Although never colonized, Afghanistan is part of the colonial history of Tzarist Russia and British India, with a strategic importance that in 1884 brought the two empires to the brink of war.\u201d Ewens indicated (p. 66) that Russia\u2019s opposition to Britain\u2019s colonizing Afghanistan was based upon Russians\u2019 fear that Britain would use the fundamentalist-Sunni Afghans as proxy boots-on-the-ground to spread into and take over parts of Russia.<\/p>\n

John David Blom\u2019s March 2009\u00a0“The Decline of Anglo-Saudi Relations\u201d<\/a>\u00a0noted (p. 7) that, \u201cThe major areas of British imperialism in the Middle East during the nineteenth century were the Ottoman and Persian Empires, the Trucial states along the Persian Gulf, Aden, Oman, and Egypt. The Ottoman and Persian Empire provided a buffer against Russian expansion south.\u201d Furthermore, Blom observed (p. 11) that after the Saud family came to recognize that in order for them to dominate against the Ottoman Turks for control over the Islamic world, \u201cThe Anglo-Saudi Treaty of 1915 recognized Ibn Saud\u2019s position as ruler of Najd, El Hassa, Qatif and Jubail. It guaranteed British protection of these regions in exchange for control of Ibn Saud\u2019s foreign policy.\u201d Of course, the defeat of Turkey was the real focus of that, otherwise called Treaty of Darin. But the decline of Anglo-Saudi relations was merely the opposite end of the rise of US-Saudi relations. After WW I, this British alliance with the Sauds was effectively\u00a0taken over on 23 May 1933 by Standard Oil of California (a Rockefeller oil company, now called Chevron)<\/a>\u00a0when the existing oil-discoveries in Saudi Arabia failed to excite British and European investors sufficiently. Three years later, Texaco joined SoCal. Then, in 1938, these American drillers made the first big oil-strike in Saudi Arabia. In 1943, the company became renamed Arabian American Oil Company\u00a0(ARAMCO), and the previous British Empire now effectively became the American Empire. The alliance between the Saud family and the US aristocracy has remained solid ever since.<\/p>\n

Further contributing to the Sauds\u2019 increasing reliance upon the US aristocracy instead of upon the British aristocracy, has been this: In The West at the end of the 1800s, the British Empire adopted the British mining-magnate\u00a0Cecil Rhodes\u2019s plan for their Empire<\/a>\u00a0to become joined with the soaring new American Empire, which combination during World War I won against the then-soaring German Empire (and against its allied Japanese and Italian Empires) and then won against Germany yet again in WW II, this time because Russia and its Soviet allies basically conquered the Germans in the east. The US, emerging then essentially unscarred from WW II which had devastated all of America\u2019s allies in that war, became, more clearly than ever, the Saud family\u2019s winning horse, to carry them closer to final victory.<\/p>\n

In the 1915 Treaty of Darin, between the United Kingdom and Abdul-Aziz al-Saud\u00a0(sometimes called\u00a0Ibn Saud, who then led only part of what subsequently became the larger Saudi Arabia) both parties agreed that Saud would join UK\u2019s war to conquer (Ottoman-led) Turkey; and that, in return, the British Empire (UK) would protect and defend the Saud family\u2019s imposed rule, anywhere that it might become challenged.<\/p>\n

Turkey\u2019s Government was thus conquered, and then it ended its moderate-Islamist Ottoman Empire, after Turkey\u2019s participation on Germany\u2019s side in WW I produced\u00a0General Ataturk<\/a>\u2019s creation of the secular Turkish state in 1923, and the end of the Turkish Caliphate the following year. Ataturk created a Turkey whose laws were almost completely independent of the Quran.<\/p>\n

However, after the success of the US-Saudi war against Russia in\u00a01979<\/a>\u00a0by means of spreading Wahhabist and other fundamentalist-Sunni mosques and especially funding and\u00a0creating mujahideen<\/a>, Taliban, Al Qaeda, and ultimately ISIS fighters, all against Russia and against Russia\u2019s ally Iran \u2014 that is, against the two countries which the Sauds and America\u2019s aristocracy are the most determined to conquer \u2014 the Islamist Tayyip Erdogan in 2003 rose finally to power in Turkey, so as to support that US-Saudi cause, against Russia, and against Iran.<\/p>\n

Turkey, of course, is on Syria\u2019s northern border. The accession to power of an Islamist leader of Turkey constituted a disastrous turn against the adjoining Syria, which country now was almost completely surrounded by hostile governments (controlled by fundamentalist Sunnis, except Israel, which is controlled by fundamentalist Jews). Erdogan was very much America\u2019s leader of Turkey.<\/p>\n

However, the US aristocracy wanted\u00a0Fethullah G\u00fclen<\/a>, who was even more dependent upon the US, to take over Turkey. So, on 15 July 2016, a\u00a0US-NATO-backed coup-attempt to replace Erdogan by Gulen occurred and failed<\/a>. It failed because\u00a0Russia\u2019s Putin informed Erdogan in time to save Erdogan’s life<\/a>. This did not, however, turn Turkey immediately and 100% against America\u2019s aristocracy, but it certainly did start that. This is\u00a0the reason why Russia\u2019s Astana Peace Process to settle and end the war in Syria<\/a>\u00a0includes Russia, Iran, and Turkey \u2014 and not US, Saudi Arabia, or any other outright enemies of Russia and of Iran.<\/p>\n

America\u2019s CIA has actually been trying ever since 1949 to place the Middle East\u2019s only committedly anti-sectarian, pro-secular, nation, Syria, under the control of the fundamentalist-Sunni Saud family, who own Saudi Arabia and cooperate with US oil companies.<\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n