Turkey’s Halk TV aired an interview with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Oct. 3-4. Halk TV gained notoriety during the Gezi Park protests in June as one of the few channels reporting live from the streets. It is hardly considered mainstream in Turkish media, and has a reputation for being rather critical of the Turkish government.

Assad has been interviewed by Turkish media since the start of the civil war. However, during this interview, Assad was unexpectedly blunt and critical of the Turkish government, particularly of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu. Assad did not mince his words. He referred to Erdogan as “bigoted,” accused him of having the blood of Syrians on his hands and having exploited the presence of Syrian refugees in Turkey, while seeing the Gezi Park protests as the Turkish public’s rejection of Erdogan’s lies. This interview has escalated the war of words between the countries' leaders to a personal level.

On the Turkish front, the 60-minute interview with Assad generated uproar from some commentators. One of them, Yilmaz Ozdil — a longtime Hurriyet columnist known for his hardheaded critical stance against the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and said to be the most-read columnist in the country — shocked many viewers with his staunch defense of Erdogan. Ozdil said, “Hacivat [an Ottoman character known for being ignorant in shadow-puppet theater], the Middle Eastern butcher, cannot preach to the Turkish prime minister.” He also criticized Halk TV for airing the interview and abetting Assad’s psychological warfare. Any pro-AKP pundit uttering this would not have made the news, but the public showed its surprise on social media when Ozdil did. Ozdil’s defense of Erdogan pleased few, as pro-government Turks could not bring themselves to applaud Ozdil and the opposition was rather bitter. Many Ozdil fans blamed him for being a “sellout” and a “traitor,” so much so that Ozdil felt compelled to address the social-media lynch mob in his column the next day.

Going back to the interview, what Assad said, in a nutshell, was, “When Syria is on fire, Turkey cannot stay peaceful.” First, he highlighted his part of the story about Turkish diplomatic efforts in the beginning of the crisis to “help” Syria. In August 2011, Davutoglu and Assad had a six- to seven-hour meeting in Damascus.   It is fair to say that after that meeting, diplomatic communications between the two countries diminished significantly. Turkish government representatives frequently claim, “If only Assad had taken our advice,” yet Assad said no democratic reform was advocated by the Turkish government. Assad made a poignant reference to the neo-Ottoman attitude of the Turkish government when he complained, “Erdogan and Davutoglu repeat the allegation that Syria made reform promises to them, as if Erdogan is a sultan and I am his governor.’’ Assad claimed that the Turkish government was only interested in bringing the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan) — most of whose leaders were living abroad — back into Syria, and that Turkey only asked about how many of the Brotherhood members were released from prison when he talked about reforms. Unless and until a voice or video recording — if one exists — of the Davutoglu-Assad meeting is released to the media, we may never know whose account of the exchange is accurate.