Tag Archives: NATO

NATO airstrike kills Afghan civilians

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An Afghan boy wounded in the air strike in Kunar province that left 10 civilians dead is treated in a hospital. Photograph: Namatullah Karyab/AFP/Getty Images

From daily The Guardian in Britain:

Nato air strike kills civilians in eastern Afghanistan, officials say

If confirmed as Nato action, deaths of 10 civilians, including five children, likely to renew tensions between Karzai and Nato

Emma Graham-Harrison in Kabul

Wednesday 13 February 2013 08.42 GMT

A Nato air strike in eastern Afghanistan has killed 10 civilians, five of them children, and wounded five other children, Afghan officials said. …

If confirmed the latest deaths are likely to spark protests and renew tensions over civilian casualties between the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, and the Nato-led military coalition.

A single home in the remote Sultan valley, in Kunar province, was hit by bombs around 3am on Wednesday, said Wasifullah Wasifi, spokesman for the provincial governor. …

“Four women and five children were killed, and five children wounded. One man, who was the leader of the family, was also killed, according to reports from the site,” Farid told the Guardian by phone from Kunar.

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‘New’ Libya, run for your lives!

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This video says about itself:

March 11, 2012

When the Libyan uprising began, many women enthusiastically took part, marching alongside men and aspiring to greater freedoms. But now they may have to pay for that liberation by losing their rights.

The Dutch government, like other NATO governments, in 2011 waged war against Libya.

After that bloody war, Libya, according to NATO logic, was “safe”. The Dutch government decided that refugees from Libya would be forced to go back to Libya. In practice, contrary to NATO theory, that might mean returning the refugees to their death.

So, safe in theory for refugees.

However, yesterday the Dutch government told Dutch nationals in the Libyan city Benghazi and the area east of Benghazi to run away immediately, because of threats of violence against them.

I myself was in Benghazi in 2006, for archaeological and birdwatching reasons.

I fondly remember the kind people.

I fondly remember, when walking along the harbour, five little terns flying.

Now, for the umpteenth time, the lies of the NATO merchants of “humanitarian” war, are exposed by bloody reality.

From News Line daily in Britain:

Friday, 25 January 2013

RUN FOR YOUR LIVES! – Foreign Office tells UK nationals in Benghazi

THE UK Foreign Office yesterday urged British nationals to leave Benghazi at once in response to ‘a specific and imminent threat’ to Westerners from Al Qaeda and its supporters.

A notice on the Foreign Office website said: ‘Since September 2012, the Foreign Office has clearly advised against all travel to Benghazi and all areas of Libya, with the exception of Tripoli, Zuwara, Az Zawiya, al Khums, Zlitan and Misrata, and the coastal towns from Ras Lanuf to the Egyptian Border.

‘We are now aware of a specific and imminent threat to Westerners in Benghazi, and urge any British nationals who remained there against our advice to leave immediately.

‘We have updated our Travel Advice to reflect this. The British Embassy in Tripoli has been in contact with British Nationals for whom we have contact details to alert them to the Advice.’

This ‘advice’ constitutes a huge slap in the face for the British government who spent hundreds of millions supporting the ‘Benghazi revolutionaries’, including the use of massive air power in a campaign that culminated with the murder of Colonel Gadaffi.

Now UK citizens are running for their lives from the same ‘revolutionaries’.

It has also emerged that the terrorists who laid siege to the Amenas gas plant in Algeria also took part in the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi that killed the American ambassador to Libya.

An Algerian security official has told the New York Times that three of the surviving terrorists said they were aided by Egyptian extremists who were involved in the September 11 attack on the US consulate in eastern Libya.

The Egyptians were reportedly all killed during the special forces raid on the gas plant and Hillary Clinton, the outgoing Secretary of State, said on Wednesday the US was still investigating the link.

Clinton said that there was ‘no doubt’ that the Algerian terrorists had been armed with weapons obtained from Libya.

While testifying in Washington on the September 2012 attack in Benghazi, she said: ‘There is no doubt that the Algerian terrorists had weapons from Libya.

‘There is no doubt that the Malian remnants of AQIM (Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb) have weapons from Libya,’ Clinton told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Algeria’s prime minister has said that 37 hostages and 29 assailants were killed in the operation. Three US citizens were reportedly also killed in the attack.

The Islamist ‘Mulathameen Brigade’ claimed responsibility for the hostage crisis, warning it would carry out similar attacks until Western powers end what it called an attack on Muslims in Mali.

Russia, which backed a UN Security Council resolution on intervention in Mali, also backed the UN Security Council resolution that was used to organise the NATO attack on Libya.

However, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told a news conference on Wednesday: ‘Those whom the French and Africans are fighting now in Mali are the same people who overthrew the Gadaffi regime, those that our Western partners armed so that they would overthrow the Gadaffi regime.’

Saying that terrorist attacks had almost become a daily occurrence in the region, Lavrov reiterated: ‘The situation in Mali seems to be the consequence of events in Libya.’

Libya Protects Oil Fields, Foreigners Exit: here.

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Afghan prisoners, still more torture

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This video is called Canadian Government looked the other way on Afghan torture.

From Al Jazeera:

UN says Afghan prisoners still being tortured

Forms of abuse included hanging prisoners by their wrists and beating them with cables, a new report says.

Last Modified: 20 Jan 2013 18:29

Afghan authorities were still torturing prisoners, such as hanging them by their wrists and beating them with cables, according to a UN report.

More than half of the 635 detainees interviewed had been tortured, according to the report titled Treatment of Conflict-Related Detainees in Afghan Custody: One Year On, released on Sunday.

The figure is higher than the UN found in its first report in 2011, when 24 percent of transferred detainees were tortured.

In multiple detention centres, Afghan authorities leave detainees hanging from the ceiling by their wrists, beat them with cables and wooden sticks, administer electric shocks, twist their genitals and threaten to shove bottles up their anuses or to kill them, the report said.

The report shows little progress in curbing abuse in Afghan prisons despite the Afghan government’s promise of prison reform.

It also cites instances where Afghan authorities have tried to hide mistreatment from UN monitors.

After the last year’s report, the NATO military alliance temporarily stopped transferring Afghans it had picked up to national authorities until they could set up a system free of abuse.

Though it said the findings were exaggerated, the Afghan government promised after the first report to increase monitoring, but little appears to have changed.

Once NATO forces resumed the transfers and decreased inspections, torture quickly returned to earlier levels, the report said.

‘Allegations untrue’

The report documents what it called a “persistent lack of accountability for perpetrators of torture”, noting that no one has been prosecuted for prisoner abuse since the first report was released.

…

One detainee in the western province of Farah told the UN team: “They laid me on the ground. One of them sat on my feet and another one sat on my head, and the third one took a pipe and started beating me with it.

They were beating me for some time like one hour and were frequently telling me that, ‘You are with Taliban and this is what you deserve.’”

It’s troubling given the amount of international attention and pledges of reform that came after the first report.

“Torture cannot be addressed by training, inspections and directives alone,” said Georgette Gagnon, the head of human rights for the UN mission in Afghanistan, explaining that there has been little follow-through by the Afghan government.

In a letter responding to the UN report, General John Allen, the commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, said that his staff had written letters to Afghan ministers urging them to investigate more than 80 separate allegations of detainee abuse during the past 18 months.

“To date, Afghan officials have acted in only one instance,” Allen said in the letter.

See also here.

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Dutch army injures Afghan child

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This video from England says about itself:

Nov 6, 2012

On the 11th anniversary of the start of the war in Afghanistan, killed Afghan civilians and British soldiers are remembered at a Naming of the Dead ceremony in London.

According to NOS TV in the Netherlands today, a Dutch military vehicle in Khanabad in Afghanistan has collided with an Afghan child.

The child was severely injured.

Dutch soldiers are part of the NATO occupation force in Kunduz province; jointly with the German army, which caused already more than one bloodbath in Kunduz.

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Dutch whales beached because of NATO war games?

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This video is called Navy Sonar & Whales.

First, a humpback whale beached on Noorderhaaks desert island in the Netherlands.

A few days later, a dead sperm whale stranded on the same island.

There has been a lot of attention to attempts to save the humpback’s life, which ultimately did not succeed.

Another issue: why did these two whales beach so soon after each other, on the same island?

On his blog, Arjan Berkhuysen, director of the Wadden sea conservation organisation, discusses this question.

He writes that shortly before the beachings, there were NATO war games in the Wadden sea region. Military planes broke the sound barrier. The sound of these war games may have disoriented the whales. Like navy sonar causes whale deaths.

There is still no scientific consensus on why humpback Johanna and the sperm whale beached on Noorderhaaks.

Dutch humpback map: here.

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NATO pressure frees Croatian war criminals

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This video says about itself:

Neo-Nazism In Croatia/ Obsession With Historical Paradox

Apr 4, 2008

Over 60,000 fans celebrating Croatia’s Nazi past with Hitler style hand salutes – “Sieg Heils”.

By Paul Mitchell:

Croatian war criminals released after appeal by Western military chiefs

11 December 2012

In April 2011, the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY) found Croatian general Ante Gotovina and Assistant Interior Minister Mladen Markac guilty of war crimes committed during 1995’s Operation Storm military offensive and sentenced them to 24 years’ and 18 years’ imprisonment, respectively.

The two leaders were accused of involvement in a “Joint Criminal Exercise” (JCE), led by late Croatian president Franjo Tudjman, aimed at “the permanent removal of the Serb population from the Krajina region by force, fear or threat of force, persecution, forced displacement, transfer and deportation, appropriation and destruction of property or other means”. More than 150 Croatian Serbs died, hundreds disappeared and 200,000 fled in what was described as the biggest act of ethnic cleansing in the Balkan Wars. Half of the refugees have still not returned to their former homes.

In January 2012, 12 US, Canadian and British military experts, three of whom had served as judge advocate generals (senior military lawyers) and one as the top legal adviser to the US Army, launched an appeal to overturn the convictions. They argued that the court was wrong to use a “200-metre standard” by which artillery bomb craters located more than 200 metres from a legitimate military target were deemed evidence of unlawful indiscriminate attacks on civilians. If the standard became enshrined in international law, they declared, future Western military operations would be put in jeopardy and commanders would run the risk of being hauled in front of human rights courts accused of war crimes.

The appeal document concluded with a letter from General Ronald H. Griffith, vice chief of staff, the second highest officer in the US Army, from 1995 to 1997 and current executive vice president of the private military company Engility, formerly known as Military Professional Resources Inc. (MPRI). Griffith declared, “Should the standard of review adopted by the Trial Chamber gain traction as a controlling interpretation of international law it will ultimately expose commanders who have conducted military operations in compliance with accepted doctrinal principles and in a morally responsible manner to the threat of being brought before some international court and charged, as was General Gotovina, with war crimes.”

Last month, the ICTY Appeals Court overturned the convictions of Gotovina and Markac, declaring that the original court had “erred” by using the “200-metre standard”. The rest of the charges against the two war criminals fell like dominos. By a 3-to-2 majority, the court declared that the mass exodus of Serb civilians “cannot be qualified as deportation” and the existence of a JCE “cannot be sustained” and ordered Gotovina and Markac to be released.

Two of the five judges dissented from the majority opinion. Maltese judge Carmel Agius said that he “strongly disagreed” with almost all of the conclusions reached by the majority and was “distancing himself” from their decision. Italian judge Fausto Pocar insisted that the judgement “contradicts any sense of justice”.

Former ICTY chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte declared, “I am shocked, very surprised and astonished because it is absolutely unbelievable what happened after ruling the sentence of 24 years in prison to general Ante Gotovina.” Current chief prosecutor Serge Brammertz said that “those affected by crime committed in connection with Operation Storm are not satisfied by the outcome and feel their suffering has not been acknowledged”. He hoped the Croatian authorities would use the evidence his office had gathered to prosecute those responsible.

Brammertz’s plea was quickly forgotten. After flying back to Croatia, Gotovina and Markac received a hero’s welcome from a crowd of 100,000 in the capital, Zagreb. President Ivo Josipovic welcomed the verdict, and other government figures and officials declared the men’s release was proof that no ethnic cleansing had occurred in Croatia. Gotovina declared that the “Homeland War is now clean, it belongs to our history, it is a basis on which we build our future.” Media reports suggest he will stand in the next presidential elections.

Serbian president Tomislav Nikolic denounced the Appeal Court’s decision as “scandalous,” declaring that it “will not contribute to stabilisation of the situation in the region but will reopen all wounds.” Russian United Nations ambassador Vitaly Churkin declared, “In its work, the ICTY demonstrates neither fairness nor effectiveness.”

The two have been released in the first instance because the Croatian army acted as Washington’s proxy against Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic, with President Bill Clinton’s special envoy Richard Holbrooke describing them as his “junkyard dogs”. In November 1994, MPRI was contracted to train the Croatian army at the time of a UN-monitored ceasefire. Photographs show Gotovina with US military personnel in front of a computer screen showing “Battle Staff Training Program” and “Welcome to Training Center Fort Irwin”. Franjo Tudjman’s son Miro, head of Croatian intelligence at the time, claims the Croatian and US governments enjoyed a “de facto partnership”.

In 2002, Henry Hyde, chairman of the House Committee on International Relations, was already warning that the ICTY could investigate officials who were “formulating and carrying out US government policy” in connection with Operation Storm. The Washington Times repeated Hyde’s warning and attacked the concept of command responsibility as a threat “to US national interests” and “Washington’s ability to project its power around the world.”

Such concerns also lay behind the release, a few days after that, of Gotovina and Markac, of Kosovo Liberation Army commander and former prime minister Ramush Haradinaj and others accused of being members of a JCE involved in the torture and murder of Kosovo Serbs, Roma and Egyptians in a KLA compound in the village of Jabllanicë in 1998. A partial re-trial had been ordered because the original trial was surrounded by allegations that witnesses were subjected to systematic harassment and intimidation. Del Ponte was also forced to complain to the United Nations Security Council and UN secretary-general Kofi Annan about the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) and its chief, Soren Jessen-Petersen, who, she said, protected Haradinaj. She asked, “How can the rule of law be implemented if UNMIK chiefs so openly support a person who is accused of some of the gravest crimes in international law?”

Both the Croatian and Kosovan Albanian leaders played a key role in ensuring US hegemony within the Balkan region. The US had been intent on preserving a unitary Yugoslav state as a bulwark against a Soviet thrust into the Mediterranean, but this changed with the collapse of the USSR and the reunification of Germany in 1991. When German imperialism, anxious to flex its political muscle, promoted secession in Slovenia and Croatia and rushed to extend recognition, both the US and the other western European powers reversed their previous opposition.

It was inevitable, given the history and politics of Yugoslavia, that the break-up of the federation would lead to civil war. The secession of provinces would suddenly deprive ethnic minorities of the constitutional protections they had enjoyed under the federation.

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Kidnapped Libyan blogger survives, for now

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This is a music video of Libyan blogger and doctor Hamid al-Tubuly, singing a song in English.

From Magharebia:

Libya: Tripoli Blogger Freed By Kidnappers

5 December 2012

Armed gunmen freed a social networking activist Hamid al-Tubuly one day after abducting him in Tripoli’s Ain Zara neighbourhood, Libya Herald reported on Wednesday (December 5th).

“He has been active on Twitter, commenting on everything that has gone on, but he wasn’t criticising any one group or anything. If he was criticising anything, it would be the security situation,” al-Tubuly’s niece was quoted as saying.

Al-Tubuly is a professor at Tripoli’s medical school.

So, an armed gang grabbed Dr Hamid al-Tubuly, even though his tweets did not criticize that gang, any other group, or anything else. He is alive, and free again. I hope that this horrible experience will never happen to him again.

How about Libyan bloggers who do criticize one of the many armed gangs in NATO’s post-2011 war ‘new’ Libya? Will they be released after kidnapping as well? Or should one rather fear that the kidnappers will imprison for a long time, or kill, bloggers of that kind?

So much for freedom of speech in the brave ‘new’ Libya, the result of the bloody war by the NATO-CIA-Pentagon-Sarkozy-Berlusconi-Cameron-king of Bahrain-king of Saudi Arabia-emir of Qatar-al Qaeda alliance.

The ‘new’ Libya where armed extreme fanatics kill their recent ally, the United States ambassador. Where women’s rights have gone down the drain. Where people are tortured and killed because of their complexion.

Who were the armed gang which kidnapped Dr Hamid Al-Tubuly? The Libya Herald reports:

Tripoli, 5 December:

The prominent social networking activist taken from his home yesterday morning by armed gunmen has been freed. …

It now transpires, however, that Tubuly’s “kidnappers” were none other than the Supreme Security Committee, Libya’s de facto police force responsible for internal security under the authority of the Ministry of Interior.

“The men who took him belonged to the SSC’s 10th brigade in Dahra” said Tubuly’s niece Hajer Sharif. …

Sharif says her uncle is not in a state to discuss the details of what he was asked during his questioning and that neither he nor the family could explain the arrest.

UPDATE: Twitter message by Tubuly, 5 December 2012:

I’m safe home. Thanks to all of you who helped me out. Details coming soon. Pray for those who can’t find the support/help I got. #FreeHamid

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British soldiers accused of murdering Afghan teenagers

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This video is called Axis of Willing ‘Liberation’ Has Afghanistan Decaying.

From daily The Guardian in Britain:

British forces accused of killing four teenagers in Afghan operation

Boys were targeted at close range witnesses claim, as defence secretary asked to launch urgent inquiry

Richard Norton-Taylor and Nick Hopkins

Tuesday 4 December 2012 20.42 GMT

The defence secretary, Philip Hammond, has been asked to launch an urgent inquiry into claims that British forces led a counter-insurgency operation in Afghanistan during which a 12-year-old boy and three teenagers were shot dead while they were drinking tea.

Lawyers acting for the brother of two of the victims have written to Hammond describing an incident on 18 October in the village of Loi Bagh in Nad Ali, Helmand province, where British forces have been based since 2006.

According to statements given to the lawyers by other family members and witnesses, the operation involved Afghan and UK forces, but it was British soldiers – possibly special forces – who were said to have been in the lead.

“We submit that all of the victims were under the control and authority of the UK at the times of the deaths and ill-treatment,” states the letter to Hammond.

“The four boys killed all appear to have been deliberately targeted at close range by British forces. All were killed in a residential area over which UK forces clearly had the requisite degree of control and authority.”

The four victims are named as Fazel Mohammed, 18, Naik Mohammed, 16, Mohammed Tayeb, 14 and Ahmed Shah, 12.

Britain contributes soldiers to Nato’s International Security and Assistance Force (Isaf), which has already confirmed that an operation took place in the village on that date.

The incident has been reported in the Afghan media. Major Adam Wojack, a spokesman for Nato-led forces in Afghanistan, confirmed the “joint Afghan-coalition forces” operation in Nad Ali on 18 October. He said the result was the “killing of four Taliban enemies in action”. That claim is rejected by relatives of the victims.

Military sources also said it was unusual for UK forces to take the lead in operations of this kind because the Afghans are supposed to be in control as part of the transition process. The MoD said it would give the claims “full consideration before responding”.

According to a statement sent to Hammond on Tuesday by Tessa Gregory, lawyer for Noor Mohammad Noorzai, brother of two of the dead youths, the boys were “shot and killed at close range” in a family guesthouse. Gregory, of the law firm Public Interest Lawyers, obtained written sworn statements from witnesses in a visit to Afghanistan last month. They allege that British soldiers, who were engaged in a joint operation with Afghan forces, hooded some of those arrested despite a ban on the practice.

“The soldiers walked through the village calling at various houses asking to be told where the claimant’s brother Fazel Mohammed lived”, says Gregory’s statement. “It is alleged that the soldiers entered the house of a neighbour dragged him from his bed, hooded him and his son and beat them until under questioning they showed the soldiers the house of Fazel which was across the street.”

According to the document sent to Hammond, the families and neighbours “reject outright any suggestion that any of the four teenagers killed were in any way connected to the insurgency. All four were innocent teenagers who posed no threat whatsoever to Afghan or British forces”.

Gregory told the Guardian: “On 18 October 2012, during a joint British-Afghan security operation, four innocent Afghan teenagers were shot whilst drinking tea in their family’s mud home in Helmand province. Our client, the elder brother of two of the teenage victims, wants to know why this happened. As far as we are aware no investigation into these tragic deaths has taken place. We hope that in light of our urgent representations the Ministry of Defence will act swiftly to ensure that an effective and independent investigation is carried out without any further delay.”

In her statement to Hammond, Gregory says: “After the soldiers left, the claimant’s family and some neighbours entered the “guesthouse” where they found the bodies of the four teenagers lying in a line with their heads towards the doorway”.

The statement adds: “It was clear that the bodies had been dragged into that position and all had been shot in the head and neck region as they sat on the floor of the guesthouse leaning against the wall drinking tea..”

Gregory says the British soldiers involved in the operation are bound by the European Convention of Human Rights which enshrines the right to life and outlaws inhumane treatment. Unless the MoD could show it has carried out a full investigation, lawyers representing the victims’ families will ask the high court to order one.

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Patriot missiles in Turkey, war in Syria

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This video from Turkey is called Taksim, Istanbul: Anti-Erdogan War with Syria Protest.

From daily News Line in Britain:

Tuesday, 27 November 2012

NATO Patriot missiles–‘harbingers of a war on Syria’

THE Turkish privately-owned, mass-circulation daily Hurriyet, on 23 November, discussed the issue ‘Are the Patriots Harbingers of a War in Syria?’

It stated: ‘Turkey first became familiar with Patriot batteries during the Gulf War of 1991.

‘Turkey did not enter that war despite then President Turgut Ozal’s aspirations to the contrary. Then Chief of the General Staff Necip Torumtay, Foreign Minister Ali Bozer, and Minister of National Defence Safa Giray resigned their positions over this issue.

‘These three resignations were in truth a political earthquake but Turkey did not spend much time discussing the backstage developments.

‘The purpose of bringing Patriots to Turkey was defence against Iraq’s Soviet-made Scud missiles. However, despite the patriot presence some Scud warheads landed in provinces near the Iraqi border and this caused strong indignation at the time.

‘At the end of the Gulf War, the United States drove Saddam out of Kuwait but it did not touch his government.

‘After the war a no-fly zone was declared in northern Iraq. Operation Poised Hammer was put in place, the border crossing point in Habur was closed, the PKK (Kurdistan People’s Congress, KGK) acquired heavy weapons from the Iraqi army, and regional dynamics changed.

‘Despite insistent calls from the United States, Turkey kept out of the war because of its undeclared “cosmic understanding” with Britain.

‘The first Gulf war ended up being the event that injected the United States into the Middle East.

‘The second coming of the Patriots occurred in the second Gulf war. The United States did not overthrow Saddam in the first war for its own regional interests, but it returned to the region in 2003.

‘This time, it unseated Saddam and settled in the region permanently in the name of maintaining “stability.”

‘As in the first Gulf war, Turkey initially expressed a desire to participate in the second war. However, it got cold feet at the last minute and stayed out of the war.

‘This equivocation resulted in heavy economic losses and strengthened the PKK in both wars.

‘In the first Gulf war, the United States wanted Turkey to open a northern front. In the second war it wanted to use Turkish ports and airports and to open a second front in the north. In both cases, these demands were opposed in Turkey.

‘The 1st March 2003 authorization bill on Iraq created problems that could not be repaired for a long time in Turkish-US relations.

‘The second intervention in Iraq was the war that installed the United States permanently in the Middle East.

‘Now, the deployment of Patriots is on the agenda for the third time.

‘According to NATO statements, “the deployment of Patriot missiles on the Syrian border will strengthen Turkey’s air defence capability to protect its people and territory” and “the missiles will contribute to the reduction of tensions on NATO’s southeastern border.”

‘These statements notwithstanding, Turkey is trying to find its way in the strategic chess game among the United States, Russia, and Britain.

‘Syria has in its possession Russian-made Scud missiles. In the event of a real intervention, the region may turn into a ball of fire, especially if Iran also gets involved.

‘When we look at the past 20 years, we see that Patriots are always brought in when there is a war. In other words, we see a history and string of events that seem to repeat themselves.

‘It seems that an intervention in Syria, which was postponed because of the US elections, will soon gain new impetus.

‘Russia’s unexpected opposition to the deployment of Patriot missiles on Turkey’s border with Syria for defensive purposes suggests that a different policy is being pursued this time.

‘Russia did not object to Patriot missiles in the previous two occasions but it has expressed opposition in the case of Syria.

‘When we put these developments together, we see that there is a desire to reformulate the Sykes-Picot order in the Middle East and that the region may be the scene of new conflicts.

‘It seems that the intervention in Syria will aim to remove Russia and other powers backing it completely from the region. In view of this, Turkey’s behaviour this time may be different from its conduct in the previous two interventions when it stayed out of them.’

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