If the US also keeps terror organizations as allies…

Last week, the massacres carried out in Azaz, Aleppo, in northern Syria by Russian and regime forces, driving PYD terrorist elements ahead of them, grew beyond Syria's interior into attacks directly targeting Turkey. As a result of the joint operations of Russian and regime forces, tens of thousands of civilians setting out from Aleppo and its surroundings piled up at Turkey's borders. Meanwhile, the intensification of attacks by the PYD and YPG forces on areas under the control of moderate opposition groups directed a new wave of refugees toward Turkey. This clearly opened the way to developments that will make it harder for Syria to emerge as a whole from this civil war and crisis environment.

The occupation by the YPG forces, which are affiliated with the PKK terrorist organization and operate in northern Syria, of the Menagh Air Base, located north of Aleppo and holding an important place in securing the link between the Syrian opposition and Aleppo, was the last straw for Turkey. For immediately after this development the Turkish Armed Forces shelled with howitzers the areas near Azaz occupied by the YPG terrorist organization.

The development fell like a bomb on both Turkey's agenda and the agenda of the international community. Let us note that Turkey's intervention in Syria came after the Foreign Ministers of Saudi Arabia and Turkey announced that they could carry out a joint ground operation toward Syria. The statements that came from the US after Turkey's intervention, following the tension that arose on account of the PYD, are striking.

The US State Department Spokesman, in a written statement, said that Turkey should halt its intervention in northern Syria while also saying that the PYD should stay away from activities that would expand its control on the ground; this clearly shows the contradiction into which US foreign policy has fallen. In the post-World War II period, when it took over global hegemony, the US experienced foreign policy crises from time to time. It is known that the Vietnam and Iraq Wars caused serious damage to US power and prestige. But even in those periods of crisis the US never had a foreign policy as passive as in Syria, one determined and shaped by certain powers such as Russia.

That it has designated a terrorist organization like the PYD as its interlocutor and ally, and has lost its prudence to the point of being able to ask a terrorist organization to refrain from certain moves that would deepen the crisis in the region, clearly reveals the state the US administration has fallen into.

We are watching the collapse, with a great racket, of "smart power," the foreign policy vision Obama announced with such fanfare. In this respect we can say that out of the box of "smart power," wrapped in a showy gift package, came the PYD rag, a sign of the Obama administration's impotence. The statement of Fabius, the Foreign Minister who left office in France, that the policies of the Obama administration were the main factor in the deepening of the crisis in Syria, summarizes the situation nicely.

At this point the fundamental question to be asked of the US and Western countries is this: the terrorist elements affiliated with the PYD are carrying out barbaric acts against the forces and civilians tied to the Syrian opposition supported by the Group of Friends of Syria. Does the US's being in a position of supporting the PYD in this situation mean that the Friends of Syria initiative has come to an end or that the theses it defended have been abandoned? In other words, since the beginning of the crisis in Syria, has the US abandoned halfway, or deceived, the allies from whom it received support while producing policy and building arguments?

By contrast, Turkey's operation against YPG elements in northern Syria should of course be assessed as a move aimed at keeping the Friends of Syria initiative on its feet. It is a strong indication that the goal of a Syria with its territorial integrity secured, respectful of the rule of law and human rights, in which Assad is not in power and is tried for the war crimes he committed, has not been abandoned, and that it will be defended at whatever cost.

In this atmosphere the US has to choose its side. Either it will stand with terror by preferring PYD-YPG brutality and cause the struggle it claims to wage against terror all over the world to lose its legitimacy, or it will take a stand against the Russia-Assad-PYD axis for the creation of a free and democratic Syria. For US foreign policy has long since passed the point of bearing the weight of the tensions created by the strategy followed as "smart power."

YENİ ŞAFAK WILL KEEP DAWNING, YENİ AKİT WILL KEEP FULFILLING ITS COVENANT

The attacks carried out last week against Yeni Şafak and Yeni Akit are not the first attacks encountered by the two newspapers, which have never refrained from speaking out and taking a stand in difficult times, and they will probably not be the last. Yeni Şafak, Yeni Akit and Star newspaper, which circles very skilled at presenting Turkey to the world as a country that represses the press consider deserving of every kind of violence as "pro-government media," had been singled out as targets in public by Demirtaş himself. It was very clear that these provocations and this targeting by a political formation that has its back against an armed terrorist organization could not amount to simple criticism. Violence is an instrument that forces drawing their power not from being right, from their idea, from their thought, but from bullying can never give up. But at the same time it is a sign of intellectual misery, political impotence and moral collapse. As the dawn of the future, Yeni Şafak will keep shining every day, and they will keep plastering it every day with their mire of the dawn and drowning out its voice with their noise. We are prepared for this. It would be good if they too learned this by now.