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Comment by foooorsyth | Hacker News Reader

>Assad wasn’t really a stabilizing force

Questionable statement.

Syria has (had) a secular government that allowed Sunnis, Alawites, Christians, Druze Muslims, twelvers, and Kurds to live there. The status quo for the region is theocratic iron fist of a particular Islamic denomination, with all others persecuted.

Not to mention, Assad is a Ba’athist (as was Sadam) which by definition is all about Arab unity.

Which Sunni warlord group should we hand the country to now? Do you think things will be better? Can you name a single Syrian political figure or interest group (don’t Google!) that you would propose lead the country? Be honest with yourself.

>Almost seven million Syrian refugees might have he chance to return home and rebuild now

They’re not going back.

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> a secular government that allowed ... to live there.

"live" is a strong word to use there.

Syria wasn’t a particularly shitty place before all this began in 2013.

It was under a repressive dictatorship with crumbling infrastructure. Sure, it can always be worse, but the people deserve and are capable of so much better.

"Sure, it can always be worse"

Yes, I would argue the islamic state was indeed worse. And so far I see nothing preventing them or a similar force taking hold again. I mean turkey is the moderating factor here and turkey under Erdogan has gone the authorian islamic way since a while.

Drawing analogies between Erdogan and the IS is wild.

Where did I do that?

I said I am sceptical for the outcome, if Erdogan is the moderating factor. Or do you think, he cares much for human rights and democracy?

That is far from saying he is like IS.

Well his son made hundreds of millions / billions from selling directly oil from ISIS held lands, since nobody else wanted to deal with them. His daughter personally built and supervised hospitals in Turkey specifically built to treat wounded ISIS fighters. These are verified public informations, although they obviously deny it.

Erdogan is as much pro-ISIS as one can be. Maybe just a political game during complex conflict to fight against US-supported kurds at all costs, maybe not. We don't know.

I was giving you the benefit of doubt all this time, but your comments about my country confirms to me that you're misinformed. For all I hate Erdoğan and his attempts to undermine democracy, and I want to see him gone sooner or later, Turkey is as much an Islamic authoritarian state as USA is a Christian authoritarian one under the rule of Trump. There seems to be a tendency to exaggerate the realities on the ground for some reason, and I suspect this is fueled by bots.

I said going the authorian islamic way, not that you are already a califat. Sorry for the missunderstanding, I am aware that turkey is all in all still quite democratic and secular and we seem to both not like the direction Erdogan is heading. My point was, Erdogans influence over the SNA is not comforting me.

Btw. I just read, a pro SNA news source:

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/politics/russia-astana-format-meeti...

It seems the war will continue.

Why are you relating authoritarianism with "Islamic way" or even the Caliphates? I've never seen anyone make this claim before, which is, to be honest, quite absurd.

Edit: Also your linked article no longer reflects the current stance of Russia.

That link I gave is propaganda BS. It claims the syrian army gave the terrorists( SDF) control over the new areas, while in reality they fought with US support against iranian and syrian regime militias. So that iran could not send support without fighting their way through it, maybe a turning point in this war.

It was just to illustrate that Erdogans goals are not peace, after Assad is gone.

That's all well and good. Could you please reply to my other question? I'm very curious where this notion is coming from.

The claim that Erdogan is more open towards being a sultan and open towards more influence of Islam into the government?

The sentence "I said going the authorian islamic way,", implies that there is an "authoritarian Islamic" way. What is that? Because it sounds like you're implying that the religion has intrinsic authoritarian aspects to it.

"Because it sounds like you're implying that the religion has intrinsic authoritarian aspects to it."

No, it implies the focus on the authorian aspects of Islam, just like certain groups in the US would like a authorian christian rule of law.

The issue is that in the West people hear one of Erdogan's pep-talk speeches against Israel on CNN and assume that he means everything.

They don't know that Turkey has been delivering oil to Israel all the time and that Israel is in favor of the current events in Syria.

If all of Turkey, the U.S. and Israel support the Syrian rebels, we may assume that the goal is to install a U.S. friendly government (perhaps supervised by Turkey) and have more buffer states against Iran.

Yes, it must be much better now after all the devastation. Same with Lybia, much better place now, no?

Why do you insist that it will go the way of Libya? The rebels are calling for a peaceful and democratic transition of the government and the protection of all minorities. They've stopped using Islamist rhetoric for almost 10 years. This is as good of a regime change in Syria as it gets.

There is no counter-example of thriving democracies developed after western regime change projects. On the other hand, there’s Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.

Tunisia

It is not a democracy https://time.com/7020023/tunisia-kais-saied-democracy/

I don't know what the future will bring, I said it in retrospect of the last 15 years.

That feels like a claim that might be news to the residents of Madaya, Yarmouk, Douma, and Idlib, right?

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