Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

Turkey, ISIS, Kurds and Syria

Wagner ( if it exists as a PMC at all) have previous as being a fairly blatant proxy of the Russian Min of Def if rumours are true about their roles on the Donbass and suchlike. Some rather iffy characters in the company and its affiliates, again with lots of previous and lots of grisly political baggage
 
miss direct said:
My partner is a Turkish Kurd (Kurdish Turk?) and we live in Turkey. Could you please elaborate?

We've already agreed that if we are to have a son (unlikely but you never know), he will only get British citizenship so as to avoid compulsary military service.
Click to expand...

Just vibes (again, from working in a NATO HQ), and perhaps having watched a little too much 'the Nazi's - a warning from history' - I don't see anything good happening in Turkey in the near term.

It's not a place I would want my children to move to, and if they lived there, I'd be working very hard at bringing them back.

It's worth mentioning that the overwhelming majority of the Turks I've met and spoken to are/were military officers who would have been critical of Erdogan and possibly sympathetic to the coup attempt, so perhaps my view is skewed and hyperbolic - but enough of my colleagues from other NATO countries have similar concerns to make me think that I might be right.

Up to you, you're there and speak the language, I'm not and don't...
 
Indeed. though some have said perhaps the Kurds miscalculated and perhaps this is, to some extent true. Still I think we may all come to regret this at some point. Here we have a NATO member openly waging jihad supported by extremists some of whom may have even been members of ISIS.

upload_2018-3-18_14-56-49.png
 
Last edited:
Hawzhin is an ethno-nationalist who masquerades as a revolutionary. There are no ISIS in the Turkish forces involved in Operation Olive Branch. The PYD are responsible for a lot of scare mongering and racism. Anyone who opposes them is a 'Jihadist' whether it is true or not.

Oh, and Kurdish forces are reportedly preventing civilians from leaving unless they have contacts in the administration or the armed forces.
 
Geri How can you be so sure? Under other circumstances I would concede that you may have a point as you seem to be very well-informed on events in the region. However there were rumours and possibly more than rumours that Turkey was covertly supporting ISIS before all this kicked off. Now if you discount the bias you claim for the person who tweeted the above what about the one-finger gesture which is associated with Islamic extremists such as ISIS? Also I've seen tweets from lots of other sources some of them very disturbing; killing unarmed civilians, videos from the fighters themselves cursing dead combatants as infidels and pigs etc etc. I think with the best will that even if some former ISIS fighters didn't make it into the olive branch operation there are pretty much definitely some extremist wingnuts there.
 
teqniq said:
Geri How can you be so sure? Under other circumstances I would concede that you may have a point as you seem to be very well-informed on events in the region. However there were rumours and possibly more than rumours that Turkey was covertly supporting ISIS before all this kicked off. Now if you discount the bias you claim for the person who tweeted the above what about the one-finger gesture which is associated with Islamic extremists such as ISIS? Also I've seen tweets from lots of other sources some of them very disturbing; killing unarmed civilians, videos from the fighters themselves cursing dead combatants as infidels and pigs etc etc. I think with the best will that even if some former ISIS fighters didn't make it into the olive branch operation there are pretty much definitely some extremist wingnuts there.
Click to expand...

Because there is no credible evidence for it, despite the YPG claiming this for several years. The one fingered gesture is the tawheed, an Islamic symbol meaning one god and is used by many Muslims. I am completely against Operation Olive Branch and I am saddened that some FSA units are allowing themselves to be used by Turkey in this way, and some of them may be jihadists but that doesn't mean they are ISIS.
 
'May be' Harakat Nour al-Din al-Zenki are there and these are the people responsible for chopping that kid's head off in Aleppo, also further to what I was saying in my last post there are reports of fighters mutilating dead women combatant's bodies. The videos are on Twitter but I refrained from posting them here so unfortunately I feel that there is credible evidence of extremists in the olive branch forces. It is even been suggested in the Independent:
...The first act of the fighters of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) fighters, an overwhelmingly Arab force, was to bulldoze the statue of a Kurdish mythological hero in the centre of Afrin. Videos taken by FSA fighters suggest that many are former Isis or al-Qaeda fighters who see the Kurds and non-Muslim minorities as enemies to be expelled or eradicated....
Click to expand...
Looks and sounds like ethnic cleansing to me.
 
British woman killed fighting Turkish forces in Afrin

A British woman fighting alongside Kurdish forces in Afrin, northern Syria, has been killed, her Kurdish commanders have said.

Anna Campbell, from Lewes, East Sussex, was volunteering with the US-backed Kurdish Women’s Protection Units (YPJ) – the all-female affiliate army of the People’s Protection Units (YPG) – in the besieged city of Afrin when the convoy she was travelling in was struck by a Turkish missile on 16 March....
Click to expand...
 
Geri said:
Because there is no credible evidence for it, despite the YPG claiming this for several years. The one fingered gesture is the tawheed, an Islamic symbol meaning one god and is used by many Muslims. I am completely against Operation Olive Branch and I am saddened that some FSA units are allowing themselves to be used by Turkey in this way, and some of them may be jihadists but that doesn't mean they are ISIS.
Click to expand...

I think a lot of this all back to front.

It's used by those fighting for God.

I think large parts of the FSA have been positively itching for this opportunity for a long time.

Some parts of the FSA are ex-ISIS one-time ISIS just like some parts of the YPG's Arab allies were ex-FSA.

On Turkey-ISIS as I read it: there was close cooperation and money and weapons transfers after the Mosul consulate hostage takeover. Then it stopped when things got too serious and ISIS elements started bombing within Turkey (not part of the deal).
 
teqniq said:
'May be' Harakat Nour al-Din al-Zenki are there and these are the people responsible for chopping that kid's head off in Aleppo, also further to what I was saying in my last post there are reports of fighters mutilating dead women combatant's bodies. The videos are on Twitter but I refrained from posting them here so unfortunately I feel that there is credible evidence of extremists in the olive branch forces. It is even been suggested in the Independent:

Looks and sounds like ethnic cleansing to me.
Click to expand...
That's Cockburn who've we - and that means you as well - have written off as credible on this issue. And one of the reasons we wrote him off was because he simultaneously claimed that the FSA did not exist and also was composed solely of jihadis and always was - even when FSA groups were fighting ISIS and pushing them out of western Syria and even when they were joining with the YPG in the SDF to fight ISIS east of the euphrates. He continues the latter smear in the piece that you quote.

If, over 7 years in, we are reduced to finally agreeing with the likes of him rather than looking critically how things have changed as regards the FSA and why. For example, the Zinki group who you mention in the first post have moved from being a moderate well organised FSA group to a group of wild anti-FSA islamists whilst still being anti-ISIS. In fact they are currently involved in a civil war within the civil war with what was HTS/AQ/Nusra rather than allying with them in Afrin. (In fact i'm not at all sure they even got involved in OB - though there was a concerted media attempt from YPG aligned sources to suggest this was the case last month). Was this due to FSA inactivity under pressure from the two external operation centres and the cutting of funds and weapons as a result - i think so, so do many other critical commentators. Something pretty different from Cockburn's crude FSA=arab=sunni==jihadi's near racism.

One of the tactics of the PYD response to olive branch is to hammer home the exact same idea as Cockburn in order to rally international and leftist support - it's the exact same tactic as assad decided on very early in 2011 and we didn't fall for it then did we? That there are jihadi's heavily involved in olive branch is undeniable - previously defeated dregs recruited from the displaced camps over the border that turkey allows jihadi's to run under certain conditions, turkmen fascists etc - but let's not make the mistake the anti-imperialists and the loons made years ago. Not now.
 
I just knew someone would come along and take issue with me linking to a Cockburn article, oh well. I just think in this instance he's not wrong and part of the point in linking to it was to show that this opinion has reached mainstream news channels and therefore more people. At least it wasn't Fisk eh?
 
teqniq said:
I just knew someone would come along and take issue with me linking to a Cockburn article, oh well. I just think in this instance he's not wrong and part of the point in linking to it was to show that this opinion has reached mainstream news channels and therefore more people. At least it wasn't Fisk eh?
Click to expand...
He's been in mainstream media for decades - his whole pampered life and career in fact. As his disgusting lying stalinist journo father before him was too.
 
teqniq said:
I know this, that was my point. :)
Click to expand...

Ok, slight misread of what you meant on my part - but it's not that it's reached mainstream media like cockburn - it's that cockburn has been part of producing then introducing and circulating this into mainstream media - it's exactly why assad started on this approach back in 2011.
 
(On a related but not that important note - i don't think i'm going to be renewing my LRB subscription this year due to them continuing to give him column inches)
 
Sooner or later the US is going to have to make some actual choices regarding Turkey

The Latest: Turkey vows to expand Syria operation

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says that after victory in Syria’s Afrin region, his country will expand its military operations into other Kurdish-held areas in Syria as well as to Iraq’s Sinjar region.

Speaking at a ceremony for judicial appointments in Ankara, Erdogan said troops would target the Syrian city of Manbij, as well as Ayn al-Arab, also known as Kobani, and other towns along the border to the east of the Euphrates River. Those areas are controlled by U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish forces and U.S. troops are stationed there...
Click to expand...
 
teqniq said:
Sooner or later the US is going to have to make some actual choices regarding Turkey

The Latest: Turkey vows to expand Syria operation
Click to expand...

The US isn't ready to make hard choices regarding Turkey, it will do everything it can to kick that shit-filled can as far down the road as possible. There's no doubt what the emotional, gut reaction is, or what the principled reaction is, and it's the one the US wants to make - it's difficult to get over to people how appalled the US 'deep state' is by how Turkey has behaved throughout the last 7 years (and more), and how appalled they are by Turkey's willingness to tell the US to fuck off,and mean it, which is a particularly unwelcome development.

The US is genuinely in a bind - it would like nothing better than to turf Turkey out of the club and face them off over Kurdistan (the principle, and the reality on the ground that it's people have been fighting with for years), but they are faced with the unpleasant reality that if they do Turkey will walk out of NATO and into the Russian camp (and take with it the F-35 production line and repair centre - thereby writing off a $1.5 trillion fighter program that is meant to equip NATO air forces for the next 50 years...). The US knows that Vlad the Invader will offer literally anything to get Turkey out of NATO and close off the Eastern Med to the US - that, unfortunately, is the situation the US finds itself in, and it simply isn't in a position to give Turkey any kind of ultimatum involving an 'or else's, because Turkey (or perhaps more correctly, Erdogan) will prefer the 'or else'.
 
kebabking said:
The US isn't ready to make hard choices regarding Turkey, it will do everything it can to kick that shit-filled can as far down the road as possible. There's no doubt what the emotional, gut reaction is, or what the principled reaction is, and it's the one the US wants to make - it's difficult to get over to people how appalled the US 'deep state' is by how Turkey has behaved throughout the last 7 years (and more), and how appalled they are by Turkey's willingness to tell the US to fuck off,and mean it, which is a particularly unwelcome development.

The US is genuinely in a bind - it would like nothing better than to turf Turkey out of the club and face them off over Kurdistan (the principle, and the reality on the ground that it's people have been fighting with for years), but they are faced with the unpleasant reality that if they do Turkey will walk out of NATO and into the Russian camp (and take with it the F-35 production line and repair centre - thereby writing off a $1.5 trillion fighter program that is meant to equip NATO air forces for the next 50 years...). The US knows that Vlad the Invader will offer literally anything to get Turkey out of NATO and close off the Eastern Med to the US - that, unfortunately, is the situation the US finds itself in, and it simply isn't in a position to give Turkey any kind of ultimatum involving an 'or else's, because Turkey (or perhaps more correctly, Erdogan) will prefer the 'or else'.
Click to expand...
Which goes a long way as a response to this post. You've put it in more blunt material terms than i could have. It's not a game of moral rewards.
 
kebabking said:
The US isn't ready to make hard choices regarding Turkey, it will do everything it can to kick that shit-filled can as far down the road as possible. There's no doubt what the emotional, gut reaction is, or what the principled reaction is, and it's the one the US wants to make - it's difficult to get over to people how appalled the US 'deep state' is by how Turkey has behaved throughout the last 7 years (and more), and how appalled they are by Turkey's willingness to tell the US to fuck off,and mean it, which is a particularly unwelcome development.

The US is genuinely in a bind - it would like nothing better than to turf Turkey out of the club and face them off over Kurdistan (the principle, and the reality on the ground that it's people have been fighting with for years), but they are faced with the unpleasant reality that if they do Turkey will walk out of NATO and into the Russian camp (and take with it the F-35 production line and repair centre - thereby writing off a $1.5 trillion fighter program that is meant to equip NATO air forces for the next 50 years...). The US knows that Vlad the Invader will offer literally anything to get Turkey out of NATO and close off the Eastern Med to the US - that, unfortunately, is the situation the US finds itself in, and it simply isn't in a position to give Turkey any kind of ultimatum involving an 'or else's, because Turkey (or perhaps more correctly, Erdogan) will prefer the 'or else'.
Click to expand...

Turkey in Syria is fine for the US power elite, though make the weaker countries like Syria and Turkey fight each other is better than fighting yourself.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

teqniq
Huge earthquake in Turkey and Northern Syria 05-06/02/23
2 3
Replies
83
Views
3K
JimW
JimW
Rob Ray
Erdogan vs the world
Replies
20
Views
2K
_Russ_
_Russ_
tim
Bizarre acts of terrorism - statue of Lenin and Mao blown up in Texas.
Replies
3
Views
387
belboid
belboid
Bingoman
Slovak PM shot and injured - 15th May 2024
2
Replies
39
Views
2K
Monte
Monte
tim
New Caledonia and the resistance against French settler colonists.
Replies
5
Views
524
Wkdloz
Wkdloz
Back
Top Bottom