04.07.2012

Full text of Assads interview with Cumhurieyt / Turkish Prime Minister asked not to conduct the interview

[Sana] The Cumhurieyt Turkish daily today published part of an interview it conducted with H.E. President Bashar al-Assad about the events in Syria and regional and international developments. A group of Turkish media, including Cumhurieyt, represented by Utku Cakirozer, Kanal D, CNN Turk and Posta newspaper, represented by Mehmet Ali Birand, and Hurriyet newspaper represented by Ertugrul Ozkok, and Radikal newspaper represented by Fehim Tastekin, and Haberturk newspaper represented by Amberin Zaman, requested interviews with President al-Assad.

Based on Syria’s policy of opening up to the mass media,it was agreed to grant an interview to the abovementioned media organs. However, four of the representatives of these organs were not able to come to Syria to conduct the interview after they were contacted by the director of the office of the Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, asking them not to conduct the interview.
In normal situations, and in peacetime, when you see a friendly aircraft from any country of the world doing this, you don’t down it, let alone if it were from a neighboring country like Turkey. But we are in a state of war, and when you do not know the identity of such an aircraft, you assume that it is an enemy aircraft
What happened was the following: we knew that we downed an unidentified aircraft, and Turkey announced the disappearance of one of its aircraft. So we expected that this aircraft was Turkish. No Turkish party contacted us. We contacted the Turkish side. The direct relationship between the Turkish and Syrian armies is fully severed upon a decision by the Turkish side, so we called the Turkish Foreign Ministry. Hours later, we received an answer and rescue boats were sent to the site.

Had it appeared centrally on the radar screen, it would have been warned. But when a soldier is behind his gun, and has no mechanism for sending a warning, and the military rules applied as far as such guns are concerned, are that when you see an aircraft, and you don’t have any information or instructions that an aircraft will be passing from that particular place, you shoot it. These are the standing military rules: the soldier shoots without going back to command and control, because the whole issue happens in a matter of seconds.

More importantly, there are no anti-aircraft missiles in that area which can reach beyond the limits of the territorial waters. So, the things said about this point are mere lies made up by some Turkish officials.

I ask those who are saying this to state what is Syria’s interest in downing a Turkish aircraft?

Erdogan and his government want to exploit this accident in order to make political gains they were not able to make last year. They haven’t been able to mobilize the Turkish people behind them on the Syrian issue during the past 15 months.

No, communications were stopped over six months ago by the Turkish government, specifically since the changes which took place in the Turkish army

For us, what American officials say has no credibility in general. Second, the American position is already hostile to Syria in this crisis. They are part of the problem. They support the terrorists very clearly. That’s why we are not very interested in what this or that official says during this crisis.
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