Inexplicable Bedfellows

A Lebanese television network cameraman died under Syrian fire, on the Lebanese side of the Syrian-Lebanese border.  Syria, of course, has traditionally felt there should be no border, that Lebanon should be part of greater Syria.  The Lebanese Sunni population and the still-notable Christian population, and the Druze, do not quite agree. 

Although Hezbollah, a proxy militia of both Syria and Iran, is quick to agree; another issue of sectarian polarization.

And Turkey has called Syria's envoy to Ankara on the mat to explain how it was that Syrian troops, in pursuit of rebels crossing into Turkey, attacked a checkpoint, killing six soldiers and Syrian civilians, attempting to escape to the Turkish refugee camp.  One Turkish policeman was also shot and wounded, on Turkish soil.  Causing an already prickly Turkey to become even more so.

Turkey has been extremely loud in its condemnation of President Bashar al-Assad's actions and the conduct of his military, brutalizing and slaughtering Syrian Sunni protesters.  Turkey found it difficult to swallow Kofi Annan's confidence as a UN/Arab League special envoy for peace.  The much ballyhooed deadline came and went, and in that period the battles of the regime against its people intensified, rather than withdrew.

It is not only artillery and armoured tanks firing indiscriminately into the centre of the country's rebel-enclave cities and the military making arrests, terrorizing women and children, torturing and slaughtering them, but helicopter gunships also attacking villages.  Turkey now houses roughly 25,000 Syrians who have fled their country to preserve their lives and that of their children.

There are an additional 200,000 Syrians displaced within their own country, causing Turkey to fear that it will soon be faced with an increased influx of desperate people in Turkish refugee camps.  At which time they will most certainly have cause to call upon the United Nations to assist them to cope.  Apart from the sanctuary that Turkey has provided to rebel army units, it speaks of a military incursion into Syria to create a buffer zone.

And this in and of itself constitutes rather a mystery.  How it is that Syria's greatest regional ally, Iran, remains as far as Turkey is concerned, a friendly country, one whose ambitions are recognized by Turkey as being quite reasonable.  And Turkey has characterized Hezbollah as a moderate, also respectable entity in the geography. 

Yet faced with the reality of the disproportionate response by the Syrian regime to the aspirations of its majority of Sunni Syrians who initially had every intention of continuing their largely peaceful protest, but were forced by the ferocity of the regime's response to answer in kind, Turkey is outraged with Syria's actions.

Does Ankara not give a second thought to the connectedness of the Iranian Republican Guard assisting and abetting Syria's military, along with Hezbollah, both of which Turkey thinks so highly of?