Retired Turkish diplomat Sukru Elegdag, who was Ankara’s ambassador to the United States over 1979-1989, told the popular Turkish daily Sozcu yesterday that Turkey would have been better off respecting the sovereignty of Syria rather than following the U.S. military across the border. “If Turkey, first of all, had learnt any lessons from the occupation of Iraq, instead of invading Syria on the heels of the U.S., had it maintained dialogue with the regime of [Syrian President] Bashar Assad, then today it wouldn’t have come up against this enormous flow of migrants and such threats,” he said, reported TASS.
Otherwise, Elegdag identified that one of the main objectives of the cross-border military operation that Turkish President Rcep Tayyip Erdogan has been threatening, was the prevention of a so-called “garrison state” in the adjacent area. “After the emergence of the Kurdish administration of the Northern Iraq in the wake of the U.S. occupation of Iraq [in 2003], the United States is set again to form a state of the Kurds, but this time in Syria,” said Elegdag.
