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Q: What makes you say the Syrian National Council (SNC) represents nearly 80 percent of the Syrians, which is a very ambitious claim? 

A: The gist of the SNC was actually a gathering of diaspora opposition who were seeking ways to support the demonstrators on the streets and had no claim to representation. But when the regime attempted to establish an alternative opposition group, the street forced the outside groups to assume responsibility. So we take our legitimacy from the street.

Q: What is the street? How can you judge their support from here?

A: There have been three consecutive Friday events when banners saying “SNC is our representative” were carried. There are three groups in Syria representing the streets and all three of them support us and have their representatives in the SNC, whose names are not disclosed obviously. The Muslim Brotherhood, Kurds and Christians also are represented in the SNC.

Q: The opposition meetings took place in Turkey. What was Turkey’s role during the whole process?

A: Actually Turkey did not really have a warm approach to the first congress in Istanbul.

Q: But even the fact that it let the congress happen is important.

A: But we did not ask for permission. Actually it was not really like a meeting of the opposition. It happened rather like a brain-storming by intellectuals. It was organized by Turkish NGOs. But opposition figures got to know each other in that meeting. When the regime sent a group to sabotage our meeting in Antalya, Turkish authorities said to them, go hold your own meeting in another hotel. They said this is a democratic country, people can hold meetings. It is then that we realized a change in attitude, and we said if we hold a congress the government won’t object.

Q: So Turkey was not behind this process.

A: No it was not at all. Its position was, “We neither say come here nor do we say go away.” But we also insisted for the meetings to take place in Turkey. Most of the participants have Syrian passports; there are no visa requirements for Syrians. We had visa problems with France, we tried but couldn’t organize it there. It is easy to come to Turkey from abroad. It is a secure country. At one stage there were discussions to go to Cairo. But some of our friends were attacked by Assad supporters in Cairo. We have easy access to media. Our friends from Paris were surprised as there were 20 cameras at our meeting. We need to be heard by the international media, which is present in Turkey. So there was not a better alternative.

Q: What now are your relations with Turkish government?

After the establishment of SNC we started to communicate at the level of Prime Ministry’s advisors and Turkey started to monitor the SNC. We then had our first meeting with Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu. The second meeting was like a moral recognition. Turkey has been looking for a solution through persuasion with minimum loss of life. Turkey was never focused on military intervention. We know from the Libyan experience, Turkey never wants Muslims to kill other Muslims, it will never give weapons. We were also told so by the Libyans when we went there. They said: “Turkey helped us a lot, but it gave only financial help. It did not give one single bullet.” But Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said Turkey would not stand silent if there are mass atrocities. The Arab League’s call for the protection of civilians is very important. So I believe Turkey will work for the implementation of sanctions. But if the regime continues to escalate violence, then I believe the next step will be a process leading to the establishment of a no-fly-zone and/or safe zones on the Turkish and Syrian border.

Q: So you believe Turkey will look to that positively?

A: The conditions of the Arab League are very clear. With the decision it took, the whole region has entered a very historic process. What is important from now on is to secure a consistent process.

Q: But how will this take place?

A: We are against military intervention, the type we have seen in Libya. What is very important are the streets in Syria. It is very important that they maintain their unity despite provocation from the regime. The NSC did not close its doors to anybody. We keep giving satisfactory messages to even the supporters of the regime. The regime stands on three pillars: the army, the Baath party and the regime’s financial supporters. Defections have started in the army. The people from the Baath party are waiting for another ship to come along to jump out from the ship they are on. Businessmen started to transfer their money from Syria. The regime is weakening from the inside and there will come a time it will just fall down with even a tiny push. It may take between six months and a year.

Q: But there are also important communities like minorities who continue to support the regime because they fear reprisals. There are fears of civil war.

A: But there have not been ethnic clashes since the beginning of the events. If there had been, for instance Sunnis attacking Nusayri villages, believe me the regime would have made them public. We also have Nusayri supporters. There have never been clashes between Muslims and Christians or between Nusayris and Sunnis.

Q: How about the massacres in Hama and Homs.

A: But they were not seen as sectarian clashes. They were seen as the regime’s effort to make the Nusayri part of these clashes so that the regime would share the same fate.

Q: How then will the transition process be if the regime falls?

A: Our red line is that we are against the revolution taking up arms. We are against ethnic civil war. When the regime falls, this will mean that the current regime of fear, based on the intelligence agency and the Assad family that controls it, will fall, while all other state officials will remain in their position. The SNC will abolish itself once the regime falls.

Q: Some fear radical Islamists and extreme Arab nationalists will replace the current regime.

A: This is being said for all Islamic countries. It was said of the Justice and Development Party (AKP). It was said after the revolution in Tunisia. Islamists movements became more pragmatic and less ideological. We saw this in the Turkish model. Islamic movements focused on providing services, not on ideology. It is their biggest success and other Islamic movements need to get adopted to the global culture and to the thoughts of younger generations.

Q: What is your evaluation of the Syrian Free Army?

A: These are soldiers who flee the army saying their mission is to protect civilians, not to kill them. But the clashes are mostly directed at those fleeing and them shooting back. But they cannot do much when their ammunition runs out. They stand more of a chance if there is a no-fly zone or safe zones. This will also increase the fleeing. But we do not advise the Syrian Free Army to launch attacks right now because it will complicate the situation and lead to internal conflicts.

Khaled Khoja was born in Damascus to a family with Turkish roots. He was interred in Syrian prisons in 1979 when his father provided financial support to the Muslim Brotherhood when uprisings started in Aleppo. He fled Syria in 1982 for Turkey, where he built a career as a doctor. Facing capital punishment, he has not returned to Syria since.

Following the sart of unrest in Syria in March, he became the head of the Turkey committee of the Damascus Declaration. The Damascus Declaration in 2005 was a historic statement of unity by opposition figures criticizing the regime as being authoritarian and calling for reform. Since then he has been participating in the meetings of the opposition groups, becoming a member of Syrian National Council.

OBSERVER

I will try to imagine myself a small fly on the wall in the presidential palace.
Here is my analysis first
First, the discussion is centered on the fact that Syria accepted the Arab initiative with a short time strategy. It accepted the initiative to gain time and throw the opposition in disarray. Then it actually flipped the finger at the AL by continuing the violence and the repression and orchestrating mass demonstrations. It thought that this will give it all the time it needs. It did not count on the new facts on the ground:
1. The AL and every member state is facing a new reality called an active people educated and asking for participatory rule. Even KSA has used its massive wealth to buy yes buy loyalty from its citizens as it knows it no longer can use force. The people are fed up with one man rule with nepotism and corruption and graft and torture and yes slavery. This is the mentality of the regime in Syria and Libya. Either I rule you or I kill you. This is the mentality of the regime that is based I would say like the Zionist one on an exclusive place for the sect and the family in the world order.
2. The Qatari actually anticipated this very reaction and gave the regime a rope to hang itself with. The regime drunk with power was even more stoned after the UNSC vetoes and thought itself immune. Once the facts of non compliance become known and the inability of the regime to genuinely respond become obvious the AL under the GCC moved for the kill. The decision stems from the desire to deny legitimacy to the regime or at least its current method of control. It also stems from the fact that the Arab world is watching to see if any of these rulers are going to hijack the revolutions and keep the regimes in place.
3. The hysteria of the regime and its supporters is because the AL has effectively withdrawn legitimacy by suspending Syria’s representation; by offering a dialogue with the SNC; and by actually forcing the Coordinating committees in Cairo to commit to regime change. The local Coordinating Committees had requested regime change while leaving room for the current leadership to stay in place but the media exposure forced them to declare that the Security State in Syria is not acceptable and that they are not in dialogue with the regime itself.
4. Calling on the armed forces to resist orders is the most important item in this regard as it clearly says that these orders and therefore the people issuing the orders are not legitimate or legal.
5. Now that the AL has forced the issue, Russia is in a corner as it has always maintained that it is fostering a peaceful resolution and promoting dialogue without ever recognizing the legitimacy of the opposition. Now it will be forced to recognize the opposition as a valid and legitimate partner in this invitation to dialogue. In essence the stupidity of the regime has forced the hand of its supporters into recognizing the opposition. If the opposition cannot get its act together now then Syria is doomed.
6. There is clearly talk in Syria of arming the “people” and as Hajj Ali said this am on Aljazeera we will all wear army uniforms now; this talk is meant for the regime base and only the regime base. It is a desperate attempt to rally the troops as they are now fearful of defections within their own ranks.
7. Power delusion we witnessed with the Ghadafi clique as his sons just like Rami warned of dire consequences to the stability of Israel and the West, and we heard the Tooz on the AL from both Saif and the Syrian ambassador. This is emotional outburst that belies a complete misunderstanding of the change sweeping the region and of the balance of power in the region. Money talks and BS walks and B is going to walk. How soon and on which plank is the question now.

Now here is the imagination scene
B: What do I do now? 18 of the Arabths are after me and they are calling on the army not to follow my orderths. Pleathe Athma quiet the kidths I need to think. I have not done that in a while now.
A: crying silently and hugging the kids who are also crying because they cannot play while daddy is thinking.
M: In a rage destroying the furniture and ordering the killing of about 1000 detainees in Tadmur. Even his mother is avoiding him today.
R: Pulling his calculator and re calculating the prices and the creating an excel sheet of where the deposits are.

Now the serious work will be the privy of the old guard of the regime: these are absolutely ruthless thugs that may be plotting acts of revenge in various Arab countries and Turkey. The problem is that the AL is moving way too fast for their taste in this regard. When the AL head says that they are working on ways to protect the Syrian population, this means that the plan is moving forward and it has been thought through for some time. This the reason for the silence of the Turks as they coordinated with the AL and Qatar to see whether the regime is capable of reforms and whether the opposition can get its act together. Now we will see others helping the opposition form a legitimate alternative to the regime. Now they and others will have an Arab cover for intervention.

By the way there is a Dom Perignon bottle that we have kept since 1964 waiting to be uncorked I hope that we can celebrate soon.