Turkey, ISIS, Kurds and Syria

[LDC]

He's been all over the shop promoting the YPG etc

Geri

I saw that a few months ago when he first came back, maybe I've just missed the more recent things.

 

[Geri]

Be interested to hear more from Macer Gifford. He was in the media a bit when he first came back but not seen much of him since. He came across as quite articulate and understanding of the situation. Anyone had contact or know more of what he's doing now?

Yes, he's been lobbying and things like that. He's just written an open letter to Amnesty International, his Facebook page is here (if you are on Facebook).

Macer Gifford

 

[LDC]

Yes, he's been lobbying and things like that. He's just written an open letter to Amnesty International, his Facebook page is here (if you are on Facebook).

Macer Gifford

Yeah, saw the Amnesty letter. Thanks, I'll have a look through a mate's FB account. It sounds like you know or have had some contact with him?

 

[butchersapron]

Yes, he's been lobbying and things like that. He's just written an open letter to Amnesty International, his Facebook page is here (if you are on Facebook).

Macer Gifford

Didn't he do tv stuff, and work with the parents of the lad killed fighting, a talking tour or something and some stuff in parliament?

 

[Geri]

Yeah, saw the Amnesty letter. Thanks, I'll have a look through a mate's FB account. It sounds like you know or have had some contact with him?

Only via Facebook and being in some Kurdish groups.

 

[Geri]

Didn't he do tv stuff, and work with the parents of the lad killed fighting, a talking tour or something and some stuff in parliament?

Yes, he went to the House of Commons with Vasiliki Scourfield, whose son Kosta was killed, and he was on some Sunday morning show the other week (I forget which one).

 

[butchersapron]

Yes, he went to the House of Commons with Vasiliki Scourfield, whose son Kosta was killed, and he was on some Sunday morning show the other week (I forget which one).

Been on C4 a number of times as well i think.

 

[butchersapron]

Regarding the amnesty report, general YPG commander suggests SNC (Syrian National Council) fingers in the pie.

We saw the report of the Amnesty International. I can tell you that the timing and wording of this report is a bit suspicious. At a time when we are forming a new alliance with Syrian pro-democracy forces, and getting ready to wage a big war against ISIS this report is released. Report comes right after the coalition forces are giving us a significant aid. Hard to think it is all a matter of coincidence.

We call on the international community and the United States as well not to take this report serious. Because this is not what is happening on the ground. But again we are officially calling on independent bodies to come and see what is going on the ground.

Now, let me be clear; we have liberated some 1500 Arab villages. Some of this villages became war zones between us and ISIS. Battles took days in some villages. I am not saying there has been no harm to those villages. But they are not more than 4 or 5 villages. We have 1500 Arab villages liberated and people in them live in peace now. If it was true, why are these 1500 villages still standing? Apart from that, there are Arabs who were brought to Rojava by the Baathist regime and settled throughout the Kurds’ lands. These Arabs too in Jazira are leading respected lives. If we had an intention of driving Arabs away, we would have driven those Arabs first. I think whoever is discontent with ISIS defeats has some share in this report because we have success against ISIS. And all the world sees our effectiveness and success over this terrorist group. We have proved in practice, in liberating Rojava regions too.

One more point, 30% of YPG made up of Arabs. If allegation in the report were true did these Arabs with us committed those atrocities too? If such things were true, would they fight alongside us in Jazira and Kobane? We believe such reports want to harm our image. In our opinion, Syrian National Coalition and forces behind it has a lot to do with this. Because, at the start, for example, they couldn’t digest our liberation of Tal Abyad. So they have been spreading such rumors on purpose. But we will continue our struggle for democracy in Syria in the face of all accusations, off all such things they want to square us with. And we are open to accountability. We are respectful to human rights. Any independent body can come and investigate. We are liberating 1500 Arab villages, this report should have thanked us. We have liberated so many people. We liberated Shengal [Sinjar] and many Yezidi women. There are other interests in this report. Our units are here, anyone can come and investigate and talk to Arabs and Turkomens as well.

 

[teqniq]

The Ankara Bomber Owned One of Turkey's Most Well-Known ISIS Hangouts

The person named as a suicide bomber in Turkey’s deadliest terror attack was the owner of an Islamic State gathering place well known to Turkish authorities and Turkish media, which had been sounding the alarm about his cell for more than two years....

 

[butchersapron]

YPG official response to amnesty.Not going to pull any quotes as they generally require a prior reading of the actual report. As you can imagine it is rejected in both general and very specific terms. Oh, go on then, a flavour:

Page 21 – Paragraph 3 – Lines 2, 3, & 4

“Journalists have reported that the YPG displaced the Turkmen on 6 July 2015 and have identified some of the displaced persons by name.”

In this section, Amnesty International relied on a photographic report, published on Siraj Press website, which belongs to the Syrian Revolution General Commission associated with the National Coalition for Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces. The report includes the names of some families who were allegedly displaced by the YPG. However, the person who documented this report is named, Anwar Al Katav, who was the commander of an Islamic battalion and was involved in deporting Kurds and looting their properties in Tel Abbyad and its surrounding villages. He is currently an employee of the Syrian temporary government in Turkey.

 

[butchersapron]

Here's an interesting piece - The Syrianization of Turkey. Main argument is that Erdogan was planning to launch full scale invasion of Syria through Rojava if he failed to get his majority in the Nov elections. Russia's intervention was to stop this and head off the threat of a massive full out regional war. Erdogan has now moved to a "strategy may be summed up by the following formula: if you cannot take Turkey into Syria, then bring Syria into Turkey!" and it then lists all the potential elements for this syrianisation/civil war.

(Author a trot of the old school i believe, which might explain the rather odd view of what russia is up to).

 

[LDC]

Went to an excellent talk last night by Janet Biehl, political radical and collaborator with Murray Bookchin for the last 20 years of his life, talking about Bookchin's politics, Social Ecology, and her recent view to Rojava. Her critical yet supportive take on the events and various aspects of life and politics in Rojava was interesting and refreshing.

She's doing a similar talk at the London Anarchist Bookfair this Saturday at 12 noon to 2pm in Room E002, Ground Floor.

Janet Biehl: The Politics of Social Ecology
The defeat of ISIS by Kurdish forces in Syria has generated much news recently. For activists this is especially true in respect of the link between the organisational experiment in Kobane/Rojava and Murray Bookchin. Bookckin developed a way of organising called Libertarian Municipalism which looks at ways to wrestle power from the state. Janet Biehl worked alongside Bookchin for many years and concisely pulls together his theories in her book The Politics of Social Ecology. Janet will talk about the theory and how it can be put into practice. We may not all agree with everything Boochin said, but this is a chance to start the debate on how we organise and move from a small unknown theory (anarchism) to seriously looking how we overthrow the present system

 

[elbows]

Here's an interesting piece - The Syrianization of Turkey.

Interesting indeed. Perhaps too much of a stretch in places, especially as there are other plausible explanations for Russia's timing, such as important losses by the Syrian regime this year which alarmed its partners.

Equally, I can well believe Erdogan harbours wider Sunni-Islam ambitions, but even if everything was rosy for him domestically I'm not sure how the hell he would get far on that front. Even allowing heavily for the general nature of factions and rivalries within a 'sunni block' I think it may be a mistake to generalise it down to a single block at all, as opposed to at least two (e.g. the ones who tend to back the Muslim Brotherhood, and the ones that clamped down on them, especially in light of what happened in Egypt). I've been meaning to write about this but am still hunting for scraps of info to feed on first.

 

[butchersapron]

Erdogan: ISIS, Syrian intel, PKK behind blast

But President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, addressing a union confederation meeting, said “the attack in front of the station reveals how terror is practised collectively. It's a collective terrorist act.”

“The PKK, Daesh, the Mukhabarat, the PYD are all involved. They planned this operation together,” he said, referring to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), the ISIS group, Syria’s state-controlled military intelligence service and Syria's Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD).

Pressure has piled on Erdogan ahead of the November 1 poll, with opposition figures blaming him for security lapses over the Ankara bombing and failing to crack down on ISIS.

On Monday, the government confirmed that one of the suicide bombers was Yunus Emre Alagoz, brother of the man suspected of a similar attack in Suruc that killed 34 people in July.

 

[frogwoman]

 

[kebabking]

when i read butchersapron's post this morning i was very tempted to just post a picture of a giant crackpipe.

i wonder how much traction that kind of traction talk actually gets in Turkey - is the entire electorate just sitting there going 'how fucking stupid does that bloke think we are?', or is there a large constituancy thinking 'yeah, IS, Assad, the Kurds - they'll have got together to do this...'?

 

[J Ed]

when i read butchersapron's post this morning i was very tempted to just post a picture of a giant crackpipe.

i wonder how much traction that kind of traction talk actually gets in Turkey - is the entire electorate just sitting there going 'how fucking stupid does that bloke think we are?', or is there a large constituancy thinking 'yeah, IS, Assad, the Kurds - they'll have got together to do this...'?

More Turks blame PKK for Ankara suicide bombing than blame ISIL

Gezici Research’s latest opinion poll has revealed that more Turks believe the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) was responsible for the deadly dual suicide bombing in Ankara on Oct. 10 than believe the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) was responsible – even though the victims were mostly pro-Kurdish activists.

...

According to the survey results, nearly 28 percent of Turkish voters think that the PKK committed the attack, while some 24.9 percent think it was ISIL, even though authorities have revealed that the perpetrators were two men from the eastern province of Adıyaman who had snuck into Syria to be trained in suicide attacks by ISIL.

Meanwhile, 10.5 percent of respondents said that the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) was responsible for the blasts, 10.6 percent blamed President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan directly and 10.1 percent thought it was the pro-Kurdish, left wing People’s Democratic Party (HDP). HDP supporters were the main victims of the attack.

 

[butchersapron]

Shitness: YPG say Turkish Army attacked tel abyad over the weekend.

The statement said the aggression by the Turkish army targeted the positions of YPG units deployed at the border of Girê Spî (Tal Abyad) last night and this morning.

According to YPG, the bombardment by Turkish military was conducted with A4 weapons between 19:00-21:00 on October 24, and with MG3 weapons and 02:00-04:00 on October 25.

 

[J Ed]

New podcast from MideastWeek, well worth a listen, discusses Iranian proxies in Syria Iran's Proxies in Syria

 

[teqniq]

The ISIS War Inside Turkey Is Escalating

 

[miss direct]

I'm afraid to say that many in Turkey lack reasoning skills and are products of a shit education system and yes, they do believe that sort of crap. Many also into conspiracy theories and that all foreigners are spies, etc etc.

My boyfriend's just gone down to Diyarbakir to vote, wish he wasn't there.

 

[teqniq]

Best wishes to you and your boyfriend.

 

[butchersapron]

Turkish military confirmed attacking YPG in Syria:


Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has confirmed that the Turkish military has attacked Kurdish fighters in northern Syria.
The Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) said Turkey shot at its forces in the town of Tal Abyad on Sunday.

The YPG has been a key ally of the US in fighting the so-called Islamic State (IS) group in Syria.

Turkey fears advances by the YPG near its Syrian border could fuel separatist sentiments amongst Kurds in Turkey.

The attacks come amid increasing tensions in Turkey ahead of elections.

"We said the [YPG-aligned Democratic Union Party] PYD will not go west of the Euphrates and that we would hit it the moment it did," Mr Davutoglu told Turkish ATV television late Monday.

 

[teqniq]

Turkey's shameful state of media freedom - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East

 

[Geri]

Interesting piece about the co-chair of the HDP, Figen Yuksekdağ.

The most important woman in Turkey

 

[teqniq]

CPJ calls for investigation into murder of Syrian journalists in Turkey

New York, October 30, 2015--The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on the Turkish authorities to investigate and bring to justice the murderers of two Syrian journalists found slain in an apartment in the city of Urfa in southeastern Turkey today. Ibrahim Abd al-Qader worked as the executive director and Fares Hamadi as head of the production department for Eye on the Homeland, a Syrian media collective, according to a statement on the group's Facebook page.

A member of the Syrian journalist collective Raqqa is Being Silently Slaughtered (RBSS) told CPJ that Abd Al-Qader was also a founding member of their group. CPJ will recognize Raqqa is Being Silently Slaughtered this year at the organization's annual International Press Freedom Award.

The RBSS member, Abu Mohammed, as well as Ahmed Abd al-Qader, Ibrahim's brother and a staff member of Eye on the Homeland, both told CPJ they believe Islamic State militants were responsible for the murders....

 

[J Ed]

U.S. to deploy special forces to Syria in about-turn for Obama

 

[teqniq]

Surely they've already had them there even if it's been on more of an in/out basis.

 

[teqniq]

This puts a bit of a different perspective on it. Turkey much less likely to carry out operations against the Kurds if they know that US special forces are there. Could be part of the reason if not the main one that they are being deployed.

 

[butchersapron]

All to do with the coming moves on Raqqa.