The last propaganda instrument created by the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) is the destruction of an archaeology museum in Mosul, where invaluable, millennium-old artifacts and statues of early civilizations of Mesopotamia were kept. ISIS militants destroyed these treasures with axes and hammers and took videos of their crime to be distributed all over the world on social media. Their attempt has reached its target, so long as the world public remains speechless against such a terrible event. These links with the long-gone civilizations are lost forever as well as invaluable hand-written texts kept in libraries and museums. By criminally carrying out this "tabula rasa" with the past, ISIS utilizes an efficient way to destroy all hope, sever all ties with the past and expect nothing from the future except what ISIS will implement.

A very similar atrocity was committed by the Taliban before the Afghan war in 2001 when Taliban fighters destroyed the largest standing Buddha statues in the world carved in the rock, a remnant of a very old civilization, on the grounds that the statues were blasphemous.

This nihilistic and pitiless attitude is the evident proof of how these people remain very afraid for their future, bear no hope and are in a situation of acute aggressiveness and truculence. Mahatma Gandhi wrote after the terrible events and killings in Amritsar ordered by Brigadier General Dyer, that Dyer was a true coward who tried to hide his fear behind firing rifles. The Amritsar massacre, or the Jallianwala Bagh killings, totally changed Gandhi's attitude vis-à-vis the British and he henceforth fought only for self-rule in India.

Will the deeds of ISIS change the terrible fate of Syria at last?

Western democracies did not want to intervene in Syria. It was a peripheral state, not producing any oil and previous military attempts in the region to enforce or implement democratic rule had failed badly. But what has been perhaps disregarded was the presence of both Russia and Iran, which gave a reprieve to the totally dismantling of Syrian President Bashar Assad's Baathist regime. The central authority has practically lost half of its country, but thanks to the armament and military support given by Iran and Russia, it has survived. The Assad regime has not totally disappeared, but the population has been decimated, and one Syrian out of two had to leave his or her house, town or city, creating an inhumane exile. The democratic opposition in Syria swiftly weakened, to be replaced by radical gangs. Turkey's policy has consistently advocated supporting Syria's democratic opposition, to begin with, the Free Syrian Army.

Only a few weeks ago, the agreement to train and equip the Free Syrian Army - some in Turkey - has been accepted as a viable solution by the U.S. It is definitely very late, but hopefully some organized opposition, targeting a democratic Syria will seize the day and will have a real power on the ground.

This is not a simple military struggle, a balance of power in the Middle East. Everyone remembers the incredible archeological findings during the excavations for the Marmaray under the Bosporus. The archeological findings delayed the whole project for almost three years but invaluable findings have been unearthed, to be kept in a museum that is being constructed. Now these are two neighboring countries, Turkey and Syria, divided by a terrible dichotomy. A democracy on one side, a terrible denial of any civilized value on the other. This is the divide and this is why Turkey should be better supported by its allies in the democratic world.