Prime Minister Erdogan of Turkey has told his country to prepare for war
against Syria relying on an unproven shelling that landed in Turkey
from Syrian territory.
The Turkish military has fired mortar
shells into Syria for the fourth day in a row after a number of
projectiles slammed into the southern border province of Hatay.
Press
TV has interviewed Michel Chossudovsky, Centre for Research on
Globalization, Montreal, about the recent steps Turkey has taken and how
the plan for NATO involvement inside Syria may unfold.
What follows is an approximate transcript of the interview.
Press TV: Five days of military strikes and now the Turkish prime minister is calling on his country to prepare for war.
With the way things have gone so far, would Turkey had come to this regardless of the mortar that fell in from Syria?
Chossudovsky:
Well, this has been a hidden agenda for quite some time. The war on
Syria is already de-facto because Turkey is supporting the Free Syrian
Army; it's training the rebels; it's allowing for the influx of
mercenaries through its territory; it is providing logistics to the
terrorists inside Syria; and it has Special Forces also within Syrian
territory.
And I should say that the military high command has
concern that it's supporting the Muslim Brotherhood as well involved in
insurrection. So the war is de-facto.
The incident is being used
as a pretext when in fact even according to the Western media, we do
not know who is behind this shelling incident inside Turkish territory.
The
Ankara government blames Damascus; it blames the Syrian armed forces,
but if you look at some of the press reports emanating from the New York
times on the one hand and the German media, there is absolutely no
proof that these shots were actually done by the Syrian governmental
forces.
And they could have been done by the Free Syrian Army.
They could also be used deliberately as a pretext to enable Turkey to
proceed to the next phase of this war.
Now what is also of
course very disturbing is the fact that Turkey as a member of NATO may
well invoke Article 5 of the Washington Treaty, which stipulates that an
attack on one member is an attack on all members. It's the doctrine of
collective security and this might be the first step for a NATO
involvement.
Press TV: That leads me to my next question, do you
think that through this escalation of this conflict we are going to see
direct NATO involvement, because we are already getting reports that
NATO artillery and weapons are already being used by the Turkish
military in their shelling?
Chossudovsky: Well, it's clear that Turkey is already involved. Turkey is already involved inside Syria.
Now
what I think is possible is that Turkey is going to demand the
formation of some kind of a buffer zone, which essentially means the
occupation of certain border areas of Syria. This has been on the
drawing boards of military planners for quite some time. Turkey has
territorial aspirations as far as Syria is concerned. But it is more
than that.
The coast line, which links Turkey to Lebanon and
Israel going through Syrian territory. This is also an objective, to
gain control over that coastline. In other words, we have to
understand that Turkey is a major military power in the region; it is
involved in the conflict; it is supporting mercenary fighters inside
Syria; and there is the distinct danger of military escalation not only
in terms of Turkish regular forces, which are now entering officially
into Syrian territory, but also that this might extend to a subsequent
NATO involvement under the doctrine of collective security.