Turkey in Syria & ISIS (merged thread)

[CrowBat]

Please, don't now start to misinterpret actions against the PKK and the Daesh as 'actions against the YPG'.

Sure, the YPG is de-facto led by ex-PKK thugs, but 'even' the Turks are making difference between them. So, everybody else might want to do the same.

As next, oh my bad, yes: Erdogan is angry about recent election win of Kurdish parties in Turkey.

But, did he order the military into action over this issue?

Nope.

- PKK has re-opened hostilities by its own action, i.e. attacks; it wasn't Turkey that started.

- Even the leader of Iraqi Kurds has commented PKK's attacks with something like, 'PKK is making a fatal mistake: by resuming attacks they are preventing negotiations that came a long way...'

- Turkey has never negotiated with the PKK: PKK is a terrorist organization and Turkey is not negotiating with such. Turkish position was always crystal clear: negotiations are possible if the PKK stops fighting.

So, please somebody explain: why should Turkey start negotiating with the PKK now - and then at a gun-point?

Because the HDP won few additional seats in the Parliament?

- A 'BTW' factor: HDP's negotiations with Turkish government stalled (and that's the supposed reason for renewal of PKK's attacks) over the issue of introducing 'Kurdish' language as official language in Turkey (that said, Kurds already have their Kurdish-language newspapers, TV- and radio-stations, and the right to use Kurdish in schools and universities). This demand was turned down by two major Turkish parties. Reason: there are 47 different Kurdish languages, with 4 different roots and 4 different alphabets. Several of languages in question have never been spoken in Turkey. Not even the Kurds can agree over their 'official' language; indeed, the PKK is using Turkish as its 'official' language, so all of its members can understand each other!

Please somebody tell me then: precisely what other state would accept such demands?

- Furthermore, Turks are interested in retaining a land connection to Syria, and thus not the least keen to see this cut off by a terrorist organization (whether the Daesh or the YPG, with the note that the latter is de-facto led by ex-PKK) - that's then also cooperating with the regime of Bashar al-Assad (which both the PKK/YPG and the Daesh are meanwhile known to be doing).

- Finally, in its opening strike, the THK is known to have bombed one assembly point and two local HQ of the Daesh in syria, killing 35 (this without violating Syrian airspace, i.e. by deploying PGMs from inside Turkey), and up to nine PKK-related targets in northern Iraq (this time violating Iraqi and Syrian airspace), killing at least one (one of top PKK COs) and wounding three.

During the second strike it flew up to 160 sorties with F-16s and F-4E-2020s in three waves to hit 400 targets in northern Iraq, plus Daesh positions around Azzaz, in northern Syria.

Ever since, it's primarily flying recce.

So, if a 'security zone' - then not 'against the YPG', but only in the area north of Aleppo held by the Daesh and squeezed in between two areas held by the YPG.

[JWing]

Turkey is not making a distinction between the PYD/YPG and PKK. Prof Henri Barkey pointed out that Turkish govt press & papers that back Erdogan routinely say that PKK, PYD & YPG are all the same and that they are a bigger threat than IS. The only time the Turks try to make this distinction is when they talk to the U.S. and you can guess why.

[CrowBat]

There are words, and there are actions.

Surely, for public consumption at home, Erdogan (don't worry: I'm not trying to defend him) is making no difference between the PKK and the PYD (YPG is the armed wing of the latter).

And he's got not only 'a few good reasons' to do so: the PYD/YPG-conglomerate is de-facto led by the PKK-cadre that used to cooperate with Assadists before the PKK was 'disbanded', three years ago, after which they all fled to Syria. Through the last three years they have assasinated, executed, liquidated or forced into exile any concurent Kurdish leader in Syria in order to establish 'their' PYD/YPG as a 'representative for all the Kurds in Syria'.

They are actually still collaborating with the Assad regime, and not the least interested in supporting other insurgent factions in Syria (though it finds it fine when these are supporting it).

So, considering history of their leaders, and what are they doing... why should it be surprising the PYD/YPG ended on at least the Turkish list of terrorist organizations?

But, this does not mean that Turkey is now going to start bombing US- (and FSyA-) supported YPG units fighting the Daesh around Hassaka. Even less so it's going to drive its Army into northern Syria in order to conquer the area presently controlled (primarily) by the PYD/YPG.

[JWing]

New Chatham House paper on Turkey's entry into IS war. Concludes Ankara wants to establish hegemony over Syrian Kurds rather than fight IS and any safe zone created in northern Syria would probably be used by anti-western jihad groups who want to fight Assad rather than IS.

http://www.chathamhouse.org/expert/c...N25HY,CSLXQ,1#

[CrowBat]

'Anti-Western Jihad groups who want to fight Assad'...?

Yeah, everybody in the West and his/her next kin, 'knows' that not only Syria, but all the countries in the Middle East are predominantly populated by exactly such elements: crazy hordes of extremist Islamists that want nothing else but to be anti-West and to go fighting Assad...

...like JAN, which pledged allegiance to al-Qaida, but can't stop declaring no intention to go fighting Jihad in the West, and is fighting Assad at every opportunity...

...or like the IF, which has nothing to do with al-Qaida, and fights Assad above everything else...

...or all the different moderate groups, which are still there and still more numerous despite everybody's - really everybody's: Assad's, Daesh's, JAN's, and even Western - sternous efforts to exterminate them...?

...and let me guess what comes as next: 'logical next step' would be to sell - or better: donate - B-52s to Israel, so it can better 'defend' itself... because it is ah-so-well-known that Israel is the only US 'friend' in the Middle East and all the time doing precisely what the USA says and what is in US interest... just like it's clear that continous blanc support for corrupt theological dictatorships like that in Saudi Arabia is certainly going to result in them help establishing democracies in such countries like Syria or Yemen...

Bottom line: throw the facts and logic out of the window. Who cares? It's since long that common sense is anything but common.