Konflikten i Syrien

Despite the deaths of as many as half a million people, dozens by chemical weapons, in the Syrian civil war, the Trump Administration is now prepared to accept President Bashar al-Assad’s continued rule until Syria’s next scheduled Presidential election, in 2021, according to U.S. and European officials. The decision reverses repeated U.S. statements that Assad must step down as part of a peace process.
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Yet, over the past few months, facts on the ground have led the Administration to accept that Assad, whose family has ruled Syria for almost a half century, may be around for as much as four more years. Syria now controls the majority of territory—including cities such as Damascus, Hama, Homs, Latakia, and Aleppo, which was once the opposition’s crown jewel—that U.S. analysts refer to as “useful Syria.” The regime and its foreign allies—Russia, Iran, and Lebanon’s Hezbollah—have consolidated what were, a year ago, unconnected patches of territory. And Assad’s rule has been restored over the majority of the Syrian population.
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Diplomatically, Washington has been marginalized by the powerful troika of Russia, Iran, and Turkey, which now dominates the peace process. Several rounds of talks sponsored by the United Nations, in Geneva, have made no progress. The U.N. effort has been superseded by the Russian-led troika’s peace talks, launched in January, held in Astana, Kazakhstan. After his visit to Syria, Putin flew to Turkey to discuss the next steps in that process with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
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The Trump Administration says it still wants a political process that holds the prospect of Assad’s departure. But it has concluded that it may take until 2021, when the next election is scheduled, to pull it off. Depending on the outcome of the 2020 U.S. election, Assad could still be in power after Trump leaves office. U.S. officials worry that Assad could win the 2021 Syrian election, one way or the other, and remain in power for years to come.

/.../So how exactly did American weapons end up with ISIS? Spleeters can’t yet say for sure. According to a July 19, 2017, report in The Washington Post, the US government secretly trained and armed Syrian rebels from 2013 until mid-2017, at which point the Trump administration discontinued the program—in part over fears that US weapons were ending up in the wrong hands. The US government did not reply to multiple requests for comment on how these weapons wound up in the hands of Syrian rebels or in an ISIS munitions factory. The government also declined to comment on whether the US violated the terms of its end-user certificate and, by extension, failed to comply with the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty, of which it is one of 130 signatories.

Çavuşoğlu, Afrin'e ilişkin soru üzerine "Bizim Afrin veya başka bir yere girmemiz için ya da bize tehdit oluşturan teröristle mücadele etmemiz için orada birinin olması ya da olmaması gerekmez. Önemli kriter bize tehdit mi değil mi? Ve bunun zamanlaması" diyerek Türkiye'nin hedefinin şu anda ilişkiler kopuk olsa da rejim ya da başka ülkeler olmayacağının altını çizdi. Çavuşoğlu, şu an itibarıyla da böyle bir tehdidin söz konusu olmadığını vurguladı.