The fairy tale Jeffrey Sachs told in Antalya

The Antalya Diplomacy Forum had an interesting guest. The interesting part, of course, was what he said. The generous credit we extend in advance to anyone who comes to Turkey and says things we like to hear also leads us to overlook, at first glance, his other aspects. Take what Jeffrey Sachs, President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), said about the negative roles of Israel and the US in our region, remarks that nearly everyone followed with interest because they spread on social media and then landed on every website. No one noticed that he has actually been accused of being a Eurasianist and of having close ties with Chinese and Russian intelligence. Moreover, his side that denies the persecution China inflicts in East Turkestan and gives China unconditional support on this matter has not been remembered at all.

If what Sachs said were limited to this sentence, in which he claimed that "the US administration and its ally Israel are responsible for many of the crises and wars in the region, and that these were done deliberately," and went no further, he would of course deserve applause for having the courage, as an American, to state a truth everyone knows. But like many of his peers, what Sachs said after voicing this plain truth led nowhere but to a complete blackout of everything that has been happening in our region for years.

Sachs has many such correct statements, of course; for instance, his words that "without the political, military and financial support of the US, Israel could not fight one day, could not commit genocide in Gaza" are among these truths. But then he went on to try to explain that the entire revolutionary movement in Syria unfolded within a plan set out by the US, at Israel's request, to overthrow Assad. Indeed, in Antalya, which is rapidly heading toward becoming one of the world's most powerful diplomacy forums, he told all those people who took him seriously and listened to him, in his most assertive and self-confident tone, the following: "The Syrian war is only one of six wars encouraged by Israel. In Lebanon, Iraq, Libya, Somalia and Sudan. In fact, we had this list. Wesley Clark was briefed in 2011 with a paper from the Pentagon. The aim was to start seven wars within five years. Despite Netanyahu's great sorrow, the only war that did not happen was the one with Iran. Israel is still trying to provoke this war."

Where would one even begin to correct this? It sounds like the words of people who are either treating their listener as a fool or who are themselves genuinely foolish. He tells us that the US, at Israel's request, tried to overthrow Assad by starting a war in Syria, that to this end it organized, trained and armed all the armed groups, but that somehow it failed to succeed, despite a tyranny that over 14 years killed 1 million of its people and displaced 12 million. It is an approach that leaves no role to regional actors, to the people, or to anyone else, and that, while ostensibly criticizing, loads all the will onto the US and Israel, thereby restoring their role as the real perpetrators.

In this account Assad has no tyranny at all. Assad himself has no role in having overwhelmed his people with oppression, repression, torture and killings, and left them no option but revolt. Those people who arrested the children of Daraa and killed them under torture, then insulted their families' honor, and opened fire on the families demanding their children, were they not provoked by any of this, but instead heeded Obama's call and rebelled?

DID ISRAEL HAVE NOTHING BETTER TO DO THAN TO WANT TO TOPPLE DICTATORS?

Really, did Israel truly want a change in the countries mentioned? Why? What quarrel could it have with Mubarak, with Gaddafi, with the administration in Lebanon? Was Israel simply restless? Were not all the governments there obeying it unconditionally anyway? On the contrary, the Arab Spring process disrupted the comfort of Israel and the US in the region and brought the peoples to power, and this made Israel very uneasy. Were the counter-coup processes that started afterward anything other than efforts to restore the former situation? Was Israel looking for an Egypt in which Morsi would come to power, and so decided to overthrow Mubarak? Could Israel roam the region so easily if Morsi were in power? Did they not cling tightly to Assad precisely so as not to experience another Morsi in Syria?

How did this happen? Let us remember. Like dominoes, the revolutions that took place in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen were all anti-Israel. Precisely for this reason, when it was Syria's turn, the hands that came into play prevented the revolution from taking place in Syria. True, the US initially joined the "Friends of Syria" coalition with the goal of overthrowing Assad. But after coming to Syria for this purpose, its whole agenda suddenly changed. It produced a so-called enemy called ISIS and began to wrestle with it.

Sachs tells us that the US has been trying to overthrow Assad since that day. And in Turkey, those know-it-alls who for years were partners in Assad's tyranny through their solidarity with him have seized upon this as if they had found a windfall. They are not even aware of what kind of helplessness they attribute to a US that, though it wanted to overthrow Assad for 14 years, could not do so, the US they take to be the head of everything that happened. Of course it is not that powerful, but neither was the US too weak to overthrow Assad. On the contrary, the US openly blocked the path of the popular forces that were on the verge of toppling Assad. It protected Assad and kept him standing. Why? Because Assad was Israel's "favorite dictator."

Israel never had any problem with either the father or the son Assad. Father and son were Israel's trustworthy custodians. Assad considered his power in Syria to be owed to the fact that he had sold the Golan. And he never truly wanted the Golan back anyway. That is why, when Assad fell, Israel began to lash out left and right like a mad bull. Syria was essentially a country under Israeli occupation. With the revolution, Israel has, so to speak, lost territory.

The US-Britain-France, who toppled Gaddafi in Libya within a few days, could by all means have shown this performance in Syria. They even "patiently" waited in those days for Turkey's ongoing relations with Syria to end. And we thought they would come and overthrow Assad. They came; had they wanted, they could have done it. Beside them was the entire Syrian people, fed up with 50 years of despotism. Every kind of international legitimacy was there too, on account of war crimes.

But whatever happened, Assad suddenly dropped from their agenda. Were they afraid of Iran, of Russia, of Assad himself? Who can make us believe that in this picture? Moreover, at that time Russia had not even yet given Assad its full support. There was not even an agreement yet. Only Iran and Assad remained. There was every kind of popular support for toppling them as well. Why did it not do so? Because at that very moment they saw that there was no post-Assad, or no alternative to Assad, for themselves. Even now the post-Assad situation has become a complete disaster for Israel. What Israel actually feared has come to pass, albeit after 14 years.

Having Sachs tell this tale today at the Antalya Diplomacy Forum, and listening to him with rapt attention, is another matter, of course.