Turkish airs in free Syria

Along the road in Syria from Aleppo to Damascus, you advance past many military or civilian vehicles, evidently struck by air raids and pulled to the roadside. If you drive fast on the road, you must also proceed carefully around the potholes formed by rockets. These will not be things that are hard to repair, of course. What matters is that, within a short time, a climate has formed that has shaken off its chains and lets one breathe the air of freedom. Along the road, the well-kept agricultural lands, made up of wide planted olive, pistachio and fruit trees, draw attention.

In Aleppo and Damascus above all, meeting people speaking Turkish in any street, restaurant or mosque is one of the very ordinary things. This prevalence of Turkish is of course quite normal because of the 6 million Syrians whose path has passed through Turkey within 13 years, but seeing and experiencing it in the field is something else entirely. You feel almost as if you were in a city in the Southeast. Kurdish or Arabic is the mother tongue of many, but people know Turkish too. In Syria this has come to be the normal of everyday cultural life.

RETURNING HOME, BUT NOT AS THE SAME PEOPLE

Walking along the road we can run into many Syrian people we had previously met or been introduced to in Istanbul, Ankara, Gaziantep. The great majority are those who came within the last few days, and some are those who had come earlier to settle in the safe zones created by Turkey. Now all of them are returning to the homes they were forced to leave 13 years ago, but not in the same way, not as the same persons, not with the same equipment. The 13 years they lived in between took a lot from them, and also added a lot. A new horizon, a new vision, a new personality, even with additional languages, all of them are experiencing the excitement of a "return home" with great happiness. Even to witness this happiness up close, it was worth coming here at precisely this time.

These people inevitably bring their relations in Turkey or other countries here as well. It is also inevitable that they bring more relations from Turkey, where they were most numerous. It is very clear that this will undoubtedly form the answer to the question of what role Turkey will have in Syria's reconstruction. Already, beginning right after the revolution, the exchange bureaus in Aleppo and Damascus have started to treat the Turkish lira as the most valued currency. Here you can now shop easily with Turkish lira. What effect this expansion of the Turkish lira's sphere of circulation across the whole of Syria will have on the Turkish economy, let the experts comment.

THE EXPERIENCE OF HIJRA AS EQUIPMENT FOR BUILDING CIVILIZATION

Anyone who reads a little history knows what a great opportunity these people, who are living the experience of returning home, have seized for building a new country, a new society, even a new civilization. Such bitter experiences of migration have played a very important role in the building of new civilizations throughout history. Hijra is also described in the Qur'an as a fruitful, blessed adventure, and all the data of historical sociology concede this. In the light of this dimension, on which Ibn Khaldun also concentrated his entire approach, we can now say that in the Syrian example we are witnessing the birth of this new civilization.

THOSE WHO COULD NOT TAKE THE RIGHT SIDE OF HISTORY

Turkey's role in the building of this civilization will be appreciated by everyone, everywhere and always. In all the ebbs and flows of this long process that has taken place in Syria until now, people from Syria were forced to flee in waves. Those who played roles in these processes were, besides the regime, Iran, Russia and the US. In all of their interventions in Syria, the Syrian people had to pay great and heavy prices en masse. Only in Turkey's intervention are the people very happy, celebrating en masse with displays of joy in their own homes, their own cities, their own squares, and while those who had fled abroad are now thinking of returning home, no one is to be found who has had to leave their home in the new situation. This alone is enough to show who stands on the right side of history. What did Iran, which for years stood here beside the criminal regime against the Syrian people with the claim of an Islamic Revolution and in the name of forming a front of resistance against Zionism, gain for the Syrian people? And what, at the end of the day, did Assad, who at the first opportunity did not hesitate to sell all the interests of both Hezbollah and Iran to Israel for a small price, gathering his last benefit in this way, provide to it? Leaving aside the many material interests it sacrificed for Assad's sake, did it not bury here all its claims in the name of the Islamic Revolution? Are the mass graves unearthed in Sednaya or in countless other places, the inhuman massacres and tortures that were carried out, now to be attributed only to Assad?

The walls of the tower in Marjeh Square are now covered with posters hung by people looking for their relatives from the time of Assad. The four walls of the tower are crammed full up to as high as a human can reach, and all these pictures were hung within just one week. Before, people who had lost their relatives did not even have the courage to ask about them. While this image alone is enough to tell what has been lived through in Syria over the last 61 years, those who supported Assad will of course also have a share to draw from what happened. Iran, Russia, the US and their other brothers, who were here in solidarity with Assad while these things were happening, will never be rid of the charge of complicity in them.

THE UMAYYAD MOSQUE NOW TRULY A "JAMI"

The scene we see every time we go to the Umayyad Mosque is worth recounting in itself. The mosque lives up to its name exactly: a "jami," that is, a gatherer, a bringer-together, a meeting point, but now a celebration and festival ground. I ask a Syrian student I know from Turkey and met here whether the crowd in the mosque, which never thins at any of the prayer times, is temporary. He says that of course this crowd is a little abnormal these days. Unfortunately, for years this Mosque was closed by the regime to Sunnis outside the prayer times, and there was no excitement in coming here. By contrast, for Iranians the mosque's wide courtyard had been turned into a Shiite demonstration ground. There were no restrictions for them. Because of their historical enmity toward the Umayyads they also counted this as a religious gain. This rush to the mosque is an expression of ecstatic joy at people's deliverance from these dark days, from this regime's dungeon, a gesture of thanksgiving.

In the Mosque you can again meet many Syrians you know as refugees in Turkey. They returned quickly and came straight to the Umayyad Mosque. People whom I do not know personally but who know me from my articles in Yeni Şafak Arabic and aljazeera.net or in some other way come, congratulate each other on this great conquest together, and take photographs together.

THE HERMENEUTICS OF PHOTOGRAPHS

Some of them also publish the photographs taken. Here I think an explanation is needed. It is a consequence of the new photo culture or etiquette that comes with being a politician or somewhat well known. Answering a request to take a photo together affirmatively is the simplest and perhaps cheapest hospitality that can be offered to people. Answering the request negatively is often considered a peculiar kind of stinginess, even impoliteness. It can be debated, of course, in terms of manner, means and ways. But politicians can also face unwanted situations because of the persons they appear with in a photo frame.

Indeed, in the Egyptian media, a photograph we took with Ahmed al-Sharaa has awakened some very serious sensitivities because of an Egyptian person next to us. It has been interpreted as if indicating an intention of Egyptian opponents to find a path to revolution in Egypt too by way of the Syrian revolution. Frankly, these inferences and these publications surprised me exceedingly. That photograph was taken entirely in an improvised way of the kind I described and was published without my knowledge. On the contrary, in the interview I held with him for Yeni Şafak, al-Sharaa said that, especially regarding Syria's relations with other countries, he would follow a completely peaceful path based entirely on dialogue and cooperation, and I reported this as well.

Frankly, this answer was very important in the following respect: when his past struggle experience moved from Nusra to HTS, it had already focused entirely on Syria, that is, on the aim of liberating his own country from a cruel and inhuman regime. This was a declaration that from then on he had no further concern with the struggles of other countries. Truly, this was also a choice that gave him full rightfulness and legitimacy. Now, he himself says that, in the event he achieves success in Syria, with a host of problems in his own country, he will not enter a path such as meddling in the internal affairs of other countries. This of course and especially includes Egypt.

In fact, in the present atmosphere of dialogue and rapprochement between Turkey and Egypt, it does not seem possible for him to follow another policy. For both Turkey is the greatest support in Syria's reconstruction, and he himself is by no means independent of the support of any country, Egypt and Saudi Arabia not excepted.

As far as we have seen and as I understood from our conversations with him, al-Sharaa has no intention of dragging a war-weary Syrian people into new adventures from now on. He had in any case expressed this clearly in these words he mentioned in our interview: Beyond this, we have no intention of undertaking tasks such as solving the problems of the entire Islamic world, which are beyond our power and would keep us from our real responsibility toward our people. We will try to establish and develop our relations with all countries in a way that benefits our country.