World Press on Iran, Turkey and the Caucasus (February 10, 2012)

On February 10th Hurriyet published an article by Yusuf Kanli devoted to Russia's role in the Syrian crisis. According to Kanli, Russia has not given up hope that the Syrian crisis is still “resolvable” through “national dialogue” and with al-Assad remaining in power. Such a position may be explained by the fact that Al-Assad’s Syria accounts for 10 percent of Russia’s arms sales to the Middle East. So Russia has probably placed its own interests before anything else. Still, if al-Assad fails to grasp this last Russian lifeline or if rebels refuse to engage in an exercise of compromise with the al-Assad regime, that will be the end of diplomacy, Kanli says. At that point, the future won’t just be bleak for Syria, but others as well, he adds.

Another article published by Hurriyet today was written by Murat Yetkin and entitled "Power game within Turkish establishment." The demand of the Istanbul prosecutor to question the Turkish National Intelligence Organisation (MİT) head Hakan Fidan, together with two top intelligence officers, because of their secret talks as ordered by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan with the illegal Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) turned into a serious crisis in Ankara yesterday, the author says. According to him, in order to shield the Turkish secret service, the government is attempting to change the law and it will have some side effects within the establishment.

The Washington Post published an article by Jackson Diehl headlined "Why the U.S. should arm the Syrian opposition." "The Obama administration’s current policy toward Syria might be described as the Big Bad Wolf approach. The president and secretary of state huff and puff — loudly denouncing Bashar al Assad and predicting the fall of his regime — and hope it reacts like a house of straw," the author says. He also denounces the Obama's administration's position on arms delivery to Syrian rebels. “We don’t think more arms into Syria is the answer,” the statement by the US State Department reads, to which Senator John McCain responded: “Tell that to the Iranians and Russians.” Both have provided material aid to Assad’s forces, Diehl underlines. According to him, al-Assad's victory would be a debacle for the US and NATO, which is why the US administration should support the rebels by all possible means.