What does the spirit of the age want from us?

While the USA continues to give unlimited support to the massacres of occupying Israel in Gaza, which have reached 290 days, it at the same time continues, with the same recklessness, to give unlimited support in Syria to another terrorist organization, supposedly against a terrorist organization. Moreover, it continues this support even though it includes an aggression, a hostility, against its ally in NATO, the alliance's second-largest partner. The USA does not even feel the need to explain this open inconsistency and contradiction. It sees itself in an unquestionable station. In Syria, with the position it has gained by arming the PKK and PYD for years in regions whose majority is Arab, it is trying to establish a new Kurdish-centered Baath regime. Never mind my saying "Kurdish-centered"; with this support it is, above all, stripping the Kurds of being Kurds and turning them into Israel's legionaries.

If there were an authority to operationalize international law, what the USA does would clearly be a crime to be tried as support for terrorism and a crime against humanity. But it is also a tragic reality that in international relations there is a kind of license from which the powerful benefit. Today all humanity is confronting that reality in its most bitter dimension.

While the USA stands guilty before all humanity and before Turkey on account of the support it gives both to genocidal Israel and to its legionary the PKK, some circles in the USA shamelessly do not refrain from evaluating Turkey's rhetorical support for Hamas within the scope of "support for terrorism."

The rhetorical and diplomatic support given to Hamas is in fact like Erdoğan's challenge to the hypocrisy of the Zionist world order. It is not a secret he hides. Yet, at Israel's instigation, through its lobbies in the USA, a serious movement is observed to accuse Turkey of actually giving military support to Hamas. These circles are engaged in a brazen, shameless effort such as bringing the support given especially through the wounded brought from Gaza to be treated in Turkey, and even the humanitarian aid that is being tried to be delivered to Gaza, directly within the scope of support to Hamas, and thus to terrorism. At a time when Israel's image has been drawn in the eyes of the whole world as a criminal against humanity, a genocidal, base, massacring war criminal, its launching such an offensive is an infuriating brazenness. Of course even this takes its courage from the criminal world order again.

The search by the USA, together with Israel, for moves that would nullify the support it gives to terror against Turkey's actions against Zionist activities in Syria has of course become inevitable. Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, on the possibility of President Erdoğan's meeting with Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, had made a statement in recent days to the effect that "The spirit of the times forces us to seek peace."

The concept of the "spirit of the times" is of course an abstract concept. It is also a domain somewhat open to political commentary. What does the spirit of the times truly ask of us? It never has an aspect that kills politics and reduces options to one, but it may have an aspect that exerts pressure on it. It needs to be filled with very good strategic reasoning and realistic assessments. Surrendering with an armistice, exclusively to certain developments and options from the spirit of the times, is of course not to be understood. On the contrary, the concept also expresses assessing, in a smart and measured way, the new opportunities that confront us in order to cope with the new threats that changing circumstances in the world put before us.

It is very clear that the activities of Israel and the USA in the region directly threaten Turkey. It is no secret that a significant part of Turkey is within the scope of the Zionist project's implementation, nor that the effort to form a legionary army out of the PKK-PYD has no other meaning.

The Zionist project threatens Syria as much as, indeed first of all, it threatens Turkey, and circumstances of course require the countries of the region to take a joint measure against this threat, and to be in communication and cooperation in this measure.

But the problem here is how much Assad truly grasps and understands such a threat, or how much he cares. Is the USA in Syria despite Assad?

Assad's first reactions to Erdoğan's statements in this direction can on the one hand be seen as the natural reaction of 13 years of enmity that has passed, but on the other they lead to the question of whether, even if Assad wanted to, he could deliver what could be expected of such a normalization. Because in order to remain in power in his own country, he no longer has the capacity, even if he wished, to break and re-establish in Turkey's favor the alliances that he has built against his own people for 13 years.

As if savoring the fact that the wish for a meeting was first made public by Erdoğan, in a statement to the cameras he promptly tried to put forward a condition: first the Turks will withdraw from Syrian territory and cut the support they give to terrorist groups.

Can Assad make such a call to the USA, which has occupied his country, in part supposedly on behalf of his age-old enemy Israel? Has there been any move of his so far to get Israel out of the Golan, occupied in 1967? Forgetting his irresponsible massacres and crimes against humanity that led millions of people from his own country to enter Turkey and that, from some point on, constituted a security threat for Turkey, he exploits the opportunity that has come his way to take swipes at the necessary operations Turkey has undertaken in Syria.

My personal opinion is that talks with Assad will be of no use. He can neither propose a solution that will make possible the return of the Syrians in Turkey to their country, nor can he make a contribution that would remove the US-Israel-backed PKK terror threat directed at Turkey. It is a fact that until now he has been turning a blind eye to the operations the USA has been carrying out against Turkey by using the PKK, but this turning of a blind eye needs to be understood well. In Assad's situation he has no option other than to turn a blind eye to the USA anyway. And from this hour on, he will not (be able to) have one either. That is, Assad now has neither the power nor the intention to change the situations inside Syria.

He is not in a position to put forward a condition in this matter, but if he truly intends a beginning, he can start by handing the control of Aleppo over to an international force, for example the UN, so that his citizens in Turkey can return to their country.

Because it is not possible to persuade the Syrians abroad to return to a country under Assad's control. Because in the regions under Assad's control the murders, oppressions and tortures continue as on the first day. If we truly want to move forward, this can be dwelt upon as a realistic beginning.