May God set it right

Syria's shooting down of a Turkish military plane has without doubt brought the Syrian crisis, which has been going on for 16 months, to a new stage. With this stage, Assad has probably expressed a search for an opportunity to spread the matter from a legitimacy problem within his own country into an international conflict. The Syrian crisis is, first of all, a crisis of the Syrian state, as an event hard to remain indifferent to in international public opinion, increasingly as the problem of a "state committing massacres against its own people."

Assad is trying to portray to international public opinion what is happening in his country as a struggle waged by the legitimate state against the terrorist attacks of armed and frenzied rebels. Despite the clear responsibility for the dead numbering as many as twenty thousand, the wounded and detained numbering as many as a hundred thousand, refugees likewise reaching two hundred thousand, and forced internal displacements reaching into the millions, Assad was somehow finding a way to sell this claim to international public opinion. Unfortunately, whatever he does, he is still succeeding in marketing this claim with lobby support from certain people who act sometimes in the name of a shallow third-worldism, sometimes in the name of a blind pro-Iranism, or of a strange Islamism that has no share in Islamic values. For this reason, in order to keep up the claim of "foreign centers inciting and arming his own people to rebellion," the hunting of a Turkish warplane in Syrian skies must have created an unmissable opportunity.

Syria's announcement right after the incident that the plane had been shot down by "accident," that is, without it being known to be a Turkish plane, was in a way seen as a sign that it did not want to escalate the crisis with Turkey. But as the intent in the incident became impossible to cover up, it was also understood that such an attack could not simply be passed off as an accident. Giving it the guise of an accident, while serving up claims that it had violated the border, was flying low, and was therefore hit by an anti-aircraft gun, would have made it possible to snare Turkey as the "outside hand" behind the rebellion taking place in its own country from the start. Yet, even if a foreign plane has been seen in one's own airspace, the first reaction in no custom is to shoot it down immediately. Normally there is a series of procedures to be carried out until one decides to shoot it down. Such as warning, pushing it out of the airspace, harassing it, and forcing it to leave accompanied by one's own planes. If none of this happens, shooting down can be considered as a last measure. Yet it is not possible to see as an accident the immediate shooting down of a Turkish plane of clearly known identity with all of these procedures skipped.

With this incident Syria may have wanted to see the trumps held by Turkey, which has so far supported the opposition and has said on every occasion that the Assad regime must go. And it is probably not Assad himself but Russia, which also set up the missile battery's technology, that may have wanted to see this. Also, pushing it to the limit of the maximum it could do, it may have wanted to see Turkey's entire potential against Syria. Had Turkey immediately retaliated against this test and gone to war, the Syrian regime's legitimacy crisis would have been reduced in an instant to the level of a localized war between Syria and Turkey. This would have created an unmissable opportunity for the Syrian regime, which is about to run out of options.

Many segments within Turkey did not hold back from giving the hawkish support necessary to fall into such a trap. Yet with the cautious stance it displayed in this incident, Turkey has for now spoiled this game. By appealing to NATO, it found a way to explain that the issue is not one of Assad attacking Turkey, but a problem of a regime dangerous for world peace, which while massacring its own people has now become a threat also to the countries of the region. Turkey's declaring war on Syria over a plane claimed to have been "downed by accident" might have easy rhetoric for a day or two, but continuing to explain it, neither to the international community nor even to its own public after a day or two, would not be so easy. Yet with this incident one more strong step has been taken toward explaining to the international community that the Baath regime can no longer be sustained.

Turkey's general strategy regarding Syria is also the departure of the Assad regime, and to achieve this it needs to take correct and solid steps. Even if its plane has been shot down, it cannot make the mistake of taking impulsive steps and reducing the problem to a matter between Turkey and Syria. In and of itself there is no situation that would require there to be a problem between Turkey and Syria. Turkey is still a country that suffers from the deterioration of its relations with Syria, and the improvement of those relations is first and foremost in Turkey's own interest. But this crisis situation Turkey has entered with Syria is not a choice but a necessity. This must be understood clearly. One cannot get along with a dictator who commits merciless massacres against his own people. Were it to keep up a relationship by ignoring it as if nothing were happening, this time it would not be possible to explain this to all the rest of the countries of the region. That is why, even on a matter like the plane crisis in which Turkey is one hundred percent right, we say may God set right those who, instead of criticizing Syria, try to portray relations with Syria as a fantastic and forced policy of Turkey, and we say nothing else.

FOR TWO BRAVE PEOPLE: ALİ BAYRAMOĞLU AND NAGİHAN ALÇI

The people in need of God's setting right are not one, not two. And these days there are also those who strike at Ali Bayramoğlu on the Habervaktim site over his lineage. What Ali Bayramoğlu said, what he defended, what is wrong, what is right, I have so far seen or heard no criticism of a caliber to assess any of it. I have always been merely disgusted by any kind of assessment made on the basis of lineage. Even in the periods when it was most popular, whether in criticisms about the Sabbatean or in discourses about the people called "dönme," I have only ever engaged with them at this level of disgust. If Islam has a determining principle on this matter, it is that no one can be assessed by his lineage and ancestry, and that those who set about assessing by lineage and ancestry will surely sink backward into the religion of ignorance. You heedless ones! If you had a little awareness, you would remember that all the Companions were "converts" either from polytheism or Christianity or Judaism. Moreover, a person is responsible for his own deeds. No one bears the sin of others, nor can anyone be made to bear it. Those who force this are only racists, and racism is cursed.

I have assessed Bayramoğlu by what he has written and done, and he is one of the personalities whom I have always seen at the very top on my scale of intellectual stance, depth, direction, and bravery. His stance on the Armenian question and on the Kurdish question has always been a stance I have followed with respect and interest. Here I also consider it an obligation to remind that I have not in fact always thought the same as him. Whose tail he has stepped on to be subjected to these attacks these days is without doubt a matter to be assessed separately, but that those who attack him also try to use Islamic references is an even greater wrong. One does not argue with ignorance; one only displays a stance, and this is my stance.

On this occasion I want to display the same stance for Nagihan Alçı as well. She had earlier been subjected to a similar baseless attack by Nihat Genç, I could not attend to it, but these days she is again subjected to an attack from the same circles, again in a disgusting manner, over her womanhood and honor. May God give them what they deserve. With God, everything is clear as day. I did not even try to learn what she had said. A slander cast at a chaste woman, the defamation of her honor, is among the most disgusting sins that bring a person down to the lowest of the low. I am sure this is a mud that will not touch Ms. Nagihan; indeed, the more she is subjected to these attacks, the more my respect for her has increased.

May God do the rest as He knows.