Most EU leaders conspicuously mum on Palmyra: Analyst

Press TV has conducted an interview with Wahid Azal, a political commentator, about the remarks made by the Syrian president’s adviser Bouthaina Shaaban, who said that Turkey is to blame for the conflict in Syria.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: I’d like to pick up on the point made by Bouthaina Shaaban regarding the double standard of the West when it comes to for example Palmyra, where she’s saying that Palmyra was liberated from those very terrorists that had carried out the attacks in Brussels, in Paris and other parts of the US as well.

Azal: That’s true. This is absolutely correct and not only Cameron but most of the EU leaders have been silent about the liberation of Palmyra over the last weekend. And this is very conspicuous and the double standards that we have in the West here, where they decry these terrorist actions in places like Brussels and Paris, but when the Syrian Arab Army together with Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards liberate a city that has been controlled by ISIS for over a year now, there’s just a complete conspicuous silence.

Press TV: Well, isn’t that interesting because when Palmyra was indeed taken over by the Daesh terrorists, there were articles upon articles and news pieces in the mainstream media and all these Western leaders expressing their concern of the Syrian heritage that would fall to destruction in the hands of these terrorists?

Azal: And yet they get nothing about it. There were no airstrikes by the so-called coalition. Nothing, nothing happened. I mean it only came… the airstrikes on Daesh only came when Russia entered to fray last year in September.

Press TV: Right. So, now that we’re at this juncture at the moment, there’s obviously a lot of questions regarding Turkey’s role specifically, something that Russia’s been speaking about as well, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has brought this up many times in the past, and now Turkey itself is suffering from blowback from its involvement in Syria. What next?

Azal: Well, what next, God knows, but Shaaban has said… it’s correct. And we knew of Turkey’s involvement not just with ISIS but some of the other Takfiri groups going back all the way to late 2011. So, this is nothing new. It’s only now that we have the full evidence of the degree of the involvement of the MIT, the Turkish intelligence and its military with these various Takfiri groups in Syria and Iraq by the way.

Press TV: And what does Turkey hope to gain from this, considering that the country itself is paying the price economically as well as when it comes to security and stability?

Azal: Well, this was a foolhardy gamble by Erdogan. They thought that, I mean, they subscribe to a kind of new Ottoman ideology that they want to reconstruct the Ottoman Empire, but it backfired. And it backfired because these Takfiris are not the Janissaries… and Erdogan is not a sultan. And they are suffering now the blowback.

M.Wassouf