TURKEY: Syrian military defectors await a buffer zone to escape and regroup against embattled President Bashar al-Assad

Record ID: 276307

  • Title: TURKEY: Syrian military defectors await a buffer zone to escape and regroup against embattled President Bashar al-Assad
  • Date: 24th November 2011
  • Summary: VARIOUS OF CHILDREN BEHIND BARBED WIRE
  • Embargoed: 9th December 2011 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Turkey, Turkey
  • Country: Turkey
  • Topics: International Relations,Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA8BPYUD38IYFXQZQ7QJTX8AV4L
  • Story Text: A recent defector from the Syrian military wants Turkey to establish a buffer zone inside Syria territory.
    Captain Ayham al-Kurdi said the buffer zone would give recruits from the Syrian Free Army a safe haven to assemble and run a command and control centre to organise their armed struggle against Syrian military forces loyal to al-Assad.
    "If such a zone is created, it will speed up our progress and will lend a huge blow to the Syrian military," al-Kurdi said in an interview with Reuters.
    "Instead of having individual defections, we could have entire units or brigades along with their weapons and tanks turning to the buffer zone. At the moment this does not happen because there is no place for them to bring their tanks, so they have been leaving their tanks behind, and say you have four soldiers in a unit, they just leave only with their weapons," he added.
    Al-Kurdi is staying in a safe house provided by a Turkish Arab family on the outskirts of Hatay city in Turkey.
    Having deserted and taken refuge in Turkey rather than be part of Assad's military, al-Kurdi and his comrades operate from Hatay, the south-eastern Turkish province jutting down towards Syria.
    From there they sneak back and forth across the border to carry out armed guerrilla attacks on forces loyal to al-Assad.
    Although Turkey currently represents a rear base for the rebels, most defectors are certain their numbers would multiply if they could operate from Syrian territory with Turkey providing a protective umbrella.
    Defectors believe smuggling of arms into Syria from Turkey is negligible but a steady stream of high value electronic gadgets and unspecified amounts of cash sent by clandestine expatriate supporters of the uprising were finding their way to the senior defectors and used to bribe top security officers to get hold of a number of weapons.
    "Turkey is not allowing us the opportunity to send weapons inside (Syria). Turkey only provides us safety, as for arms supplies, this only takes place between traders inside Syria. People who support the revolution, but maybe they do not reach out to us a lot because they do not know exactly who to communicate with. So they reach out to us and we relate this to our people inside (Syria)," al-Kurdi said.
    Last week, Turkish foreign ministry officials made it clear Turkey would not intervene militarily in Syria.
    But they also drew red lines: if there was a mass exodus of refugees fleeing the violence in Syria, Turkey would consider establishing either a no-fly or buffer zone inside Syrian territory.
    Turkey has bad memories of the 1991 Gulf War, when around half a million Iraqi refugees poured across the border creating a humanitarian crisis.
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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