The Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research (SETA) published its 2017 report in Ankara on Islamophobia on Wednesday following a keynote speech by Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, as the world turned its attention to whether the Syrian regime would be hit by international powers following its latest chemical attack on civilians in the country.

The current escalation and the ongoing crisis in Syria are in fact just results of Islamophobia in the West, which was institutionalized and turned into a tool to legitimize the brutal atrocities of the Bashar Assad regime.

Assad has used chemical weapons against his own people various times since 2011 but no steps were taken by the international community to punish or prevent the murderer's actions in Damascus. The survival of Assad was assured by the hostility of the Western powers against Islam. Instead of allowing local Syrian actors with Islamic sensibilities determine the future of their country, some circles in the West remained silent about Assad's chemical attacks.Ironically, during a telephone conversation, former U.S. President Barack Obama shocked his French colleague François Hollande by refusing to hit Assad following another attack on civilians even though warplanes were loaded, ready and waiting for commands from both presidents.

"I still do not understand why Obama refused to hit Assad. Daesh was not as strong as today and the opposition was stronger," Hollande was quoted as saying in French media.

And now, if some in the West started to talk about the possibility of an attack on Assad, you could be sure that there was another motive behind these plans, but not the suffering of the Syrian people.

As Israel has recently taken the opportunity to attack Iranian targets, the center of attention was something else, but not the Syrians.

Additionally, the institutionalization of Islamophobia in the West resulted from a controlled operation of perception against Islam that led to the current misconception that parallels Islam and terrorism. While making assumptions on the future of Syria, you should absolutely take the Islamophobic approach of the West into account because until now, it has been the main base of their policies toward Syria, including their evil partnerships with the PKK terrorist group and its Syrian offshoot, the Democratic Union Party (PYD) terrorists.