Turkey's Splitting Headache
"They said in the mosques that they could kill all Kurds between seven and 77 years old. So we collected our things and left, immediately."
Sahab Basravi, Syian Kurd
"I hope that we are not faced with a more populous refugee wave, but if we are, we have taken our precautions."
"A refugee wave that can be expressed by hundreds of thousands is a possibility."
Numan Kurtulmus, Turkish deputy prime minister
"Fierce clashes are still underway but the ... advance to the east of Kobani has been halted since last night."
Redur Xelil, People's Protection Units spokesman
Turkish troops are trying to control the flood of refugees, and stop Kurdish fighters crossing into Syria
Between 250,000 to 400,000 people are thought to normally live in the region around Kobani. Close to 1.6-million Syrian refugees have thus far entered Turkey from Syria since 2011. Less than three kilometres from the Turkish border, Kobani is now a ghost town with about two thousand of its former 50,000 inhabitants left, along with a few Kurdish fighters. They are mostly elderly, the citizens, determined to protect themselves and their property; too old to rush off, but still desperate.
The Islamic State has conquered new territory, overrunning about an additional 50 Kurdish villages.
The Islamic State/ISIL/ISIS has conquered new territory in their drive to attain and stretch their geography for their caliphate, in the process attacking and killing non-Sunni Muslims, Christians, Yazidis, Alawites (minority Shias) and Shiites in Iraq and Syria. The Kurds are targeted because of their secularism.
ISIS's reputation marches before it, instilling fear and terror in the hearts of the fleeing refugees. The Turkish border town of Suric, a Kurdish enclave, has seen its population more than double in recent days. Refugees, terrorized and weeping in fear and despair at their forlorn condition, have been accommodated in parks, squares and hospitals, with the Turkish government setting up temporary tent camps.
A massive security presence of Turkish police and soldiers has been deployed in huge numbers. This is an influx of Kurds, after all, stretching Turkey's patience to accommodate the presence of even more of that troublesome tribe within its borders. Their mission is to prevent People's Protection Units fighters from crossing the border to join the Kurdistan Workers' Party, their Turkish cousins, outlawed by the Government of Turkey as a terrorist group.
BULENT KILIC/AFP/Getty Images A Kurdish woman runs away from a water cannon near the Syrian
border after Turkish authorities temporarily closed the border at the
southeastern town of Suruc in Sanliurfa province, on September 22, 2014.
Some 130,000 people had flooded across its border from Syria as Kurdish
fighters battled Islamic State group jihadists trying to capture a
strategic town.
This is the same Turkey, needless to say, that considers Hamas to be a responsible Arabic Islamist government; reflecting their own values. Turkey's support of Hamas and respect for its terrorist tactics simply points out that it depends on whose ox is being gored. Turkey has no patience for anyone who might suggest that the Kurds deserve their own sovereign territory.
Turkey's cruelty to the Kurds is legendary, as is its failure to acknowledge the Armenian massacre and its atrocities committed against Greeks.
This however, is a NATO member demonstrating its capacity for human rights, welcoming within its borders Syrian refugees fleeing the depraved military response of an Alawite Syrian government against its Syrian Sunni population rebelling against the oppression under which it lives at the whims of a Shiite-offshoot regime.
As a NATO ally Turkey also refuses to involve itself in a U.S.-led allied battle against the Islamic State. Whose victims it now welcomes, however grudgingly.
Labels: Conflict, Hamas, ISIS, Islamism, Jihad, Refugees, Syria, Turkey
posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, September 24, 2014
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