generalspeaking

Aiding The Terrorism of Choice

"The PYD is for us, equal to the PKK. It is a terror organization."
"It would be wrong for the United States — with whom we are friends and allies in NATO — to talk openly and to expect us to say `yes' to such a support to a terrorist organization."
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who with his Justice and Development Islamist party led Turkey away from its almost-century of Ataturkian secularism, to a more classical fundamental Islamist reality, was confident that with him at the helm Turkey was preparing to move from the 17th largest economy in the world to rise to take its place among the economically advanced countries of the world in the 10th place.

He was also more than a little pleased with himself and his diplomatic skills to have been able to persuade the Turkish-Kurdish Kurdistan Worker's Party to sign an initial peace treaty, bringing the country's decades of conflict in which 40,000 lives were claimed, to a close. And then things began to fall apart in the neighbourhood, when Syria became embroiled in a deadly civil war with its government choosing to bomb its own civilians.

Turkey's stability under the emotionally volatile and religiously-motivated Erdogan was carried off in an unintended direction when Ankara decided to support the Syrian Sunni rebels against their Shia-Alawite government with its murderous bent. Perhaps President Erdogan failed to calculate that Syria would become an irresistible magnet for terrorist groups, even though he has a functioning love affair with the terrorist group Hamas.

President Assad remains firmly in power thanks to the assistance of yet another terrorist group, Hezbollah, and its sponsor, the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Al Quds section of the Republican Guard. Still, Syria has been irremediably fractured religiously, geographically, and the hated Syrian Kurds have declared their full autonomy. A situation that infuriates and frustrates Mr. Erdogan; on the one hand that Bashar al-Assad still rules Syria, on the other that a Kurdish group whose past includes aiding his own PKK Kurdish opposition has declared itself independent.

A looming threat of emulation suddenly raised the spectre of Turkey's PKK becoming restive once again, and violently agitating for independence in Mr. Erdogan's back vision. The growing presence of ISIS which now controls a large portion of the Turkish-Syrian border another chink in Turkey's armour, though not nearly as troubling to Mr. Erdogan as the PKK in eastern Turkey, and to which he addressed himself by bombing Kurdish PKK fighters near Hakkari in southeastern Turkey.

The softening relations between Ankara and its Kurdish population has now been fired into rebellion caused by Turkey's contentious decision to defy its NATO membership and responsibility as a neighbour to aid the Syrian Kurds battling ISIS intent on taking the Kurdish city of Kobani, to take possession of the entire border area, and unsettle Syrian Kurds' plan of their own continuous geography. Better not to worry about the future of ISIS on the border than a Kurdish state, for Turkey.



The violent protests against the Turkish Islamist government by its Kurdish population as a result of the government's stance on Kobani has seen 37 people die, and hundreds injured. The jailed leader of the PKK, Abdullah Ocalan, has stated that peace talks with Ankara would come to a finish if the Kurdish city of Kobani falls, while it is within the power of Mr. Erdogan to allow humanitarian supplies to reach the Kurdish fighters, a situation he has allowed to fester as a result of his pathology of hatred for the Kurds.

Hatred so vibrant that Turkey spent over a trillion dollars in the past thirty years fighting the Kurds in a war that could have been settled with the decision to surrender a small portion of the country's geography to the Kurds, deserving of a country of their own. That was a trillion dollars far better spent developing the economy, rather than subjecting Turkish Kurds to systematic, brutal assimilation, leading to the rise of the PKK.

Now, Turkey's political equilibrium is once again under internal threat, its economic plans for the future in doubt because it will likely have to indulge in yet another costly conflict with the Kurds, newly infuriated and resentful at President Erdogan's attitude as evinced in ordering his troops to remain poised on the border, to watch and do nothing to aid the Syrian Kurds, nor permit Turkish Kurds to cross to their aid.

Labels: Conflict, Humanitarian Crisis, Islamic State, Kurds, Syria, Turkey

posted by Pieface @ Monday, October 20, 2014