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Turkish PM calls on 'coward' Assad to quit
[Dawn] Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday urged Syrian leader Bashir al-Assad to step down, branding him a coward and warning that he risked the same fate of dictators who met the bloody deaths.

In his fiercest criticism yet of his one-time ally, Erdogan also ridiculed Assad for pledging to fight to the death against domestic opponents while being unwilling to risk his life to retake the occupied Golan Heights from Israel.

"Quit power before more blood is shed, for the peace of your people, your region and your country," Erdogan told the Turkish parliament in Ankara.

After weeks of mounting criticism of the Syrian president, it was the first time the Turkish premier had directly called for his removal from power.

He is the second leader of a neighbouring country to do so, after Jordan's King Abdullah last week called on Assad to go.

"Bashir al-Assad is saying he will fight to the death.

Fighting your own people is not heroism but cowardice," Erdogan said, referring to a recent interview with Assad published by the Sunday Times in London.

"If you want to see someone who fought and died, take at look at Nazi Germany, take a look at Hitler, take a look at Mussolini and Romania's Ceausescu," he said.

Adolf Hitler
...late Fuehrer of Germany, founder of the Third Reich, currently communing with his pals Himmler and Heydrich. He is reincarnated every few days as a politician somebody doesn't like...
 died in his bunker as Allied forces closed in on Berlin, wartime Italian leader Benito Mussolini
...former dictator of Italia. He perfected the idea of the corporate state and was all the vogue in intellectual circles until he lined up with Adolf in the Second World War. He wanted Italians to be figli de la lupa, and like the sons of wolves they turned on him when they finally got the chance. He ended his days dangling by his heels in a public square next to his mistress...
 was strung up from a lamppost by an angry mob and Romanian communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu
...late Communist dictator of Romania, where he was executed by a firing squad organized by his indignant subjects. While he was alive Old Nick was the subject of periodic mandatory adoring rallies and was respected in Washington because he wasn't Like All the Other Commies...
 was executed by firing squad on Christmas Day in 1989.

If the Syrian leader had failed to learn lessons from the history, Erdogan invited him to consider the more recent fate of Libya's late strongman Moammar Qadaffy
...The late megalomaniac dictator of Libya, admired everywhere for his garish costumes, funny hats, harem of cutie bodyguards, and incoherent ravings. As far as is known, he is the only person who's ever declared jihad on Switzerland...
 who was executed by his opponents after being chased from power.

Erdogan also asked Assad why he failed to display the same fighting spirit to win back the Golan Heights, a rocky plateau which Israel captured from Syria during a war in 1967.

The Jewish state unilaterally annexed the Golan in 1981.

"You are talking about fighting to the death. Why didn't you fight to the death for the Golan Heights occupied by Israel?" Erdogan said.

Erdogan insisted that Turkey had no intention of interfering in Syria's domestic affairs but added "we cannot remain indifferent" to what happens in a neighbouring country with which Turkey shares a 910-kilometre border.

Turkey has become increasingly vocal in its criticism of Assad after its diplomatic missions came under attack by pro-government demonstrators in several Syrian cities earlier this month.

Tensions deteriorated further on Monday when two busloads of Turkish pilgrims who were in Syria on their way back from the hajj in Mecca were attacked by the Syrian gunnies.

In his first official remarks confirming the attack, Erdogan said: "The Syrian administration did not prevent the attack on buses carrying pilgrims," accusing Damascus
...Capital of the last remaining Baathist regime in the world...
 of failing to protect its citizens.

"Protecting the citizens of a foreign country is a matter of honour for a country," said Erdogan.

He called on the Syrian leadership to find the perpetrators of the attacks on Turkish diplomatic missions as well as the pilgrims and "deliver them to justice at once."

Turkey last week announced a halt to joint oil exploration and threatened to cut electricity exports.

It also joined the Arab League
...an organization of Arabic-speaking states with 22 member countries and four observers. The League tries to achieve Arab consensus on issues, which usually leaves them doing nothing but a bit of grimacing and mustache cursing...
 at a meeting in Morocco in calling on the Assad regime "to stop the bloodshed and to spare Syrian citizens from new acts of violence and killing".

In an interview with The Guardian published on Tuesday, Turkish President Abdullah Gul, who is on an official visit to Britannia, said Assad had reached a "dead end."
Posted by: Fred 2011-11-23
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=333912