Mental fatigue…
There cannot be any difference, other than magnitude, between the killing of one person and thousands.
Refugees pouring in their hundreds every day across the border with Syria are telling terrifying stories. “Social media” is pounding the international community with incredible claims of savagery. Those reports and stories cannot be independently verified, and even if there is a certain degree of exaggeration, it is obvious that there is more than a “hot potatoes” situation to be handled.
With a President asking Turks to be ready for any eventuality, including war, the government is trumpeting every day the probability of creating a buffer zone, as if that does not mean declaring war. A few shots across the border into Turkey, the wounding of a few people and the death of some Syrians in Turkish hospitals, are enough for some to believe that the time of diplomacy should come to an end. A top official can appear in front of the media to declare the Annan Plan dead and that a new phase has opened in the Syria quagmire.
According to a popular folk tale, one day Nasreddin Hodja was asked by his fellow villagers when he believed the apocalypse would come. “Which apocalypse?” Hodja asks the crowd. “With all due respect, dear Hodja, how many apocalypses can there be?” the crowd replies. “Well,” he says, “there are two. If my wife dies that will be the small apocalypse; if I die that will be the big apocalypse.”
Is it not the death of a person the individual apocalypse? There can be no excuse for the heinous killing of even one person by the Baath regime in Syria or any government anywhere. But, before putting on war gear and heading across the Syrian border to wage a war to salvage the innocents being butchered by the devilish Baathists, perhaps it is wiser to look at the issue with a global perspective and try to see the bigger picture.
As a careful person must have realized by now, the “Arab Spring” is not only changing the Middle East, but the Turkish perspective is under transformation as well. Yesterday, Hosni Mubarak was our honorable mediator in trying to avoid war with Syria. He is long gone; replaced by the generals who were pulling his strings. Colonel Muammar Gadhafi, the man who helped Turkey in the 1974 Cyprus intervention, was toppled and brutally killed by the neo-democrats of Libya. Until recently, Turkey’s “Big Boss” - the chief executive prime minister - was bravely defending the interests of Iran against the “greedy West”.
During the same period, onboard the Prime Ministry’s official jet, he was carrying a wedding invitation for his daughter to an honorable President of a neighboring country, his “brother Bashar al-Assad.”
Today, al-Assad has long been transformed from a “brother” into a “heinous murderer,” though not yet into an enemy. On the other hand, the leaders of the Iran - once much adorned and defended by Turkey’s Big Boss - have now become dishonest people who do not know what they are talking about diplomatically and are thus losing credibility with the Turks.
What’s next in this puzzle, do you think? What next once the Syrian part is sorted out with some Turkish muscle? Iran?
There is absolutely a situation of serious mental fatigue.