Why the Turkish action against Syria now and not earlier?

An excellent hard-hitting article byHurriyet’s Burak Bekdil sarcastically asks “How long does it take to identify dictators?” of Turkey’s leadership and media, a question I’m sure all of us have asked not only of Turkey but of the entire Arab leadership, and much of the West as well.
Until just eight months ago, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey and Bashar al-Assad’s Syria were closest regional allies, planning what this columnist coined a “Middle Eastern Coal and Steel Union,” with their armies holding joint drills and sporting a border with no travel restrictions. Today, Ankara seems committed to Mr. Assad’s removal almost “à la Gadhafi,” thousands of angry Syrians have attacked Turkey’s diplomatic missions, forcing the families of Turkish diplomatic staff to evacuate the country, and Ankara has issued a travel advisory against visiting Syria.

Meanwhile, Ankara, wary of Kurdish armed groups attacking its security personnel, is hosting an armed Syrian opposition group, providing shelter to its commander and dozens of members and, according to the New York Times, “allowing them to orchestrate attacks across the border from inside a camp guarded by the Turkish military.”
The group, the Free Syrian Army, recently claimed responsibility for killing nine Syrian soldiers in an attack in central Syria, although Turkish diplomats say their help for the group is purely humanitarian. Let’s hope other nations won’t provide similar humanitarian aid to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) which, like the Free Syrian Army, boasts of killing enemy soldiers.
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The official explanation in Ankara for the dramatic change of course from “brother and friend Mr. Assad’s regime” is being on the right side of history since allying with dictators would mean being on the wrong side. And in line with that dramatic change, the Turkish “yellow press” has also reversed its course.
It is always amusing to read the “yellow” comments that praise Mr. Erdoğan (and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu) for fighting a dictator who cracks down on his own people – the same commentators praising Mr. Erdoğan for befriending the same man only a few months ago.
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Gentlemen; sorry to remind you but it was not the opposition party that cultivated a brotherly alliance with Mr. Assad. It was not the shadow foreign minister who bragged about having visited Damascus more than 60 times. If it took Mssrs. Erdoğan and Davutoğlu almost a decade to understand that a dictator is a dictator, this can only be explained by one word that is not suitable for publication.
Mr. Assad’s father ruled Syria with an iron fist for 29 years. It is not a secret either that the young Mr. Assad was “elected” in 2000, having won 97.2 percent of the Syrian vote, unopposed. Did Mr. Erdogan or Mr. Davutoglu think until eight months ago they were building a future with a democratically-elected leader? … Did they not know the simplest encyclopedia fact that Mr. Assad’s first security crackdown on his own people began in 2001? Was he a democrat then, and now a dictator?
Did no one in Ankara know a thing or two about Mr. Assad’s links with terrorist networks, his love affair with Hezbollah in Lebanon? Did the very important Turks in Ankara think they were on the right side of history when they rushed to Mr. Assad’s aid after the famous Rafic al-Hariri murder? And now they are playing the civilized Western democrats with a deep love affair for a neighboring nation. But which nation? Are millions of Assad supporters, some of whom attacked the Turkish diplomatic missions, Bolivians? Aliens? Or Kemalist Turks?
Ankara is probably doing the right thing by trying to further isolate Mr. Assad’s regime, which was no less dictatorial before the uprisings began. All the same, the “true democrat mask” for the job looks utterly absurd and unconvincing.
The next question that arises, if so, is “why now?”. What suddenly changed for Ankara and the Arab League, when they tolerated the Assad family’s corruption and violence for decades?
Prof. Barry Rubin has the answer, or at least one answer, along with a very interesting analysis of what is going on in Syria at the moment and what is likely to happen in the near future.
Turkey isn’t the good guy
The Turkish Islamist regime isn’t motivated by some love of democracy in opposing the Syrian regime. The Ankara government wants a fellow Sunni Islamist dictatorship in Damascus, preferably under its influence. In this situation, Turkey is just as bad as Iran.

Prof. Rubin has some good news and some not so good:

Is Syria going to encourage a war against Israel?
No. Historically, Middle Eastern dictatorships have provoked war against Israel to distract attention from problems at home. The most likely scenario would be a Hizballah-Israel war, as happened in 2006. But we’re past that point for the Syrian regime (though a radical Egypt might try this tactic after 2013.) In addition, Hizballah is trying to consolidate power in Lebanon and a war would be very much against its interests.
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Who is the opposition leadership?
Ah, that’s a very interesting question. The best-known group is the Syrian National Council (SNC). It has announced its 19-member leadership group which includes 15 Sunni Muslims, two Christians, and 2 Kurds. Note that there are no Alawites or Druze. The SNC has an advantage because it was assembled by the United States using the Islamist regime in Turkey.
Given Western backing the SNC is surprisingly dominated by Islamists. Ten of the 19 are identifiable as such (both Muslim Brothers and independent—Salafist?—Islamists) and a couple of those who are nominally leftists are apparently Islamist puppets. The fact that U.S. policy is backing an Islamist-dominated group indicates the profound problems with Obama Administration policy.
It should be stressed, though, that the SNC’s popular support is totally untested. Many oppositionists—especially Kurds—are disgusted by the group’s Islamist coloration and refuse to participate.
The National Coordination Committee (NCC) is a leftist-dominated alternative. The Antalya Group is liberal. There is also a Salafist council organized by Adnan Arour, a popular religious figure; a Kurdish National Council and a Secular Democratic Coalition (both angry at the SNC’s Islamism);
It is hard to overestimate how disastrous Obama Administration policy has been. Not only has it promoted an Islamist-dominated leadership (which might be pushed into power by monopolizing Western aid) but this mistake has fractured the opposition, ensuring there would be several anti-SNC groups. This strategy has also angered the Kurds and Turkmen minorities who view the SNC as antagonistic to their hopes for some autonomy. As a result, these two groups have reduced their revolutionary activities.
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Who do we want to win?
Despite the threat of a Sunni Islamist regime, I hope that Asad will be overthrown. Why? If the regime survives we know it will continue to be a ferociously repressive dictatorship, allied with Iran, and dedicated to the destruction of U.S. and Western interests, the imperialist domination of Lebanon, wiping Israel off the map, and subverting Jordan.
With a revolution, there is a chance—especially if U.S. policy doesn’t mess it up—for a real democracy that is higher than in Egypt. In Syria only 60 percent of the population is Sunni Muslim and thus might be potential recruits to be Islamist. The minorities—Alawite, Christian, Druze, and Kurdish—don’t want an Arab Sunni Islamist regime.
As for the Sunnis themselves, they are proportionately more urban, more middle class, and more moderate than in Egypt. Islamists and the Muslim Brotherhood in particular have never been as strong in Syria as in Egypt. In Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia, the Islamists face what is largely a political vacuum; in Syria they have real, determined opposition.
Today, the Syrian people have two major enemies blocking the way to a moderate stable democracy. One is the regime itself; the other is the U.S.-Turkish policy that is determined—naively for the former; deviously deceitful from the latter—to force a new repressive Islamist regime on the Syrians.

The situation between Syria, its neighbours and the wider region is the epitome of Lord Palmerston’s famous statement:

“Nations have no permanent friends or allies, they only have permanent interests.”