There is salvation from Assad, there is none from the CHP

At the UN Security Council, at the meeting where the humanitarian situation in Syria is being discussed, the Syrian representative speaks in extremely brazen, accusatory terms. He explains in a single word, terrorism, the violence that has caused hundreds of thousands of refugees to flee the country and take shelter in neighboring countries, and accusingly claims that this arose not from within the country but from interventions carried out, first of all, by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey. At one point in his speech he takes out and shows a paper from among his documents; it is a paper containing the list of 107 people from Arab countries among those killed in clashes with the Syrian army.

According to him, these 107 people show that there is in fact no problem at all in Syria, that everything is the result of foreigners' attempts to intervene in Syria's internal affairs.

He lies looking people straight in the eye, in a complete show. After all, what is at stake is not 107 but the lives of more than 20 thousand people, and hundreds of thousands of people are fleeing for their lives to neighboring countries, without even having time to take anything with them.

The most basic reality of the phenomenon of refugees is this: Refugees take with them to where they go the legitimacy of the administration of the land they have left. When the number of refugees reaches a reasonable figure, the question of legitimacy becomes beyond discussion.

The cause of the flights from Syria to neighboring countries today surely cannot be the Free Syrian Army or the Syrian opposition. The great majority of those taking refuge are in any case forced to flee as a result of the bombardments in which those are targeted.

Today, even if the Assad regime applied the methods it uses in its war against its own people while fighting another country, it would be considered to have committed a full-fledged war crime and would be pursued. The punishment for committing these crimes against its own people is in fact much heavier, because the people it massacres are its own people, that is, people whose security is entrusted to it, people under its responsibility.

In fact, the regime in Syria should today have no face and no justification left with which to defend itself. But with a thoroughly brazen and disgusting propaganda, trampling on the corpses of the people it has massacred, it tries to present what is happening in the country as it wishes.

Baath propaganda, edited onto sickening images shown on Syrian state television that appeal only to necrophilic feelings, cannot convince anyone who calls himself human. This gives an edifying picture of what a point Assad has come to in looking for help.

Yet somehow these images easily convince our CHP and its left-wing media. The unforgiving Turkish Left, which has never been able to come to power in Turkey and has never believed or given credit to any word of the government, can believe with great confidence everything the bloodstained Baath government says.

Setting aside their supporting him for political reasons, the only believers left in Assad's lies, which even Iran and Russia no longer believe, are the CHP members, the Turkish Left and a section of Turkey's press. That Turkey's chronic oppositionists can identify themselves so much with the blood-fed Baath government of the age of archaic dictators is, in my view, not a matter to be taken lightly or glossed over. This is a serious problem.

Years ago, especially in the days of 28 February, the Baathism insinuations made about some people's approaches or dreams may have seemed, even then, like an emotional outburst that could not really be proven. Today the dangerously real supporters of Baathism in Turkey can openly defend Assad despite all the massacres he has committed. I do not think that, while defending Assad, they believe he has not done what he has done. More dangerous is that they must regard what Assad has done as normal. That dozens of people lined up for bread are bombed, that cities are bombed at random without distinguishing women and children, that every day hundreds of people, including dozens of children and women, are killed by Assad, the deaf sultans in America, Russia and Iran hear of this, and it surely cannot be that our CHP members do not.

The support our unforgiving leftists give Assad with their media and their shows in the camps constituted the only evidence the Syrian representative speaking at the UN Security Council could put forward in defense of his brazen claims. The news in the Turkish press, whose heroes the CHP members make themselves, in order to prove that the refugee camps have become bases for attacks on Syria.

While we at times place naive hopes on the maneuvers the CHP makes within Turkish politics, two steps forward and one step back, the CHP, in the name of opposition, practices exercises in surpassing itself in foreign policy. It presents not being admitted to the refugee camp they visit as conclusive proof that something is being stirred up inside. Yet those living in those camps have fled and come precisely from the likes of you, barely saving their lives. What good will your visits do them? You have already believed in advance that they are criminals who deserve the massacre; what are you going to give them? Be thankful that they did not beat you with sticks and chase you out of there.

If there are refugee camps, there are victimized refugees there. That those who visit them are involved in calculations that will further increase their victimization is, seen from any angle, a shameful situation, a scandal.

Just look at what the CHP members have come to look for in those camps. In visiting people who have been forced to leave their homes with their wives and children, people for whom humanity grieves, the CHP members think it wise to make a visit to look after the rights of the murderers who victimized them. Really, what will the CHP deputies do once they get inside? Will they say, "Shame on you for coming here; your dictator loves you and beats you, kills you and keeps you alive"?

The people who came to the camps to save their lives have somehow saved their lives from Assad, but they will not be able to save them from the CHP members.

This CHP mindset truly kills a person.