{"id":12035,"date":"2012-08-23T09:04:23","date_gmt":"2012-08-23T16:04:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=12035"},"modified":"2012-08-23T09:10:58","modified_gmt":"2012-08-23T16:10:58","slug":"us-readies-turkey-to-speak-head-the-conquest-of-syria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=12035","title":{"rendered":"US readies Turkey to speak-head Conquest of Syria"},"content":{"rendered":"

Turkey, US hold “operational” meeting on Syria<\/strong>
\n23 August, 2012 – Al Akhbar<\/p>\n

Turkish and US officials Thursday began their first “operational planning” meeting aimed at bringing about the end of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s embattled regime.<\/p>\n

The meeting is expected to coordinate military, intelligence and political responses to the crisis in Syria where a deadly crackdown on peaceful protests that began in March 2011 has, according to the United Nations, claimed more than 18,000 lives.<\/p>\n

Turkish foreign ministry deputy under-secretary Halit Cevik and US ambassador Elisabeth Jones are leading the delegations made up of intelligence agents, military officials and diplomats at the meeting in Ankara, a foreign ministry source told AFP.<\/p>\n

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu had announced their plans for such a mechanism to hasten the end of Assad’s regime on August 11.<\/p>\n

Thursday’s meeting come just days after US President Barack Obama warned Syria that any movement or usage of its chemical weapons would be a “red line” that would change his perspective on how to respond to the conflict.<\/p>\n

Syria has said it would not use its chemical weapons against rebels, reserving them only for “external aggressors,” in a veiled reference to a potential Israeli or Turkish strike on the country.<\/p>\n

On Monday, Davutoglu said Turkey can handle no more than 100,000 Syrian refugees and has proposed setting up a UN buffer zone inside Syria to shelter them.<\/p>\n

Some analysts believe Turkey is attempting to build a case for Turkish military intervention, having previously threatened to enter Syria to crush Kurdish rebels suspected of moving into the country’s northeast.<\/p>\n

The threat of armed groups including the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and al-Qaeda which could exploit a power vacuum in Syria is also expected to figure high on the agenda of the Ankara meeting.<\/p>\n

In Istanbul, Clinton had said she shared “Turkey’s determination that Syria must not become a haven for PKK terrorists whether now or after the departure of the Assad regime.”<\/p>\n

The PKK are a Kurdish separatist group that has waged a military campaign against Ankara since 1984 in a bid to gain greater Kurdish autonomy in Turkey’s southeast. …more<\/a><\/p>\n

Tweet<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Turkey, US hold “operational” meeting on Syria 23 August, 2012 – Al Akhbar Turkish and US officials Thursday began their first “operational planning” meeting aimed at bringing about the end of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s embattled regime. The meeting is expected to coordinate military, intelligence and political responses to the crisis in Syria where a more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[247],"tags":[3407],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12035"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12035"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12035\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12037,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12035\/revisions\/12037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}