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Turkey, ISIS, Kurds and Syria

Two excellent pieces from some of the most consistent commentators on the last 8 years - the first should go down with only a few struggles at the closing remarks, the second is more likely to become a bone in the throat for many (and i would not personally allow TRT to publish anything of mine, never mind go along with the insistence that something pro-erdogan is inserted):

On the Turkish offensive on north-eastern Syria

Reportedly the deal brokered between the regime and the PYD-dominated SDF includes a guarantee of full Kurdish rights and autonomy. Yet it’s unlikely the regime will ever accept Kurdish autonomy, as it’s repeatedly made clear in public statements. Elsewhere in Syria all promises given by the regime in ‘reconciliation’ deals were not worth the paper they were written on. Anti-regime activists, both Arabs and Kurds, are now at risk of being rounded up and detained for possible death by torture. SDF fighters are also not safe. Just days ago Syria’s Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Maqdad declared that they had “betrayed their country and committed crimes against it.” Whilst many Kurds, abandoned by the US, may feel safer under Assad than Turkey, some Arab civilians living in SDF controlled areas such as Deir Al Zour and Raqqa fear a reconquest by the regime and Iranian militias above all else, and feel safer under Turkish protection. Syrians are rendered desperate, and dependent on foreign powers for survival. Foreign journalists also under threat by the regime have fled Syria leaving atrocities to unfold out of sight of the international media.

The decisions being made today are the machinations of foreign powers, and it is Syrian civilians who will pay the price. The current power struggles between states are manipulating ethnic divisions leading to increased sectarianism which will plague Syria for the foreseeable future. The refusal of Assad to step down when Syrians demanded it is what has led to this bloodbath along with the repeated failure of the international community to protect Syrians from slaughter and the failures of both Arab and Kurdish opposition leaders to put their own interests aside and promote unity among those who wish to be rid of authoritarian rule. One by one, around the country, the regime has crushed any democratic experiment in community autonomy, and the international community seems willing to normalize relations with a regime that has held on to power through unleashing slaughter on a massive scale. What is happening today is a disaster not only for Kurds but for all Free Syrians.

Once again the situation in Syria has highlighted the moral bankruptcy of segments of the left. Many of those protesting Turkey’s assault on north eastern Syria failed to mobilise to condemn the ongoing Russian and regime assault on Idlib where three million civilians are living in daily terror. In fact they’ve failed to notice that for years Syrians have been massacred by bombs, chemical weapons and industrial scale torture. Some of those calling for a No Fly Zone to protect Kurdish civilians from aerial bombardment previously slandered Syrians elsewhere calling for the same protection as warmongerers and agents of imperialism. Once again solidarity seems dependent not on outrage against war crimes, but on who is the perpetrator and who is the victim. Syrian lives are expendable in the battle for narratives and grand ideological frameworks.

The Syrian tragedy is a stain on the conscience of humanity.

-----

Western narratives on Syria are shamelessly orientalist

Syrian revolutionaries have been summarily abandoned by the Western world and were never given the benefit of the doubt. Why? Spoiler alert - it's because they're Arab.
If you find yourself in the position where you only care about Syria due to the recent Turkish incursion against ‘the Kurds’, while you’ve been ignoring the genocide being carried out by Assad, Iran and Russia in the rest of Syria, you might went to reflect on what is invariably a form of chauvinistic prejudice.

...

Divide and conquer was a key component of the British Empire’s strategy of conquest against the ‘lesser peoples’ it sought to dominate – it seems this logic persists if not pervades beyond that context.

It’s the only reason I can think of to get to the root of why people in the West, and I’m speaking from local to national groups here in the UK and across the Western world, would see fit to only express solidarity with ‘the Kurds’ in Syria while ignoring the aspirations and much more brutal struggles of other Syrians.

However, this chauvinism has been something actively promoted and emphasised by the YPG since the beginning of the Syrian revolution and subsequent civil war. Not only has it aided their aim at creating a one-party ethnopolitical statelet in the parts of Syria it has come to control, but it has managed to exploit Western anti-Arab racism and Islamophobia for its own benefit.


...

Again, the intersection between YPG fetishism and support for Assad is rooted in real political allegiances and ideological affinity.

I must say: none of what I write is about justifying war against the YPG.

This is about deconstructing the agenda of people, who face no harm whatsoever, who fetishise ‘the Kurds’ at the expense of the victims of a genuine genocide – who discount and disregard those who face the ultimate struggle for survival merely because they look, speak and think differently than them, or because they don’t meet the necessary ideals of their preconceived ideological contrivances.

It’s also because, whatever you think about the Turkish incursion or the presence of 'jihadists' in Idlib or any aspect of the war in Syria, the real source of this collectively monstrous tragedy is Bashar al Assad – the YPG-fetish narratives serve to completely erase this reality.

My own notion of solidarity stands with the oppressed of the earth, those suffering or fighting against injustice, regardless of race or creed. It’s symptomatic of the times we live in that the political left, the alleged antiracists, no longer abide by this basic principle of internationalism.

https://www.trtworld.com/opinion/we...kOwLkHkgvYqBNizCHPyGd5Zt46eF8dzxAN4G1XrKa2Xnc
 
not-bono-ever said:
Turkey is a fairly big boy in arms production these days - not one of the big 5 but significant volumes of home produced hardware.
Click to expand...

Turkey is also a big military power - it's combat power is about equivalent to (and in some areas exceeds), France,Germany and Denmark combined when they are on home soil. It is not some shit arse little tin pot place that can pushed about or intimidated stiff words, negligible sanctions and emergency meetings of groups it isn't hat fussed about joining or remaining a member of.

Turkey is the regional superpower in the ME and Central Asia - moreso than Russia actually - it simply isn't constrained by rules and policies it doesn't like. It sets the rules, and it sets them as it wishes - welcome to reality, we may not like it here...
 
kebabking said:
Turkey is also a big military power - it's combat power is about equivalent to (and in some areas exceeds), France,Germany and Denmark combined when they are on home soil. It is not some shit arse little tin pot place that can pushed about or intimidated stiff words, negligible sanctions and emergency meetings of groups it isn't hat fussed about joining or remaining a member of.

Turkey is the regional superpower in the ME and Central Asia - moreso than Russia actually - it simply isn't constrained by rules and policies it doesn't like. It sets the rules, and it sets them as it wishes - welcome to reality, we may not like it here...
Click to expand...
i wonder what effect the purge of officers a couple of years ago will have had on the efficiency of the turkish army.
 
Pickman's model said:
i wonder what effect the purge of officers a couple of years ago will have had on the efficiency of the turkish army.
Click to expand...

Limited.

Initially it was significant in a number of key areas - particularly in the Air Force where pilot numbers tumbled - but there has been a large scale recovery. Our friend has not been idle.

There are still shortfalls in some niche NATO-esque areas, but in terms of the ability to make war on the Kurds and keep the Syrians in their box, the Turks are just dandy...
 
Wild, out of the box, and probably crazy

Britain has announced an arms embargo and the US has placed santcions on Turkey, the EU likely close behind. Russia is keen to extend its influence and has been supplying them with arms.
Iran and Turkey now have common enemies and we know Assad needs deals in order to keep control of his country.

Turkey leaves NATO and alligns with Russia and Iran?
 
kebabking said:
i would wonder if this deal does bring Russia into the mix - as guarantors (for the moment) of Kurdish self-rule. Assad needs Russia to fight his war, Russia guarantees his good behaviour, Kurds join Assad, Assad gets a free win, Russia increases even further its political power within Syria.
Click to expand...
The PKK's (effective) news service quoted Salih Muslim using this phrase last night: “RUSSIA IS GUARANTOR”.
 
Don Troooomp said:
Wild, out of the box, and probably crazy

Britain has announced an arms embargo and the US has placed santcions on Turkey, the EU likely close behind. Russia is keen to extend its influence and has been supplying them with arms.
Iran and Turkey now have common enemies and we know Assad needs deals in order to keep control of his country.

Turkey leaves NATO and alligns with Russia and Iran?
Click to expand...

Why do you think NATO has been so reticent about taking action (in whatever form) against Turkey when its policies have been so harmful to western/NATO policy in Syria?

Standard stuff that just doesn't get thought about in kneejerk reactions - you think they are bad inside the tent? Think about how bad they'd be outside of the tent....
 
butchersapron said:
Two excellent pieces from some of the most consistent commentators on the last 8 years - the first should go down with only a few struggles at the closing remarks, the second is more likely to become a bone in the throat for many (and i would not personally allow TRT to publish anything of mine, never mind go along with the insistence that something pro-erdogan is inserted):

On the Turkish offensive on north-eastern Syria

Reportedly the deal brokered between the regime and the PYD-dominated SDF includes a guarantee of full Kurdish rights and autonomy. Yet it’s unlikely the regime will ever accept Kurdish autonomy, as it’s repeatedly made clear in public statements. Elsewhere in Syria all promises given by the regime in ‘reconciliation’ deals were not worth the paper they were written on. Anti-regime activists, both Arabs and Kurds, are now at risk of being rounded up and detained for possible death by torture. SDF fighters are also not safe. Just days ago Syria’s Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Maqdad declared that they had “betrayed their country and committed crimes against it.” Whilst many Kurds, abandoned by the US, may feel safer under Assad than Turkey, some Arab civilians living in SDF controlled areas such as Deir Al Zour and Raqqa fear a reconquest by the regime and Iranian militias above all else, and feel safer under Turkish protection. Syrians are rendered desperate, and dependent on foreign powers for survival. Foreign journalists also under threat by the regime have fled Syria leaving atrocities to unfold out of sight of the international media.

The decisions being made today are the machinations of foreign powers, and it is Syrian civilians who will pay the price. The current power struggles between states are manipulating ethnic divisions leading to increased sectarianism which will plague Syria for the foreseeable future. The refusal of Assad to step down when Syrians demanded it is what has led to this bloodbath along with the repeated failure of the international community to protect Syrians from slaughter and the failures of both Arab and Kurdish opposition leaders to put their own interests aside and promote unity among those who wish to be rid of authoritarian rule. One by one, around the country, the regime has crushed any democratic experiment in community autonomy, and the international community seems willing to normalize relations with a regime that has held on to power through unleashing slaughter on a massive scale. What is happening today is a disaster not only for Kurds but for all Free Syrians.

Once again the situation in Syria has highlighted the moral bankruptcy of segments of the left. Many of those protesting Turkey’s assault on north eastern Syria failed to mobilise to condemn the ongoing Russian and regime assault on Idlib where three million civilians are living in daily terror. In fact they’ve failed to notice that for years Syrians have been massacred by bombs, chemical weapons and industrial scale torture. Some of those calling for a No Fly Zone to protect Kurdish civilians from aerial bombardment previously slandered Syrians elsewhere calling for the same protection as warmongerers and agents of imperialism. Once again solidarity seems dependent not on outrage against war crimes, but on who is the perpetrator and who is the victim. Syrian lives are expendable in the battle for narratives and grand ideological frameworks.

The Syrian tragedy is a stain on the conscience of humanity.

-----

Western narratives on Syria are shamelessly orientalist

Syrian revolutionaries have been summarily abandoned by the Western world and were never given the benefit of the doubt. Why? Spoiler alert - it's because they're Arab.
If you find yourself in the position where you only care about Syria due to the recent Turkish incursion against ‘the Kurds’, while you’ve been ignoring the genocide being carried out by Assad, Iran and Russia in the rest of Syria, you might went to reflect on what is invariably a form of chauvinistic prejudice.

...

Divide and conquer was a key component of the British Empire’s strategy of conquest against the ‘lesser peoples’ it sought to dominate – it seems this logic persists if not pervades beyond that context.

It’s the only reason I can think of to get to the root of why people in the West, and I’m speaking from local to national groups here in the UK and across the Western world, would see fit to only express solidarity with ‘the Kurds’ in Syria while ignoring the aspirations and much more brutal struggles of other Syrians.

However, this chauvinism has been something actively promoted and emphasised by the YPG since the beginning of the Syrian revolution and subsequent civil war. Not only has it aided their aim at creating a one-party ethnopolitical statelet in the parts of Syria it has come to control, but it has managed to exploit Western anti-Arab racism and Islamophobia for its own benefit.


...

Again, the intersection between YPG fetishism and support for Assad is rooted in real political allegiances and ideological affinity.

I must say: none of what I write is about justifying war against the YPG.

This is about deconstructing the agenda of people, who face no harm whatsoever, who fetishise ‘the Kurds’ at the expense of the victims of a genuine genocide – who discount and disregard those who face the ultimate struggle for survival merely because they look, speak and think differently than them, or because they don’t meet the necessary ideals of their preconceived ideological contrivances.

It’s also because, whatever you think about the Turkish incursion or the presence of 'jihadists' in Idlib or any aspect of the war in Syria, the real source of this collectively monstrous tragedy is Bashar al Assad – the YPG-fetish narratives serve to completely erase this reality.

My own notion of solidarity stands with the oppressed of the earth, those suffering or fighting against injustice, regardless of race or creed. It’s symptomatic of the times we live in that the political left, the alleged antiracists, no longer abide by this basic principle of internationalism.
Click to expand...

Well written, we'll never know how democratic the democratic Syrian opposition was, and ostensible support for Assad (or if he died suddenly, another strongman backed by the clique of around families who support him) still remains strong.
 
The call for a Western no-fly zone throughout the war was also not without its problems.
Its dynamic would be unpredictable and not under the control of the western working class.

Syrian defectors failed to defect many air force members from the SNA.
Russian and Iranian governments were willing to step in keep their air operations going.
The Russian and Iranian working class much like the Western working class was to press on anything.

The previous history of a Western no-fly zone enforced in 1994 against Serbian planes was no guarantee of anything.
 
kebabking said:
Why do you think NATO has been so reticent about taking action (in whatever form) against Turkey when its policies have been so harmful to western/NATO policy in Syria?

Standard stuff that just doesn't get thought about in kneejerk reactions - you think they are bad inside the tent? Think about how bad they'd be outside of the tent....
Click to expand...

NATO won't do anything, but Turkey might well decide to work with Russia and the other lot in reaction to the US, EU, and UK's condemnation/actions against them.
A common enemy is a good reason to forge an alliance with other groups, even if they have differing goals.
 
This wild analysis is only intended as a thinking point, but it isn't impossible so it can't hurt to consider the point. Politicians, especially nut job ones, can turn around a country in very little time, as we see with Trump's stupidity.
 
butchersapron said:
Depends which 'at that time' we're talking about - 2011-12 they had the clear option of joining with the wider revolution instead of allowing assad to remove his forces from kurdish areas to stem the tide that was just about to engulf his regime. A wider victory then would have likely resulted in an internationally brokered outcome that meant either regional autonomy (as they now claim was always their sole demand) or some sort of internationally recognised looser federation with the KRG as a step towards an independent form of kurdistan further down the line. Which, of course, would and will always be opposed by turkey - or may even lead to yet another kurdish civil war, but that option was there at that point.

After Kobani and the use of the USAF i think the thoughts switched to making as much use of that help as possible to gain as much territory as possible within syria as quickly as possible (you could say the flattening of raqqa and the civilians deaths there was one of the prices for that, but that's for a wider argument i haven't time for i think) and to then use them as a bargaining chip when the conflict dies down, with the US being the guarantor, rather than a slower and clearly arab led and dominated clearing of the rest of the northern syria, or a push against assad in the north east to open another anti-regime front. They chose the US and helped produce the conditions that meant that any other options dissapeared over the horizon rather than becoming more likely. And not for the first time.
Click to expand...

There's a very detailed break-down of the PKK-ification of the PYD/SDF here. Partial pro-Nato source, but a useful attempt at an explainer, I think (From 2017, so might have been posted before).
 
Serious question (sorry I am not so up on all the politics, but as I am based in Turkey, this stuff does affect my day to day life):
Is this forum protected? Can only members view it?
 
I think anyone can see it but I also think it's completely below the radar of the Turkish authorities and their supporters. Unlike FB where I have had posts deleted from a Welsh Kurdish solidarity page though not recently.
 
Last edited:
miss direct said:
Serious question (sorry I am not so up on all the politics, but as I am based in Turkey, this stuff does affect my day to day life):
Is this forum protected? Can only members view it?
Click to expand...

i'd like to echo teqniq, but i don't share their confidence - at least in the future.

given your position, i'd stroll through the thread, find half a dozen posters you find informative and trustworthy, and ask them to join a private conversation with you to help you make future decisions.

i'm sorry to write this, but i'd start being really careful about what you write on these issues and how much biographical information you put out.
 
Interesting suggestion online that Assad won't meaningfully contest Erdogan's invasion because the 30km buffer zone is pre-arranged & mutually beneficial. Erdogan gets to suppress a Kurdish authority on his borders, & gets shot of 3 million refugees. Assad gets the end of the mutinous autonomous region, replaced with a open-air prison for millions of anti-regime Syrians, policed by jihadists. He also gets his oil fields back, which suits him & Putin who wants some money back from his investment. Following days/weeks will show whether this analysis has any merit.
 
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