From Ali, the chief Turkey correspondent for this blog:
"Assad this is an long mail, but I think necessary:
Interior Ministry of Turkey announced that the perpetrators of car bomb attack which killed 14 including Turkish citizens at the Bab Al Hawa border crossing were detained by Turkish security forces. No one claimed the responsibility but Syrian government and rebels exchanged accusations about the February 11 attack. Turkish government and pro-government media blames Syria for the incident and they say, the perpetrators are working for Syrian Mukhabarat.
- Bab Al Hawa has been under the control of armed militants since the mid July and the nearest areas under the army control are too far from the border crossing. Moreover, there are many check points of rebels to protect this critical supply route for their wars in western Aleppo and north Idlib:
- A rebel told that he saw the car loaded with bombs came from Turkish side:
- This claim was voiced by deputies of main opposition pary. Deputies of Republican People's Party went the place of incident for investigation and one of them Hurşit Güneş said that public prosecutor didnot allow them to watch the videos recorded by survailance cameras. Just after 24 hours, state run Anatolia Agency published the video but the deputies claimed that the video was mountaged and showing just the moment of blast. They also said that the video did not show where the car is came from. And they asked "how state run agency can broadcast the video which was forbidden by public prosecutor?":
-Bab Al Hawa has been vital for rebel groups but there has been a friction, especially between Al Farouq and foreign jihadists were in a strife over the control of the gate.
- And this friction turned into a armed conflicts a few days later. the northern branch of the Farooq Brigades was accused of kidnapping and killing Abu Mohamad al-Absi, a Syrian Jihadist who led a group of foreign fighters and had ignored their demands to leave the Bab al-Hawa border post area:
- Turkey has always been close to both Al Qaeda affiliated groups& Al Farouq. You may remember the war against the Kurds in Ras Al Ayn. Turkey provoked the foreign fighters to attack the Kurdish population. Moreover and interestingly BBC covered a bomb factory of FSA close to Syria. They did not give details about the location of the factory:
- Turkish media also reported many times the blasts in these hidden bomb factories of rebel groups. And also Tim Arango from New York Times reported the bomb transfer from Turkey into the Syria.(I cannot find its orginal version but there is a Turkish one:
- Moreover, the time is crucial. The friction erupted in September, just two months before the Crotian weapons were smuggled into Syria with the financial support of Saudi Arabia and logistic help of Turkey and Jordan. “The rebels refused to specify who supplied the new weapons, saying they did not want to embarrass foreign supporters, but said they had arrived openly via Turkey ‘from donor countries’. ‘We have received this shipment legally and normally. It was not delivered through smuggling routes but formally through Bab al-Hawa crossing,’ said a rebel commander.”
- Turkish officials are even in contradiction with each other how they arrested the perpetrators. "“None of Turkey’s security officials and members of security forces conducted such an operation abroad,” Güler said. “The suspects were detained, in accordance with previous operations, at the gates. We had no operations that were conducted on the Syrian side. Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç had previously described the operations as “worthy of making movies about,” and confirmed his statements after Güler’s remarks.“Muammer Güler is not contradicting me,” Arınç said March.13 in response to a reporter’s question on Güler’s statements. “He is only saying that [what was] written in newspapers to depict the operations are untrue. That doesn’t mean he is rejecting my remarks,” Arınç added."
"Assad this is an long mail, but I think necessary:
Interior Ministry of Turkey announced that the perpetrators of car bomb attack which killed 14 including Turkish citizens at the Bab Al Hawa border crossing were detained by Turkish security forces. No one claimed the responsibility but Syrian government and rebels exchanged accusations about the February 11 attack. Turkish government and pro-government media blames Syria for the incident and they say, the perpetrators are working for Syrian Mukhabarat.
- Bab Al Hawa has been under the control of armed militants since the mid July and the nearest areas under the army control are too far from the border crossing. Moreover, there are many check points of rebels to protect this critical supply route for their wars in western Aleppo and north Idlib:
- A rebel told that he saw the car loaded with bombs came from Turkish side:
- This claim was voiced by deputies of main opposition pary. Deputies of Republican People's Party went the place of incident for investigation and one of them Hurşit Güneş said that public prosecutor didnot allow them to watch the videos recorded by survailance cameras. Just after 24 hours, state run Anatolia Agency published the video but the deputies claimed that the video was mountaged and showing just the moment of blast. They also said that the video did not show where the car is came from. And they asked "how state run agency can broadcast the video which was forbidden by public prosecutor?":
-Bab Al Hawa has been vital for rebel groups but there has been a friction, especially between Al Farouq and foreign jihadists were in a strife over the control of the gate.
- And this friction turned into a armed conflicts a few days later. the northern branch of the Farooq Brigades was accused of kidnapping and killing Abu Mohamad al-Absi, a Syrian Jihadist who led a group of foreign fighters and had ignored their demands to leave the Bab al-Hawa border post area:
- Turkey has always been close to both Al Qaeda affiliated groups& Al Farouq. You may remember the war against the Kurds in Ras Al Ayn. Turkey provoked the foreign fighters to attack the Kurdish population. Moreover and interestingly BBC covered a bomb factory of FSA close to Syria. They did not give details about the location of the factory:
- Turkish media also reported many times the blasts in these hidden bomb factories of rebel groups. And also Tim Arango from New York Times reported the bomb transfer from Turkey into the Syria.(I cannot find its orginal version but there is a Turkish one:
- Moreover, the time is crucial. The friction erupted in September, just two months before the Crotian weapons were smuggled into Syria with the financial support of Saudi Arabia and logistic help of Turkey and Jordan. “The rebels refused to specify who supplied the new weapons, saying they did not want to embarrass foreign supporters, but said they had arrived openly via Turkey ‘from donor countries’. ‘We have received this shipment legally and normally. It was not delivered through smuggling routes but formally through Bab al-Hawa crossing,’ said a rebel commander.”
- Turkish officials are even in contradiction with each other how they arrested the perpetrators. "“None of Turkey’s security officials and members of security forces conducted such an operation abroad,” Güler said. “The suspects were detained, in accordance with previous operations, at the gates. We had no operations that were conducted on the Syrian side. Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç had previously described the operations as “worthy of making movies about,” and confirmed his statements after Güler’s remarks.“Muammer Güler is not contradicting me,” Arınç said March.13 in response to a reporter’s question on Güler’s statements. “He is only saying that [what was] written in newspapers to depict the operations are untrue. That doesn’t mean he is rejecting my remarks,” Arınç added."
