“Mr. Erdogan, take a deep breath, take Damascus,
or head home, and close the door behind you,” say humanitarians.
Why is Recep Erdogan so angry? He has threatened to invade Idlib with a massive surge of Turkish troops, and even the calmest humanitarians understand his anger.
This article will explain what seasoned, neutral, humanitarians in Syria have come to learn; how they know; and why they shared with FPM.news.
Photo Art/Cropping/Enhancement: Rosa Yamamoto / Feminine-Perspective Magazine
For a long time, Turkey has collectively acted like any typical Turk: helpful. Turks are nice people. They are helping some 4 million refugees in their country. Their compassion for desperate, unhappy refugees who have fled from Syria and Iraq is taken for granted by the world. It is no less true that Turkey, as a nation, is a humanitarian hero.
Now Syria’s Assad regime wants to drive about three million people, including the worst collection of gangsters (Americans call them “terrorists”), into Turkey, or kill them all. And that is what the Syrian Army is doing today, backed by the Russian military and the Kremlin. It’s crazy. It’s bloody, and it is sick.
The saddest part is that the people are mostly olive growers and farmers of various types. Their lives were as simple and boring as watching an olive grow, while baking in the sun. Since the civil war began, for most families, their men are dead, so its women and kids. Maybe two million. Wake up, world.
First the Syrians and Russians killed the doctors and the teachers; then they killed the ambulance drivers; and then they bombed the hospitals and the schools.
Russians and Syrians have commit these crimes. They went after the linchpin community members. But why would anyone be surprised? This has been happening in various forms since 2011. Half a million, the most modest estimate, are dead already.
Not just President Erdogan, everybody should be angry.
by Melissa Hemingway and Micheal John
President Of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, speaking to the joint assembly of the Pakistan and Turkish parliaments, making history, again, on 14 February 2020.
“The world does not know what Mr. Recep Erdogan knows! Nobody gets it like he does,” says a Syrian doctor on her way out of Aleppo heading along the M4.
“And if the Turkish soldiers move into Idlib en masse, they will find out things that Mr. Putin and that scumbag Assad do not want anyone to know. That scares Putin and Assad. But it will hurt the Turks. Mr. Erdogan needs to decide he will take Syria, or just go home and close the door behind him,” says Dr. Buni with a certain finality.
Putin needs to go home and fast or risk being exposed. He tried to fix things but now the war crimes have piled up and this has become very serious. Heads are going to roll and Putin knows this to be true. No amount of obfuscation and lies will fix this. Read: Feminists in Syria Issue ruthless, angry warning. Stop killing us or your head could be a pink mist, like Suleimani.
Fleeing one more time: medics, nurses, patients, and orphans.
The remnants of The Nurses Without Borders’ (RINJ Foundation) clinic in Idlib City have been packed up and almost completely salvaged. The goods were moved back to the clinic on the Euphrates and a small group of immobile children, orphans in fact, have been also transported. Arrangements have been made for some of the orphans to go to Duhok in Iraq and others may go to Germany and Turkey to distant relatives. In the meantime they are already in another country. They are lucky.
“It’s been a nightmare,” says Jessica Williams, an administrative nurse running the show in that region.
A brief look at the War Crimes Ongoing in Syria Today
Beverley Baldock is a retired IDF soldier. She now works as a private security team leader for practitioners and patients. She is a mercenary. She has a team of security staff who operate the shuttles of medicines and patients in civilian vehicles. This is done in lieu of using EMS vehicles which the Russians and the Syrians have been bombing.
In all honesty, they seem to be a bunch of women taking care of many children. The parents keep getting killed. Their children are often found dazed, looking for food.
“About the last thing you want to be in Idlib is a white-coat driving a white vehicle with a red cross on it. Boom!” says Edwards.
“We have not used insignia or ID since 2012,” she adds. “We mostly care for women and children, and because of the religion, we deliver a lot of babies and take care of women ‘down there‘ because it is forbidden for male medical people to do that,” she explains.
“We also became good at crush injuries, major trauma, amputations and fitting prosthetics when we can either get them or make them. Emergencies are the mothers of inventions. Our two doctors and a few of our nurse practitioners have done every kind of surgery imaginable in the past eight years. It would shock a college of physicians and surgeons in Canada what we have done to save lives. Its beyond original training but it has become our new internships, doing things never done before because there is no one else for this patient. No one else in the world. Everyone has gone.”
“We have replaced a lot of feet, for example, with leather harnesses and wooden pegs and some even metal that our own volunteers make. Once again we had to leave a lot of those craftspeople behind. I hate moving but I am going back to a clinic I was at previously and will reacquaint with old friends and hear about those that died. It’s a bad scene. (expletive).”
Baldock is nonchalant. She says, “the Syrian forces are killing for the sake of killing. They destroy whatever they can. They rape and loot as they pass through an area and they are acting under orders. They have no opposition to speak of that we have seen. Maybe months ago down south but not any longer. They are out for blood. They want to kill or drive out every human being and they will push everyone into Turkey or to their deaths. Bodies are everywhere.”
This article will share some of the observations made during the egress from Idlib province which began last September or a little earlier.
“Life in Idlib had to come to an end. It was madness. Now everyone is dead or will die soon,” said an old man last year. Well. He is still alive, healthy as ever, thanks to his neighbour.
“It was a constant game of hide and seek,” says Gracie Edwards, a Syrian-Canadian nurse with the group. “Let’s face it, one cannot trust anyone in that region,” she reflected on what she just left behind.
“There is every kind of cult (referring to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. Al Nusra, ISIS, al Qaeda, etc.) and wannabes plus opponents to Assad and friends of Assad. There’s Russian and American supporters and every kind of player imaginable. This is the birthplace of human slavery. Girls just vanish. Who cares? They are lucky, some think.”
“Bashar al Assad is not fighting with anyone in the region,” he is killing everyone in the region.”
“Occasionally the HTS end up in a skirmish with the Syrian troops but that seems to be because the Syrians are overrunning the Salafists.
“Nobody is shooting back, for the most part. The Russians and the Syrians are just killing people. They could just drive in and take over but the people would just run to somewhere else, so the Syrian soldiers kill everyone that they can. How do I know that, you ask? I already said, I have treated Syrians and that is what they tell me,” she adds candidly.
What should Turkey do?
“Attacking Syrian troops in Idlib is a nonstarter,” says Baldock. A few of her colleagues agree.
“Take Syria,” they say. “Forever. Fix it. Then the Syrian refugees now in Turkey have a home. The benefits of Turkey invading Syria are enormous. The cost could be great, but maybe not.”
“If Russia wants to send in a half million troops, the Americans will do the same. Russia will back off unless Putin realizes he will lose everything. Russians want another war like a hole in their heads. They will have Putin’s head,” the soldiers say.
“Now that the Assad Regime has control over most of Syria, the reprisals have begun against the people. Syria’s Bashar al Assad is a lot like Trump inasmuch as he will slam all the people who have not supported him. Both are bullies. Assad is the bloodiest and will kill millions more, says Baldock with a straight face.”
Bashar al Assad must go, somehow. Nobody knew when or how, so is that now changing?
The Message to Mr. Erdogan:
“There are no other options, just two. Either take the country, or get the ‘f ‘ out. Apart from those two options, everything else is a big mess,” says Baldock, swigging the last of her black coffee, clanging down the tin cup with a shake of her head, grabbing her rifle, and heading out the door into the cold Syrian night.