The presidential jet's most popular journalist on Turkey's Syria policy U-turn

A very interesting development took place the other day: A prominent pro-government journalist, who has until recently been an unconditional supporter of Turkey's Syria policy, suddenly switched sides.

Indeed, this individual is among the cadre of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's A330 jet. 

Last May, pro-government daily Türkiye columnist Fatih Selek wrote a nice analytical article titled "The journalists in the presidential plane." In it, Selek examined 26 photographs taken inside the presidential jet between September 2014 and May 2017. He produced a list of which journalists and which newspapers were invited onto the A330, as well as how many times.

One of the journalists most frequently invited to join President Erdoğan's foreign visits is İbrahim Karagül, the editor-in-chief of daily Yeni Şafak. 

Karagül has been with the president in the A330 on 10 visits in two years. He was also for years among the fiercest defenders of Turkey's Syria policy, which has only ended in total fiasco. Now, Karagül has decided that Ankara's Syria policy now has to change. 

We have to get rid of our obsession on al-Assad

Let's take a look at what he wrote just the other day.

Apparently, the sectarian policy has ended: "As soon as possible, we have to find possible ways to save us from the sectarian crisis that has the potential to turn the whole region into a wreck," wrote Karagül. 

The slogan "fight against terror" has collapsed: "It is impossible to understand speaking with abstract, meaningless sentences like 'the fight against terror" which are far from reality. There is no longer a concept like the 'fight against terror.'"

The policy of toppling Syrian President al-Assad has...