“You can not fool all the people all the time”

Syria’s ambassador to South Africa Ounfoan Al Na’eb highlights the destructive role that Turkey is playing in Syria.In an interview with Syriatimes ,he went over his responses to a South African website.

“I hesitated for a while before writing these lines, at a time when the Corona Pandemic, threatens the world and international efforts are focused to combat the pandemic that threatens humanity as a whole. But the repetitive and continuing crimes of the Turkish Regime, and the major fallacies that were in the article written by Elif Kumoglu Olgen, and published on your site (www.iol.co.za/news/opinion)on 09/03/2020, obliges me, as Ambassador of the Syrian Arab Republic in this dear country to write a few lines to expose the misinformation, through which the author intended to deceive the public opinion in South Africa.

I would also like to refer to my people’s celebration of Mother’s Day, which is celebrated yearly on the 21st of March. On this occasion, I salute the mothers of South Africa and the world, and most specifically the Syrian Mother, who spends her life raising the righteous generation. I bend in respect for these great figures, who have stood upright like trees, deeply rooted in the soil; blooming girls and boys, including the soldier, doctor, engineer and worker, who gave their blood defending Syria. If it was not for the Syrian women, we would not have been able to win the war that has been waged on Syria for more than nine years. Without the support of the Syrian People for their national army, we would not have been victorious over terrorists.

I share with other Syrians from all fragments the love of our country, and the sufferings due to hallucinations and the crimes of our authoritarian neighbouring regime. A regime, which has swollen like a boil, to an extent it started to imagine itself as a giant.

This regime has played and is still playing the largest role in fuelling and managing a vicious war. It opened its arms to thousands of mercenaries and terrorists that it brought from all sides of the world. it facilitated and helped them infiltrate  Syria, for the aim of killing, beheading, robbing, looting and destruction, for no other reason but to fill the pockets of their master in his palace in Ankara.

The author of this article says that Turkey’s presence in Syria is in the interests of the Syrian people. Allow me to list a few of the many  war crimes committed by the Turkish Regime that it considers in the “interests of the Syrians”:

The incubation and protection of terrorist groups including“ Turkistan Islamic Party”,  “ Nour Al- Din Al Zanki Brigades”, and both “Jabhet Al Nusra” (Fateh Al Sham), and “ISIS” which  are designated as terrorist organizations. Here I must remind the author that Al- Baghdadi was killed in a Syrian border village that is under Turkish occupation.

Supplying terrorist organizations with weapons and ammunition to continue destroying infrastructure and services, and showering residential neighbourhoods with rockets and explosive bombs, which led to the martyrdom of tens of thousands of civilians, mostly being women, children and the elderly.

 Terrorists (Tools of the Turkish Regime) have targeted the humanitarian corridors established by the Syrian Arab Army, to prevent civilians from leaving Idlib and using them as human shields.

Turkish Regime forces occupy the territories of an independent sovereign state in a flagrant violation of International Law and the UN Charter, and convert these territories into large barracks for the grouping of terrorists, to be used when and where  needed.

Theft of oil and gas, both directly and indirectly in the Syrian North, and smuggling them to Turkey. An illegal trade with revenues exceeding $ 60 million a month.”

Theft of ancient Syrian artifacts.

Ambassador Na’eb went on to clarify that,

 “Dismantling and looting more than 1,000 industrial facilities in the city of Aleppo, and stealing strategic agricultural products, especially cotton and wheat.

Exploiting  refugees (Syrians and non-Syrians) and using them to blackmail other countries.

Amid Covid-19 pandemic and the urgent need for water, the Turkish regime, for the third time in a month, cut off drinking water for more than 600 thousand people from Hasaka, to intimidate and subjugate the Syrians who reject the existence of this regime on their lands.

The crimes of the butcher of Ankara, who dreams of establishing a new Ottoman Empire, as he has repeatedly stated, are no different from the crimes committed by the Ottoman Sultans against Syrians. Their armies that occupied the Levant wreaked havoc and destruction (1516-1918), They plundered and stole, spread ignorance, imprisoned the free and educated and hung and impaled most of them in the public squares of Damascus. This is not surprising as those armies slaughtered nearly 1.5 million Armenians (1915-1917), in addition to crimes committed against other nations, but that is not to be mentioned today.

I would like to refer to some numbers included by the author .She stated that the number of Syrian refugees reached 15.5 million. 9 million of whom are on its territory, in addition to 11 million internally displaced. According to simple math, the total would be 26.5 million Syrians. It is clear that the author forgot to add to her numbers the Syrians who live in their homes in various cities and villages scattered throughout Syria, who carry out their usual daily work in schools, hospitals, institutions and others, and according to her numbers the total of Syrians exceeds forty million. The Ambassador of Turkey is certainly unaware that the population of Syria is only 24 million.

I will leave a quote by Abraham Lincoln to respond to the fabrications of the Turkish Ambassador “ You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time”. It is time for the Turkish regime to wake up from its illusions, and return to wise thinking. Pull your invaders out of Syria, or you will be forced to do so. Syria is for the Syrians. Only they can maintain the sanctity of their country and its territorial integrity. They are the ones who draw the present and will shape a prosperous future worthy of the great sacrifices that have been made.”

Editor in Chief

Reem Haddad