July 31, 2015
Antiwar.com

Now the Turks Are All In

by Patrick J. Buchanan

When rebels rose up to overthrow Bashar Assad in Syria, and Assad elected to fight not quit, Erdogan turned on him and began to permit jihadists to enter Syria.

When ISIS terrorists seized Raqqa in Syria, and Mosul and Anbar in Iraq, Erdogan refused to let U.S. planes based at Incirlik bomb them.

When America supported Syrian Kurds with air power, enabling them to hold off an ISIS attack on Kobani on the Syria-Turkish border, Erdogan denounced the Kurds as the greater threat.

But 10 days ago came an ISIS atrocity in Suruc, Turkey, just north of Kobani. Thirty-two young Turkish Kurds who were planning to help rebuild Kobani were massacred, and a hundred wounded.

Instantly, Erdogan permitted U.S. planes at Incirlik to attack ISIS targets in Syria and launched air strikes himself. It appeared that, at long last, the U.S. and Turkey were again on the same page, seeing ISIS as the primary enemy, and acting jointly against it.

But the Turkish attacks on ISIS proved to be pinpricks. And the Turks began a major air assault on Kurdish forces in exile in Iraq, the PKK, who had fled Turkey after the recent civil war.

Where does this leave Turkey today? . . .

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"Seven Countries in Five Years"--Gen. Wesley Clark, Commonwealth Club, October 3, 2007

"NATO vs ISIS?: Insulting Our Intelligence," The Wisdom Fund, September 24, 2014

Patrick Cockburn, "Was approving air strikes against the PKK America's worst error in the Middle East since the Iraq War?," independent.co.uk, July 26, 2015

Robert Fisk , "Every regional power has betrayed the Kurds so Turkish bombing is no surprise ," independent.co.uk, July 28, 2015

Ramzy Baroud, "The deep roots of Turkey's war on ISIL," aljazeera.com, July 28, 2015

Emma Ashford, "An 'Isis-free zone' is nothing but a road to US mission creep," theguardian.com, July 30, 2015

Nafeez Ahmed, "UK, US turn blind eye to Islamic State oil sales," middleeasteye.net, July 31, 2015

Philip Giraldi, "Turkey's duplicity threatens the entire region," unz.com, December 15, 2015

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