2011-06-28 Refugees from #Syria entering #Turkey: a secret deal?

Anonymous sources report that Turkey is considering a number of options to help Syrian President Bashar al Assad defuse the uprising in his country.

According to Ivan Watson, CNN's Istanbul based correspondent, multitudes of Syrians are entering Turkey. 10,757 Syrian refugees in total. 12 have been recorded having bullet wounds. 441 recorded having returned to Syria in past 24 hours, and 76 new arrivals today, Ivan reported.

On June 23, the Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, reportedly spoke with his Syrian counterpart, Walid al-Moallem, about the security situation in Syria. Both apparently discussed the movement of Syrian troops and refugees on their shared border, a situation that has created tension for both.

Despite the public condemnation of Syrian President Bashar al Assad for his regime’s use of violence against the opposition, Turkey has privately endorsed a strategy towards Syria that endorses Syrian internal political and social reforms.

Turkey has provided Syrian opposition forces, including the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood (MB), open forums to organize.

According to STRATFOR sources, one of the options Turkey is considering is a political model akin to the Lebanese political system. Lebanon operates on a confessional system and on a 1932 census that roughly divides power between the country’s Christian and Muslim sects. The proposal for Syria would entail equally dividing power between the country’s Arab and Kurdish Sunni majority and the country’s minorities — Alawites, Druze and Christians. The system would create checks and balances to prevent either side from monopolizing the political system or imposing its will on the other.

Another option rumored to be discussed involves the removal of al Assad’s younger brother Maher al Assad, head of the Republican Guard, by exiling him to Turkey. Maher Assad would be replaced by Bashar, a reformer whose hands were tied by the security apparatus he inherited from his late father, Hafez al Assad.

A third option calls for the legalization of the Syrian MB — currently, there is a death penalty for membership in the group. The Syrian government would allow the Syrian MB a quota for political participation that would neither threaten the operation of the proposed political framework nor lead to the Islamization of Syrian politics.

Photo by Laprovinciadisondrio.it.