Hakan Topal wrote this piece before the recent protests and repression in Turkey. It provides a perspective for understanding those events, as it highlights the tragedy of Syria and how Turkish policy is implicated. -Jeff

At the end of May, the Syrian civil war consumed more than 94,000 civilians and destroyed the country’s civic and cultural heritage. In addition, the civil war crystallized regional fault lines along the sectarian lines; on the one side Sunni Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, on the other side Shiite Iran, Iraq and Hezbollah (Lebanon) represent ever-increasing nationalistic conflicts.

While Assad’s army commits war crimes, kills thousands of civilians, and unleashes its terror on its population, factions within the Free Syrian Army utilize comparable tactics to bring Assad’s supporters to submission. This is a war with plenty of religious morality but without ethics. In a recent video circulated on YouTube, a Free Syrian Army guerilla cuts the chest of a dead Syrian soldier and eats it in front of the camera. How can we make sense of this absolute brutality?

Islamists who have no interest in democratic transformation hijacked the Syrian revolution. Any salient voices for the possibility of a diplomatic solution are silenced, effectively forcing the country into a never-ending sectarian war. Can the total destruction of the social and cultural infrastructure be for the sake any political agenda or social imagination? What will happen when the regime falls? Is there a future for Syrians?

And tragically, the civil war cannot be simply contained within Syria. It is quickly expanding beyond its borders, scratching local religious, sectarian and political sensitivities, especially in Turkey and Lebanon. A recent bombing in Reyhanli—a small town at the Turkish-Syrian border with largely Arab Alevi minority population—killed 54 people and subsequently, the Turkish government quickly covered up the incident and accused a left wing fraction having close ties with Assad regime of mounting the attacks. It was a premature and doubtful conclusion. Leftist guerillas have no history of attacking . . .

Read more: Turkey and Syria: On the Bankruptcy of Neo-Ottomanist Foreign Policy