The Situation in Syria.

I've avoided giving frequent updates on events in Syria because it remains a very volatile situation. Although there have been problems this week in Hama and the towns around Jisr al-Shughour things seem to be moving in the right direction with both the protesters and the government focusing more on peaceful protest and dialogue rather then armed confrontation.

The main area of tension now is with Syria's neighbour Turkey who at one point threatened to unilaterally invade Syria in order to set up safe havens for Syria's internal refugees. This led to both Turkish and Syrian troops holding show of strength exercises along the border between the two countries. However this has been driven more by an internal Turkish issue rather then anything to do with Syria and relates to Turkish Prime Minister, Recap Tayyip Erdogan's disappointment at a recent election.

Although his Justice and Development (AK) party won that election with 50% of the vote making Erdogan the first Turkish Prime Minister to win three, successive terms in office they fell short of the 60% target they were hoping to win in order to re-write the country's constitution. Unlike say the US constitution which was written to give a bold start to a new nation Turkey's constitution was written to hold the country together during the fall of the Ottoman Empire and contains many undemocratic rules such as a ban on people speaking certain languages. Therefore almost everyone in Turkey agrees that it needs to be re-written and updated, the only question is how and by whom. Erdogan and the AK party think that it should be re-written by them and them alone. Almost everyone else thinks that it should be re-written by Parliament and take into account the views of all the political parties and Turkish voters. So during the election campaign there was a big effort to get people who were otherwise happy with Erdogan and the AK party to vote against them in order to prevent them reaching the 60% threshold and limit some of Erdogan's more autocratic tendencies.

Obviously this was successful so after being given something of a bloody nose by the electorate Erdogan has been trying to shore up his support amongst his centre-right, working class power base and challenge the idea that he's a bit of an autocrat. The situation in Syria and its associated refugee problems provided Erdogan with the perfect opportunity to appear tough on both immigration and autocratic leaders. Fortunately he now seems to have backed off from this sort of political cynicism somewhat by focusing his attentions on Qaddafi's Libya rather then Assad's Syria.

A large part of the AK party's working class support are employed in the manufacturing industries including a company called Beko who make white goods such as fridges and washing machines. So Britain's current panic over the safety of Beko fridges and freezers seems to be a British attempt to tarnish the reputation of the company in order to put pressure on Turkey to resume their pressure on Syria and increase their pressure on Libya. They also hoped that it would have the effect of making me paranoid that my new Beko washing machine would suddenly burst into flames. That didn't work though because I'm secretly more then a little bit impressed by my new washing machine.