Turkey major instigator of ISIL crisis: Analyst

Press TV has conducted an interview with Hamilton Coalition to Stop the War’s Ken Stone to discuss Turkey’s role in the advances made by ISIL Takfiri militants in the region.

What follows is an approximate transcription of the interview:

Press TV: Now right now, when you look at the situation with regards to the Kobani region, the influx of refugees that are pouring into Turkey is just a snippet of the humanitarian disaster that we are seeing in the making here. What do you make of it?

Stone: Well, I think that the Turkish government is playing a dishonest and hypocritical role. On the one hand, it says that it has signed on partially to [US] President Barack Obama’s new coalition of the willing to go after ISIL, but at the same time the Turkish government is one of the major sponsors of the Takfiri mercenaries who are fighting to overthrow the Takfiri mercenaries.

They [Turkey] are creating the problem which produces hundreds of thousands of mercenaries, hundreds of thousands of refugees who flow across the border into Turkey. The Turkish government is a core member of the Friends of Syria group, which organized the covert war of aggression against Syria. It allows its territory to be used by the terrorists who stage attacks on Syria, to train, to send arms from various sources. So, all in all, the Turkish government has very dirty hands. They are actively helping to create the serious refugee crisis which is overwhelming all the countries that neighbor Syria and Iraq.

Press TV: Doesn’t this represent the sole fundamental flaw in the US’s so-called broad coalition of partners in its fight against the ISIL where it is made up of those very players who are funded, supported, and even trained these ISIL militants including as many appointed by the US itself.

Stone: I could not agree more. President Obama and Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Britain, France… the usual suspects, have been trying for several years to overthrow the legitimate government of Syria. They tried in the United Nations. They tried through this covert war of aggression, using Takfiri mercenaries. All of that has failed and now one year ago, they even tried the phony pretext of the Ghouta gas attack, which was blamed on the Syrian government, which was actually done by the Takfiri mercenaries.

However now, using the deaths of a couple of US journalists, what president Obama and his coalition are trying to do is to overthrow the government of Syria through the back door. That is to say, by chasing ISIS into Syria and bombing it there and they said they would. And even Canada has sent 69 commandos and put them in harm’s way in Iraq to be used as part of this coalition. What needs to happen is that these countries, they need to abide by international law. They have to give up their plan to overthrow the government of Syria. If they want to get rid of ISIS, let’s be open and not hypocritical about it.

Obama should be dealing with the government of Syria and the government of Iran for help in destroying these ISIS mercenaries, who were in fact created in the first place by the Friends of Syria coalition, which was led by the US. They need to abide by international law and they need to settle down and to cooperate with Syria and Iran in eliminating the terrorist problem and thereby, alleviating the refugee problem.

Press TV: Well, Mr. Stone, very quickly if you can. I think both you and I can agree on the fact that this is not going to happen any time soon, at least on the US part. So, what is the US hoping to achieve by going through the back door or as you describe, to remove Bashar al-Assad from power under the guise of rooting out ISIL?

Stone: Well, last year we were inches away from an attack on Syria over the alleged gas attacks in Ghouta and the peace movements around the world rally. In Britain, 100,000 marched on White Hall and the British government for the first time since 1784, the British House of Commons turned down the government’s request to attack Syria and also Obama was within a couple of inches of pressing the button to allow an attack on Syria one year ago. But, in the US, there was overwhelming revulsion against this callous and hypocritical move that Obama wants to make and it didn’t come off and President Vladimir Putin of Russia provided an alternative means of defusing the situation by having the Syrian government destroy its entire stock of chemical weapons, which it did and in time.

So, I think what is required now is for people at the grassroots to do the same thing we did last year and all other people with good will around the world, to lean on our politicians and say even though a couple of US journalists were killed, there have been many more who were killed in the last three years in Syria, it is not a legitimate excuse to override international law and attack a sovereign country.