generalspeaking

Erdogan's War

"We are going through a very difficult time." 
"Basically the genocide of Kurds is happening before the world. If they don’t act right now, if they don’t stop Erdogan, we will go back to the 1990s."
"We didn’t believe the Turkish army would get this ugly."
"They are supposed to be fighting ISIS but instead they are fighting the Kurds who are fighting ISIS. Wounded ISIL fighters cross the border in ambulances for treatment at Turkish hospitals, and fresh recruits enter Syria when those same ambulances make the return journey."
"Everything is basically upside down in Turkey right now. [Recruitment is also occurring in Turkey, where ISIL ideology is supported by] most of Turkey’s mosques. And they do all this openly and Turkey is just basically watching."
Feleknas Uca, opposition Turkish-Kurdish MP

"Erdogan is back in the driver's seat. But the car's wheels are falling -- and the car is breaking down.
Svante Cornell, Central Asia-Caucasus Institute

"To go to the polls at a time when people are being killed every single day can have a downside."
"The arithmetic in parliament won't necessarily change."
Sinan Ulgen, EDAM think-tank, Istanbul

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu is prepared to call a new election. Likely to be called for November. The June election simply didn't go the way that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was certain it would; consolidating the majority and power status of his Justice and Development Party, and ushering in a new, more powerful era for the man and the party that claimed they would clear up corruption, then indulged in it themselves.

The Kurds, representing 20% of the nation's population, had done the unthinkable; elected enough parliamentarians to deny Erdogan his majority and he is now accusing them of collaboration with Turkey's enemies. Turkey's enemies are clearly not the Islamic State, since official Turkey is tolerating their presence, and has been covertly useful to them in many ways, hoping they will succeed in unseating Syria's Bashar al Assad.

His plans are to give more power to the largely ceremonial role of the president, and perhaps changing the constitution so that two terms as prime minister as is the current law, will no longer keep him from controlling Turkey on the same kind of permanent status as President Vladimir Putin has managed for Russia. To ensure a rise in his popularity he has gambled with returning to conflict with the PKK.

Under the guise of joining the U.S.-led airstrike coalition against Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, Turkish warplanes have targeted PKK positions in Syria and Kurdish rebel positions in Iraq. U.S. jets launched airstrikes on ISIL in Syria from the Incirlik air base in Turkey for the first time. Prompting an ISIL video message with a Turkish-speaking fighter accusing Erdogan of "bombard[ing] the people of Islam" through the U.S.


Feleknas Uca is a 38-year-old Yazidi Kurd who ran in June's elections to win a seat in Diyarbakir, a flashpoint of tension between government forces and Turkey's Kurds. Ever since her pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party won 80 seats, which effectively ruined the majority of the AK Party, leaving it incapable of forming a ruling coalition, the Kurds have been once again in Erdogan's cross-hairs.

Labels: Conflict, Islamic State, Kurds, Turkey

posted by Pieface @ Saturday, August 22, 2015