Turkey seeks SCO membership and normalization of relations with Syria...
...while Israel continues its genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and drops bombs in Syria.
It’s been a while since last time I covered the Middle East crisis and the ongoing genocide in Palestine and I could not ignore what happened in the last two days: Israeli airstrikes yesterday on the Nuseirate refugee camp, targeting an UNRWA school, with 15 dead and 80 wounded people, as of last night (source: Al Mayadeen), and a much worse massacre the day before in Khan Younis, which had been classified by the Israeli “Defense” Forces (IDF) as a “safe zone”. You probably read/heard about the latter also on Western mainstream media, such as The Guardian, that kept insisting that the IDF or, more correctly, the “occupation army” was aiming at Hamas Military Chief Mohammad Deif, considered the mastermind of the attacks against Israel on 7th October 2023. His death has never been confirmed, not even by the “occupation army”, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted, yet insisting “on the continuous Israeli control of the Philadelphia axis and the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt” (source: Al Mayadeen). Actually, Al Mayadeen reported in this article that “a reliable source” confirmed that “Commander Muhammad al-Deif is well”. Nevertheless, “400 Palestinians, more than half of whom are women and children, were killed or injured”, as per Al Mayadeen today.
Al Mayadeen reported that an Hamas official stated that…
…the attack on Khan Younis showed that "Israel" was not interested in reaching a ceasefire agreement.
Occupation's claims of targeting [Resistance] leaders are lies.
This is not the first time the occupation claims to target Palestinian leaders and is found later to have lied.
These lies are but an attempt to cover up its horrific crime.
The horrific Mawasi Khan Younis massacre in Gaza, which is unprecedented in the history of wars, was committed by the neo-Nazis.
According to this other Al Mayadeen article, quoting Israeli news website Maariv, Israel used US-manufactured JDAM bombs in its bombing of Khan Younis, thus confirming once more that the Outlaw US Empire is complicit in the Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity.
This massacre may escalate tensions in the Red Sea, as Yahya Saree, the spokesperson for the Yemeni Armed Forces, said that they would “not hesitate to expand their military operations against the Israeli enemy and its backers”, according to another Al Mayadeen article.
Finally, in the night between 13th and 14th July 2024 Israel “carried out airstrikes from the occupied Golan targeting military sites in southern Syria and a residential building in Kafar Sousseh, Damascus” (source: Al Mayadeen).
Talking about Syria… a couple of days ago Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that the military operation he had launched against Kurdish PKK fighters in northern Iraq and Syria back in April 2022 is nearing its conclusion, as reported by Al Mayadeen, which has also covered the key conditions set by Syria’s Foreign Ministry for potential normalization of relations with Turkey in this other article:
A central condition for successful normalization, according to the statement, is the withdrawal of all foreign forces from Syrian territories.
So, it looks like Erdogan is on the right path to normalization of relations with Syria, which may finally help ease the situation in the Middle East.
Also, it is worth mentioning the fact that, during the NATO summit in Washington, Erdogan reiterated that he is seeking permanent membership at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), after stating it at the SCO summit in Astana earlier this month (source: Bloomberg), and that he will not approve NATO attempts to cooperate with Israel, as reported in this Reuters article. Turkey’s ambitions to join SCO have been ongoing for almost 2 years (see for instance this article on The New Arab or this other one from Al Jazeera), but most likely have been frustrated by Turkey’s NATO membership.
And just today Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad has said that he is ready to meet with Erdogan if it is in Syria's interests, as per by Al Mayadeen:
We are positive about any initiative to improve relations with Turkey, but this does not mean that we go to dialogue without rules.