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US, Turkey pursuing own interests in Syria: Analyst

Thursday, 25 August 2016 8:32 AM [ Last Update: Thursday, 25 August 2016 8:33 AM ]

This picture taken from the Turkish Syrian border city of Karkamis in the southern region of Gaziantep, on August 24, 2016 shows Turkish army tanks positioned two kilometers west from the Syrian Turkish border town of Jarabulus. (AFP photo)

Press TV has conducted an interview with Jim W. Dean, managing editor of Veterans Today, and Maxine Dovere, a journalist and political commentator, to discuss Turkey’s recent military incursion into the Syrian territory, backed by the US.

Dean believes the United States and Turkey are pretending to be fighting the Daesh Takfiri terrorists in Syria but they are in fact pursuing their own “geopolitical interests”.

He told Press TV on Wednesday night that all sides were playing a “double game” in Syria, except Iran and Russia which are there at the invitation of the Syrian government.

Turkey’s military incursion into Syria on Wednesday is “a black and white response” to the massive coordinated bombing campaign by the Syrian army and the Russian air force in Aleppo, he said.

"This is an escalation on the US and Turkey’s part," Dean said, adding they were challenging the Russia-Syria coalition by attacking the border town of Jarabulus.

Washington and Ankara, he said, will ultimately leave the Free Syrian Army as their proxy terrorist troops in Jarabulus which will be an “overt threat” not only to Syria but also to the Russian air power.

“Now you have a situation where you have the Free Syrian Army officially, openly being brought under Turkey and US coalition’s wing in Jarabulus," he said.

"You have a situation now where they can move the Free Syrian Army around and then if Syrian planes or Russian planes tried to bomb them, the US has already said now that they would consider - even threatening them - permission for them to take the planes down."

Dovere, for her part, said Turkey should have been coordinated its incursion with the Syrian government if the aim had been to get the terrorists’ activity away from the Turkish border.

The commentator further hoped the Turkish incursion would not cause a “domino” effect in the Middle East "which is a tinderbox that one invasion can lead to another."

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