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Guest Post: Turkey, The Kurds And Iraq - The Prize & Peril Of Kirkuk
Submitted by Reva Bhalla via Stratfor,
In June 1919, aboard an Allied warship en route to Paris, sat Damat Ferid Pasha, the Grand Vizier of a crumbling Ottoman Empire. The elderly statesman, donning an iconic red fez and boasting an impeccably groomed mustache, held in his hands a memorandum that he was to present to the Allied powers at the Quai d'Orsay. The negotiations on postwar reparations started five months earlier, but the Ottoman delegation was prepared to make the most of its tardy invitation to the talks. As he journeyed across the Mediterranean that summer toward the French shore, Damat Ferid mentally rehearsed the list of demands he would make to the Allied powers during his last-ditch effort to hold the empire together.
He began with a message, not of reproach, but of inculpability: "Gentlemen, I should not be bold enough to come before this High Assembly if I thought that the Ottoman people had incurred any responsibility in the war that has ravaged Europe and Asia with fire and sword." His speech was followed by an even more defiant memorandum, denouncing any attempt to redistribute Ottoman land to the Kurds, Greeks and Armenians, asserting: "In Asia, the Turkish lands are bounded on the south by the provinces of Mosul and Diyarbakir, as well as a part of Aleppo as far as the Mediterranean." When Damat Ferid's demands were presented in Paris, the Allies were in awe of the gall displayed by the Ottoman delegation. British Prime Minister David Lloyd George regarded the presentation as a "good joke," while U.S. President Woodrow Wilson said he had never seen anything more "stupid." They flatly rejected Damat Ferid's apparently misguided appeal -- declaring that the Turks were unfit to rule over other races, regardless of their common Muslim identity -- and told him and his delegation to leave. The Western powers then proceeded, through their own bickering, to divide the post-Ottoman spoils.
Under far different circumstances today, Ankara is again boldly appealing to the West to follow its lead in shaping policy in Turkey's volatile Muslim backyard. And again, Western powers are looking at Turkey with incredulity, waiting for Ankara to assume responsibility for the region by tackling the immediate threat of the Islamic State with whatever resources necessary, rather than pursuing a seemingly reckless strategy of toppling the Syrian government. Turkey's behavior can be perplexing and frustrating to Western leaders, but the country's combination of reticence in action and audacity in rhetoric can be traced back to many of the same issues that confronted Istanbul in 1919, beginning with the struggle over the territory of Mosul.
The Turkish Fight for Mosul
The Turks, in no shape to bargain with London and mired in a deep internal debate over whether Turkey should forego these lands and focus instead on the benefits of a downsized republic, lost the argument and were forced to renounce their claims to the Mosul territory in 1925. As far as the Brits and the French were concerned, the largely Kurdish territory would serve as a vital buffer space to prevent the Turks from eventually extending their reach from Asia Minor to territories in Mesopotamia, Syria and Armenia. But the fear of Turkish expansion was not the only factor informing the European strategy to keep northern Iraq out of Turkish hands. Since the days of Herodotus and Nebuchadnezzar, there have been stories of eternal flames arising from the earth of Baba Gurgur near the town of Kirkuk. German explorer and cartographer Carsten Niebuhr wrote in the 18th century: "A place called Baba Gurgur is above all remarkable because the earth is so hot that eggs and meat can be boiled here." The flames were in fact produced by the natural gas and naphtha seeping through cracks in the rocks, betraying the vast quantities of crude oil lying beneath the surface. London wasted little time in calling on geologists from Venezuela, Mexico, Romania and Indochina to study the land and recommend sites for drilling. On Oct. 14, 1927, the fate of Kirkuk was sealed: A gusher rising 43 meters (around 140 feet) erupted from the earth, dousing the surrounding land with some 95,000 barrels of crude oil for 10 days before the well could be capped. With oil now part of the equation, the political situation in Kirkuk became all the more flammable. The British mostly imported Sunni Arab tribesmen to work the oil fields, gradually reducing the Kurdish majority and weakening the influence of the Turkmen minority in the area. The Arabization project was given new energy when the Arab Baath Socialist Party came to power through a military coup in 1968. Arabic names were given to businesses, neighborhoods, schools and streets, while laws were adjusted to pressure Kurds to leave Kirkuk and transfer ownership of their homes and lands to Arabs. Eviction tactics turned ghastly in 1988 under Saddam Hussein's Anfal campaign, during which chemical weapons were employed against the Kurdish population. The Iraqi government continued with heavy-handed tactics to Arabize the territory until the collapse of the Baathist regime in 2003. Naturally, revenge was a primary goal as Kurdish factions worked quickly to repopulate the region with Kurds and drive the Arabs out. Even as Kirkuk, its oil-rich fields and a belt of disputed territories stretching between Diyala and Nineveh provinces have remained officially under the jurisdiction of the Iraqi central government in Baghdad, the Kurdish leadership has sought to redraw the boundaries of Iraqi Kurdistan. After the Iraqi Kurdish region gained de facto autonomy with the creation of a no-fly zone in 1991 and then formally coalesced into the Kurdistan Regional Government after the fall of Saddam Hussein, Kurdish influence gradually expanded in the disputed areas. Kurdish representation increased through multi-ethnic political councils, facilitated by the security protection these communities received from the Kurdish peshmerga and by the promise of energy revenues, while Baghdad remained mired in its own problems. Formally annexing Kirkuk and parts of Nineveh and Diyala, part of the larger Kurdish strategy, would come in due time. Indeed, the expectation that legalities of the annexation process would soon be completed convinced a handful of foreign energy firms to sign contracts with the Kurdish authorities -- as opposed to Baghdad -- enabling the disputed territories to finally begin realizing the region's energy potential. Then the unexpected happened: In June, the collapse of the Iraqi army in the north under the duress of the Islamic State left the Kirkuk fields wide open, allowing the Kurdish peshmerga to finally and fully occupy them. Though the Kurds now sit nervously on the prize, Baghdad, Iran, local Arabs and Turkmen and the Islamic State are eyeing these fields with a predatory gaze. At the same time, a motley force of Iran-backed Shiite militias, Kurdish militants and Sunni tribesmen are trying to flush the Islamic State out of the region in order to return to settling the question of where to draw the line on Kurdish autonomy. The Sunnis will undoubtedly demand a stake in the oil fields that the Kurds now control as repayment for turning on the Islamic State, guaranteeing a Kurdish-Sunni confrontation that Baghdad will surely exploit. The modern Turkish government is looking at Iraq and Syria in a way similar to how Damat Ferid did almost a century ago when he sought in Paris to maintain Turkish sovereignty over the region. From Ankara's point of view, the extension of a Turkish sphere of influence into neighboring Muslim lands is the antidote to weakening Iraqi and Syrian states. Even if Turkey no longer has direct control over these lands, it hopes to at least indirectly re-establish its will through select partners, whether a group of moderate Islamist forces in Syria or, in northern Iraq, a combination of Turkmen and Sunni factions, along with a Kurdish faction such as Kurdistan Regional Government President Massoud Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party. The United States may currently be focused on the Islamic State, but Turkey is looking years ahead at the mess that will likely remain. This is why Turkey is placing conditions on its involvement in the battle against the Islamic State: It is trying to convince the United States and its Sunni Arab coalition partners that it will inevitably be the power administering this region. Therefore, according to Ankara, all players must conform to its priorities, beginning with replacing Syria's Iran-backed Alawite government with a Sunni administration that will look first to Ankara for guidance. However, the Turkish vision of the region simply does not fit the current reality and is earning Ankara more rebuke than respect from its neighbors and the West. The Kurds, in particular, will continue to form the Achilles' heel of Turkish policymaking. In Syria, where the Islamic State is closing in on the city of Kobani on Turkey's border, Ankara is faced with the unsavory possibility that it will be drawn into a ground fight with a well-equipped insurgent force. Moreover, Turkey would be fighting on the same side as a variety of Kurdish separatists, including members of Turkey's Kurdistan Workers' Party, which Ankara has every interest in neutralizing. Turkey faces the same dilemma in Iraq, where it may unwittingly back Kurdish separatists in its fight against the Islamic State. Just as critical, Turkey cannot be comfortable with the idea that Kirkuk is in the hands of the Iraqi Kurds unless Ankara is assured exclusive rights over that energy and the ability to extinguish any oil-fueled ambitions of Kurdish independence. But Turkey has competition. Iraqi President Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan is not willing to make itself beholden to Turkey, as did Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party, while financial pressures continue to climb. Instead, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan is staying close to Iran and showing a preference to work with Baghdad. Meanwhile, local Arab and Turkmen resistance to Kurdish rule is rising, a factor that Baghdad and Iran will surely exploit as they work to dilute Kurdish authority by courting local officials in Kirkuk and Nineveh with promises of energy rights and autonomy. This is the crowded battleground that Turkey knows well. A long and elaborate game of "keep away" will be played to prevent the Kurds from consolidating control over oil-rich territory in the Kurdish-Arab borderland, while the competition between Turkey and Iran will emerge into full view. For Turkey to compete effectively in this space, it will need to come to terms with the reality that Ankara will not defy its history by resolving the Kurdish conundrum, nor will it be able to hide within its borders and avoid foreign entanglements.
The Oil Factor
The Turkish Dilemma
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Destruction of ALL nation states, starting with those near Israel and thereby the creation of GREATER ISRAEL.
Beat me to it.
What you are witnessing is the birth of the universal caliphate which will ally itself with China and head west to the plain of Armageddon, where it will meet with the King of the North (Puta) and the armies of the whore of Babylon (EU).
Behold, a pale horse.
Very sloppy interpretation.
You obviously do not understand revelation 13 & 16-19:
If you read, and interpreted correctly, you would understand that:
-Babylon the Great (the whore), is the global financial system that rides on the back of, and controls governments by means of love of money.
-the Beast out of the Sea represents the dominant world powers in history (Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome, and finally, the USA). This is the Beast that Babylon the Great "rides."
Nor do you understand Daniel chapters 8-12:
The King of the North is in modern times the USA (and its allies), the King of the South is Iran (and its allies).
Listen Truth.
Tell me. Is it not time for the death of the fairy tales and all those who "BELIEVE" in them?
End it, the "HUMANS" are ready to evolve!
Listen. This is begging for a parody account. Paging Baltimore Ecstasy Trader.
disappointing, as always, to see Hedgers regurgitating nonsense from the Bible.
In any event:
The only true prophecies are the self-fulfilling kind. Belief in the "truth" of the Bible and Koran is going to, in part, cause global war. Not an omnipotent Be-ing. Stupid humans who think that "faith" in the truth of some ancient text [but not the other guys' text] is any kind of proof.
What I find fascinating: the people that wrote it, didn't even know where the sun is during night but nevertheless today people take every word from these writers as revelation.
How long till after amerikas bombings that they claim that new territory as a annexed part of Israel?
As laughable as it may seem at first: during the planning for and execution of the Iraq War I argued vociferously that Kurdistan was a key locality for stabilizing the surrounding region and securing American interests in such stability.
My solution was not further enforcement of the no fly zone or even the establishment of a garrisoned US military base; -but an offer to the peoples of that region of formal annexation as a legitimate territory of the United States.
The U.S. is non-contigitous. It would have been just another terrirorial island, like Hawaii or Puerto Rico -albeit situated within a hostile desert and not a sea- to be defended, and modernized in due course...
Just what we need millions of Muslim Puerto Ricans.
West Side Story with Kurds and Turks...
I smell a Tony.
Urban Ledgend
True
HOW TO STOP ISLAMIC TERRORISTS...... it worked once in our History...
Once in U.S. history an episode of Islamic terrorism was very quickly stopped. It happened in the Philippines about 1911, when Gen. John J. Pershing was in command of the garrison. There had been numerous Islamic terrorist attacks, so "Black Jack" told his boys to catch the perps and teach them a lesson.
Forced to dig their own graves, the terrorists were all tied to posts, execution style. The U.S. soldiers then brought in pigs and slaughtered them, rubbing their bullets in the blood and fat. Thus, the terrorists were terrorized; they saw that they would be contaminated with hogs' blood. This would mean that they could not enter Heaven, even if they died as terrorist martyrs.
All but one was shot, their bodies dumped into the grave, and the hog guts dumped atop the bodies. The lone survivor was allowed to escape back to the terrorist camp and tell his brethren what happened to the others. This brought a stop to terrorism in the Philippines for the next 50 years.
Pointing a gun into the face of Islamic terrorists won't make them flinch.
They welcome the chance to die for Allah. Like Gen. Pershing, we must show them that they won't get to Muslim heaven (which they believe has an endless supply of virgins) but instead will die with the hated pigs of the devil.
They already claim the whole planet, nothing exceptional about Syria, look at America, or Ukraine.
Stratfor -- serving the oligarchs since whenever, and getting hacked by a bunch of kids since more recently.
Globalist IntelligenceTM
Oil & Religion causes so much Friction
oil is a religion in the west
Religion & Just About Anything seem to cause friction.
Reading ZH you should have learnt, that behind the presented reasons often very different ones are.
So if you believe Religion was the problem, then you obviously are ignorant against the suppression of ethnicities and people.
That an own state for the Kurds is denied, is a crime against international law, which grants the right of self-determination.
And IS is also not a problem because it's Religion was the main problem, but the reason is, that for almost 25 years USrael and it's vassals are bombing and terrorizing and attacking one muslim country after the next. And if you open your eyes a bit wider, you maybe even could see, that the core of the problem in this region is Israel.
I don't want to say that religious fanatics are innocent, I just want to raise awareness, that religion is often used as tool - just like atheism is being used as tool to achieve certain goals.
It's not so, that atheists were the intelligent ones and religious people were the dumb ones! That you believe that is in itself already a result of a brainwashing process by atheist media.
Is it just me or has US foreign policy became exceedingly drunkenly irrational since the Deep Water Horizon debacle? The US .gov and Friends have really been going balls out to get oilz since then. Im wondering if that accident has caused things to speed up, if you will. Sure did lose a ton of that sweet sweet nectar in that cock up.
Deep water horizon?
Try all the way back to operation TPAJAX.
Sure, sure, I get US policy, Im not nearly as old as some or as well read, so I dont catch all references or know all acronyms and for that I apologize. But taking .govs past into perspective its all seemed pretty well calculated, well managed, and had enough "intelligence" to pull off the proper propaganda campaigns to function rather...ummmm....under the radar so to speak.
But since DWH, it just seems to me that they are acting far more beligerent than usual. They lost a tremendous amount of oil and have been forced to seek out other sources to maintain the status quo. Everything is starting to look like a push to a finish line that was moved up 1 mile, 7 miles into a 10 mile race.
thats what it seems like to me, anyway.
Im not nearly as old as some or as well read
A Century Of War by William Engdahl ( http://www.takeoverworld.info/pdf/Engdahl__Century_of_War_book.pdf ) is a great starting point.
excellent article explaining the motivation of the Turks and their current behavior. Someone should give John Kerry and Joe Biden a helping hand and include this in their daily brief. Those idiots need all the help they can...especially Biden whose "Middle East Apology Tour 2014" continues.
Less wordy summary.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-09-24/case-you-are-still-confused-wha...
The Middle East is like the mythical Hydra. Every piece of attempted surgery on that part of the world only seems to make matters worse and what makes it impossible is the array of self interested surgeons like the UK and the USA believe that blood letting is a cure.
The UK sowed many of the seeds of today's woes in the Middle East and the USA is doing its bit by continuing to water them.
If ISIS was real they would attack Turkey... or Israel.
They are not real. they are just a US trained mercenary army.
Saddam and Noriega were once "America's boys" but with time turned against America. ISIS might end up doing the same.
"They [ISIS] are not real. they are just a US trained mercenary army"
If this is the case as some people suspect, it must mean that ISIS has "gone off script". That would explain why they're now being bombed. It raises the question of whether they were ever genuinely "on script" or whether their earlier co-operation with the West was a giant con-trick they played because Washington was channeling money & weapons to them when it suited them.
Either way, it sure looks like ISIS is an evil monster of the West's own making.
What a surprise.
Smacker - It raises the question of whether they are actually, really getting bombed. Israel wants a pipeline route thru Syria for their new Leviathan offshore gas find. ISIS is on scene to clear the way.
"It raises the question of whether they are actually, really getting bombed."
HA-HA. Interesting. And given that ISIS is about to seize control of that Syrian town next to the Turkish border despite Western claims of bombing them, you may be right. And the Turks are doing literally nothing to hold them back because the town is stuffed full of PKK "terrorists".
Stratfor's summation of the situation has not explained why Turkey is hostile to the Baathists/Alawites in Syria. It is treated as a given. But an accomodation with the Syrian regime would give Turkey the leverage it needs to keep the Kurds away and down. It will also strengthen its leverage with Kirkuk-related oil producers, who could really use Turkey's and Syria's cooperation in order to get their oil onto the international markets. I never perceived Turkey and Syria to be hostile toward each other until the 2011 uprising agains Assad began. It is certainly obvious to anyone now that there is one.
By hook or by crook , we WILL invade Syria.
Oh ya, LONG LIVE THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE!
Yes, bog Putin down in Ukraine while raping it, setting up the take down of Syria. \
Don't you love how the Zio media just trumps up a Country for takedown (Libya, Syria) without even bothering to explain why. Ask 1,000 American's if we need to take down Syria, then ask the ones that said yes "why"....they wouldn't know WTF to say, as there are just dumbshit sheep.
Today that is very easy to answer, it's a matter of national security. Some decades ago, not so easy.
We take down Syria to install a new regime supportive of a Qatar gas line into Turkey and on to Europe so Europe is no longer beholden to Putin. Biggest source of nat gas on the planet is little Qatar. Never mind Qatar is major sponsor of Muslim Bro. Also interferes with Iranian dreams of ME hegemony though risks the proxy war going full frontal. Making omelets.
Interesting history. Here's my take: Erdogan blew it. If Turkey had supported the US and NATO in 2003 and since, if it had maintained even the tenuous friendship they had with Israel for many years, then they'd have immense credibility to be the NATO surrogate for the entire region, even to get back those regions they wanted. Instead they have Joe Biden *accurately* claiming that they support ISIS. Of course they made Biden apologize for that. And like the other ISIS patron Saudi Arabia, now Turkey is ambivalent about their creation, and at least needing to get the bit back in their mouth. And so they have no credibility at all. Doesn't mean they won't get something out of the deal, but also means if they're not careful somebody may divide Turkey into three regions and hand them out to others.
Turkey today under Erdogan is neither a US or NATO ally. He has his own agenda. The Turks who demonstrated against him when he was PM, were ruthlessly put down by his Internal security forces.
And today, he is happily watching the Kurds in Kobani being slowly slaughtered by IS. Unless the US and the EU agree to his demands, he won't lift a finger to provide any assistance to the people of Kobani.
Why does he continue to assist the flow of Islamists from all over the world, to enter Turkey and then cross over to Syria to join IS ? It is because he is an Islamist. Who funneled the aid provided by the US to the "moderate" anti-Assad forces ? Is it a coincidence IS does not seem concerned that the Turks might intervene in Kobani ?
Erdogan has blood on his hands. In a just world, he should be charged for assisting IS in the unrelenting needless slaughter, murder, rape and pillage of the innocents ie Yazidis, Kurds etc etc.
newb: good stuff.
When Saddam refused building an oil pipline out of Azerbaijan, we condemned his killing of Kurds. When Turkey killed even more Kurds, but allowed the the same pipeline to proceed via their territory, we turned a blind eye.
So now, when Kurds are stuck between a rock and a hard place, we don't know how to bullshit our way out of the situation. On one hand, Turkey's an ally and ISIS is the enemy, but if we were helping Kurds, we'd be hurting ISIS and going against Turkey. If we went against Kurds, we'd be helping Turkey, but also helping ISIS.
Do we care about Kurds this time or not? What pipeline deals hang in the balance this time around?
ISIS enters Iran.... then we know who runs them.
"Caliphate" ain't just a big drought in San Fernando.
Syria & Iraq both need to be redrawn. Far North-East Syria (Kurdish control) should join up with Iraqi Kurdistan as part of the new Kurdistan.
Shia Iraq (Southern Iraq) should become a new country - Very much majority Shia.
Western Iraq & Eastern Syria need to become a new Sunni State - perhaps with a Capital in Al-Raqqa.
Rest of Syria (Effectively Western & Southern Syria) needs to become the new boundaries for Syria.
Sykes-Picot needs to be thrown into the dustbin of history.
Of course - the problem with the plan I've laid out is everyone is some sort of 'loser' and the plan is too logical!
Hence - there's no chance it will happen!!
Go ahead - draw lines in the sand. It is blood that makes lines into borders. Send 600,000 US draftees to enforce your will and treat each casualty as the price an Empire pays to enforce its will
One gets the impression in this guest post that Turkish language was spoken throughout the region rather than "Ottoman Turkish" which was a mixture of Persian, Arabic and Turkic languages and vocabulary probably unintelligible to Istanbul Turks.
That Turkey was an ally of the Germans in WW1 and had inflicted serious losses on ANZACS at Gallipoli and been the main enemy of Allenby's armies across the Egyptian, Gaza and Syrian battle fronts; is omitted from this piece.
Erdogan and his nutcase Foreign Minister are out to lunch. They are going to lose eastern Turkey if they are not careful and watch the NATO ally "turkey" disintegrate much like the Ottomans did
Absolutely.
The current weakening of Pax Americana influence in sacred Oil Patch, resulting from GWB's past mayhem and legacy, as the subsequent Wahhabist vs Shia "divide and ruin" shenanigans --all aided and abetted by US hubristic mindset in the region-- has created this current inextricable mess.
In the effacement of the Sykes Picot containment of Ottoman claims to the Syrian-Mesopotamian plain, of which they still ominously control the water supply (Tigris & Euphrates), but whose Achilles heel has been the Kurdish presence; inheritence like a bristling thorn excroissance borne of past rose bush of Seljuk-Ayyubid Empire legacy. Saladin was a Kurd from Tikrit region just like mixed breed Saddam.
Balkanisation of the region has occurred over many centuries, in terms of ethnicity, religion and resultant politics.
Oil has made this war torn region the nexus of all geopolitical contradictions since Pax Britannica days of post Ottoman collapse; whose current sinister harbinger is the US administration, imposing its vision of Pax Americana since BW revoke and petrodollar hegemony.
Now its payback and reversion to traditional regional rivalries, with the Templar State of Israel and the petromonarchies left to protect the regional interests of western civilization.
How can a Wahhabist monarchy and an Apartheid oriented Zionist Israel represent the political interests of the West, whose cultural and political heritages are diametrically opposed to both theocracy (of whatever origin) AND ethnicity (same comment) as the forge of Nations all over the world?
Some blow-back now for the West.
An ill wind blows from East to West, which is principally of our own making.
Both our belief in ME Oil as source of life and energy to our civilization, as in the politics of "divide and ruin" via MIC strong arming, are being questioned by this current conundrum that has ruined the purity of our thinking as that of our money lines.
Don't expect the <Turks to help us on that account. They will just put the region back to its historical context and continue to play their own "divide and ruin" games.
But where will the West get its oil if that happens?
Something tells me that the West is tied to the region for another fifty years!
Erdogan thinks he is a sultan and he wants to restore the Ottoman empire, eying on Iraq, Syria and the Balkans. Turkey has chosen sides, for now. It allowed -as witnessed by journalists- IS fighters to enter Kobani via Turkey. Turkish armed forces did nothing to prevent that. Erdogan wants to crush the Kurds and deal with IS later. But this could turn on him.
Well, the West frowned on coups and wanted democracy in Turkey. So they got a nice Islamist in office who could control the army. The US and NATO used to be able to rely on Turkey. But that was the Turkey of yester years. The current Islamist President has his own agenda. He wants power and influence in the Middle East funded and paid for by the West.
Erdogan is a taker and US and NATO should suspend Turkey's membership in NATO until he accepts that mutual defence is a 2 way street.
I hope it all blows up in his face and the Kurds in Turkey secede and join together with the Syrian and Iraqi Kurds to form their own independent state.
Considering that he is also reaching up north and "conquering" Bulgaria, a EU member it is no surprise that he also wants to secure power south of his borders.
http://www.turkishweekly.net/news/173110/98-gallup-parallel-tabulation-ethnic-turkish-party-dps-close-to-becoming-second-power-in-bulgaria.html
In last weeks elections, the Turkish party has won considerable power in the Bulgarian parlamanet. A friend (that lives close to the Turkish-Bulgarian border) told me that Buses full of "voters" (people with dual citizenship) drive from Turkey into Bulgaria JUST to vote. They never come back, they never live there and only speak Turkish.
The EU is subverted by Turkey (see also Germany and the hold they have on the Government, who cannot speak against this because of fear that it could be interpreted as "Nazi", "Right-wing" or "Racist").
I'm sick of this shit, this reads like something from Dr. Seuss - The Kurds vs. the Turds, then you have the Zitti's, etc. Let's bring back ALL our troops and stop spending money on things that we can't change and haven't been successful at and let's just BUY the oil; do you know how much oil we could have bought for the $3-4 trillion we just pissed away? It's staggering....
Imagine how expensive that would be if it was real money?
Can we please just simplify this to what it is. It is Turkish ethnic cleansing of the kurds by Proxy. It also gets rid of the Alawites in Syria. That is their end game. It also allows them to at somepoint invade northern Iraq in the name of peace keeping and claim the oil. Is it that hard to see this?
This is Turkey...
...its people and places, its history. Without the politics.
Well, ask the Germans who live around Cologne and/or Dusseldorf if they share your enthusiasm for Turkish people. LOL
(I am NOT a German, but have visited these cities - not amusing, I can tell you.)
Your 'LOL' is suggesting you saw what you wanted to see...
Actually, I didn't wanted to see anything. This monstrosity (in the Ottoman-style) was facing me without searching for it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cologne_Central_Mosque
...and before you come bashing down on me as Christian or something, I am an Atheist. No need for more " ancient religion" in the midst of a pretty secular city. What will they teach there? Just wondering.
Asking myself how a big-ass new cathedral would go down in Ankara...I'm sure friend Erdogan would sign the building permit in a heartbeat!
This is all such a mess and a great deal of it is because Turkey does not want to help the Kurds in fear it will come back to haunt their country. Just over a year ago I wrote an article advocating the only and most likely solution for Syria would be to break the country into two parts. Getting anyone to move in that direction would be very dificult.
If Assad remains in power those who have suffered and been displaced will never forgive him and live under his rule. A change in ruling factions is also not a viable solution in that it would probably unleash a wave of killings, and reprisals. Remember the Shiite-related Alawites rightly fear an Al Qaeda led triumph as the worst possible outcome, they would make the mass killing of Alawites their first priority.
The secular leaders of the Syrian rebels, clustered in the exile group known as the Syrian National Council, also must worry about the extremist threat they themselves would face if the Assad government fell. It all appeared a massively ugly mess and little has changed. More on why I finally came to this solution and why it still remains the best option in the article below.
http://brucewilds.blogspot.com/2013/09/syria-must-be-split-in-two.html
Is it me or coincidence that that map looks like a man with his head chopped off? Strange
Where does the supply come from?
USrael is capable to even sanction Russia, Iraq was strangled so tha tmore than 300.000 Iraqi children died, so where are the sanctions against IS and the threats against all states and companies doing business with it?
This stinks to high heaven.
ps: excellent, informative and probably quite objective article
Stratfor howlers of the day:
this must be spook humour
"...
Western powers are looking at Turkey with incredulity, waiting for Ankara to assume responsibility for the region by tackling the immediate threat of the Islamic State with whatever resources necessary, rather than pursuing a seemingly reckless strategy of toppling the Syrian government.
...
Then the unexpected happened: In June, the collapse of the Iraqi army in the north under the duress of the Islamic State left the Kirkuk fields wide open
...."