Equipo Nizkor - Letter from the Permanent Representative of Syria to the UN in response to Turkey.

United Nations
Security Council

S/2015/998

Distr.: General
21 December 2015
English
Original: Arabic

Identical letters dated 18 December 2015 from the Permanent Representative of the Syrian Arab Republic to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary-General and the President of the Security Council

On instructions from my Government, I should like to convey to you the response of the Government of the Syrian Arab Republic to the allegations set out in the letter dated 21 November 2015 from the Permanent Representative of Turkey to the United Nations addressed to the President of the Security Council (S/2015/904).

Since 2011, an unprecedented terrorist war has been waged against the Syrian Arab Republic by armed terrorist groups, the members of which come from more than 100 countries. Those groups are being provided with funding, weapons, materiel and logistical support by States and regimes from the region and beyond. The most prominent of those is the Erdogan regime that rules Turkey. That regime has not been content to merely support terrorism and various terrorist groups, particularly Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), in flagrant violation of the Security Council resolutions concerning counter-terrorism, including resolutions 2170 (2014), 2178 (2014) and 2199 (2015). Indeed, its armed forces have been involved in military operations in support of ISIL and other terrorist groups.

Turkish interference in internal Syrian affairs has taken on many forms over the course of the crisis, including the direct participation of the Erdogan regime's armed forces in offensive military operations in support of terrorists. Those forces have also provided covering fire for the terrorists' movements inside Syrian territory or along the Syrian-Turkish border, in order to facilitate the infiltration of terrorist mercenaries from Turkish territory into Syrian territory. On the other hand, there is no need to provide further clarification regarding the downing by Turkish forces of a Russian fighter jet in Syrian territory that had been bombing ISIL positions, as that crime speaks for itself.

Erdogan dreams of reviving the Ottoman colonial legacy. A few years ago, he began raising the issue of protecting persons of Turkish extraction, regardless of the fact that they are citizens of sovereign States. The Government of the Syrian Arab Republic would like to stress that it rejects the Turkish regime's incitement of racial and sectarian strife in any country of the region because those citizens are an integral part of the social and national fabric of those countries.

In that connection, it should be noted that the Turkish regime's crimes have been directed against not only Syria, a founding State Member of the United Nations, but also against Syrian refugees in Turkey, who have fled from the tyranny and terrorism of such terrorist organizations as ISIL, the Nusrah Front, the Army of Conquest and the Islamic Front, which the Turkish Government hosts in Turkish territory. Those refugees have to contend with the even more cruel tyranny and terrorism of gangs that engage in human trafficking with the knowledge and direct involvement of the Erdogan regime's agencies and institutions. The Erdogan regime recently devised a new technique to extort money from European States. It has forced Syrian and non-Syrian refugees to leave Turkish territory in successive waves and seek asylum in European States.

The downing by the Turkish Air Force of a Russian fighter jet that was bombing ISIL terrorists is a stab in the back of the heroes who are combatting the terrorism of ISIL. Moreover, Erdogan's accusations that the Russian Air Force violated Turkish airspace as it was supporting the operations of the Syrian Arab Army against armed terrorist groups, and his persistence in making those accusations, are nothing but a futile attempt to create confusion, fabricate facts and cover up his regime's involvement in the smuggling of stolen Syrian oil by ISIL into Turkey and the smuggling of weapons and materiel by Turkey to terrorists in Syria.

The Turkish regime's violations of international law, humanitarian law, human rights, the freedom of the media and the press, the principle of good-neighbourly relations and the resolutions of the Security Council, particularly those related to countering terrorism and the funding thereof, require the international community to take a resolute position in order to put a stop to those violations and crimes.

I should be grateful if the present letter could be circulated as a document of the Security Council.

(Signed) Bashar Ja'afari
Ambassador
Permanent Representative

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21Dec15

Letter from the Permanent Representative of Syria to the UN in response to Turkey