Aleppo shames the world: Turkish presidential aide

By Sorwar Alam

ANKARA (AA) - Presidential spokesperson Ibrahim Kalin on Tuesday criticized major world powers – mainly the United States, United Nations, and European Union – for remaining silent in the face of Syrian regime leader Bashar Assad’s atrocities in Aleppo.

In a column for Turkish newspaper Daily Sabah, Kalin wrote: “The fall of Syria's 5,000-year-old city of Aleppo and the brutal destruction at the hands of the Assad regime should have shaken the world to its core.”

He described the cease-fire agreement brokered between Turkey and Russia over the evacuation of civilians from eastern Aleppo as “the last hope for thousands living in the besieged city, including women and children, who have been reduced to sitting ducks to be hit by barrel bombs or executed by militia snipers.”

He said the agreement to evacuate the civilians from the devastated city “remains a fragile process with multiple dynamics on the ground.”

Under the cease-fire agreement secured last week, civilians trapped in eastern Aleppo have been allowed to go to the opposition-held city of Idlib.

The evacuation process, however, was temporarily suspended on Friday after pro-regime foreign terrorist groups attacked a civilian convoy on its way out of the city, leaving a number of evacuees dead.

It resumed Monday under last week's deal allowing thousands of civilians and fighters to be evacuated out of the war-torn city as regime forces closed in.

“Feeling emboldened by its victory in east Aleppo, the Assad regime and its supporters including the militia groups on the ground backed by Iran may seek to get revenge on the opposition groups, possibly sabotaging the cease-fire agreement and the evacuation process in the days to come,” according to Kalin.

He added that the ongoing situation in Aleppo shames the world.

He criticized the “so-called civilized world” for ignoring the “depravity and barbarity” going on in what was once Syria’s second-largest city.

He said the tragedy also laid bare the incapacity of the United Nations.

“No one is really expecting anything from this international body whose resolutions and statements do not prevent injustice or alleviate suffering. One would hope at the very least that even the slightest degree of human decency would come from an institution that purports itself as representative of the unity of nations,” Kalin wrote.

Referring to Syrian toddler Aylan Kurdi, whose dead body last year swept onto a Turkish beach on the Aegean, and Omran Daqueesh, another Syrian boy whose ash-covered body and bloodied face gained attention this year, Kalın said some hope remains that “the rich and powerful world powers in Europe and the U.S. would intervene to stop the suffering faced by thousands of Syrian” civilians.

But the latest inactivity from the western states deemed the hope of thousands of men, women and children in the besieged city who have been passing their every moment under heavy bombardment by the regime forces, according to Turkish presidency figure.

“If the U.N. and its powerful members of the European Security Council ever wonder why things have come to this point in Aleppo, they should go back and see what they have done to stop this war of attrition since 2012: practically nothing,” Kalin wrote.

He added that Obama administration’s “misguided policy of supporting the PKK’s Syrian offshoot the Democratic Union Party (PYD)” only crated first between Ankara and Washington rather than solving the core problem in Syria.

Kalin reiterated his calls for concrete action on the ground “before the fall of Aleppo becomes another dark spot in the Syrian war.”

“We seem to have lost that hope already”, he added.