• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Turkey: Is It A Trap?

I imagine Assad would be able hold the territory. With the exception of the ISIS 'prisoners' all the forces involved are now on his side.
Erdogan just needs to stop attacking the Kurds and settle for being able to ship Syrian refugees back into Syria. He can then pull out back to Turkey and leave the anti-Assad faction in the loving grip of Syria's leader.

America is out of the game there now. Which is what Trump wanted. But was there a deal involved ?
 
Even today any army operating far from home is going to find it difficult to resupply by air alone. It occurs to me that the Kurdish territories are slap-bang on top of any land resupply routes for the Russian forces operating in Syria. Stirring up trouble here, in the rear of that Russian deployment, potentially cutting them off from home, is likely to cause a few brown-trousered moments in the Kremlin and put a crimp in what they're doing. And any aircraft flying over that area is going to be keeping an eye on its early-warning screens too. So is the real intention here to destabilise things for the Russians and force a withdrawal?
 
It seems the Russians are actually taking the Kurds under their protection to stop the Turks killing them. Why not ? they have nowhere else to go.

Also, aren't Putin and Assad besties ? Why should Putin worry about Assad ?
 
Last edited:
I imagine Assad would be able hold the territory.

According to one of the talking heads, Assad is desperately short of men & although he's grabbed a sizeable chunk of land in a matter of days recently, whether he can hold on to it is not at all certain. Holding land takes a lot of men which he doesn't have.

With the exception of the ISIS 'prisoners' all the forces involved are now on his side.

No they're not - there's anti Assad 'democrat' forces still around. They're going to be fighting him in the land he's grabbed. Who's supplying them I don't know.

Erdogan just needs to stop attacking the Kurds and settle for being able to ship Syrian refugees back into Syria. He can then pull out back to Turkey and leave the anti-Assad faction in the loving grip of Syria's leader.

America is out of the game there now. Which is what Trump wanted. But was there a deal involved ?

Turkey currently has 3 or 4 million Syrian refugees in the country. The aim of getting them in this space in N.Syria isn't going to happen any time soon unless it's in tents.

The view in the prog is that Trump has followed recent US foreign policy in removing troops from the middle east but has just done it much more quickly than Obama. He was briefed about the Turkish military build up at the border & that they were going to invade & pulled the US troops out so as not to be involved. He may have ignored intelligence advice in doing so.
 
And these troops removed from Syria are going to Saudi Arabia 'because they are paying us'. So much for bringing them home.

Doesn't that make them mercenaries ? And are the US armed forces to be up for hire ?
 
Turkey uses jihadists to slaughter Kurds.

WARNING: this story contains very graphic videos and reports.

Identified, the jihadists who murdered and mutilated this Kurdish human rights advocate

Turkey’s undeclared war on the Kurds is supposedly now on pause. Though president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s objective remains: to ethnically cleanse a 30km strip of Rojava (the mainly Kurdish territory of north Syria). During the week that led up to the ‘ceasefire’, numerous Turkish-backed Islamist and jihadist brigades swept across the border in a terrifying killing spree. One of the more appalling killings was that of Syrian-based Kurdish politician and human rights advocate Hevrin Khalef. Her body was mutilated.

Khalef’s alleged murderers have now been identified and revealed together with militias believed to have committed similar atrocities.

According to the Rojava Information Center, Khalef’s killers were jihadists with the Turkish-backed Ahrar-al-Sharqiya brigade. This was separately claimed by the Syrian Democratic Council (SDC), the political wing of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

https://www.thecanary.co/global/201...mutilated-this-kurdish-human-rights-advocate/
 
It's taken a nasty new turn.
 
Did anyone honestly expect anything else ?
 
One of the arguments for removing the American troops was that, as there were only a few , what difference would it make ?

The answer is blindingly simple.

If Turkey attacked an area with the 'few' American troops in it then many more could be quickly brought into play.

Nor they are not there, this impediment is removed.
 
It seems the Russians are actually taking the Kurds under their protection to stop the Turks killing them. Why not ? they have nowhere else to go. Also, aren't Putin and Assad besties ? Why should Putin worry about Assad ?
Yeah, this is the long and the short of the matter INT21, you summed it up well. I regard this whole incident as further proof that Trump works for Russia. Up until this point, the Kurds have been solid US allies and the only decently humanitarian group operating in the Syrian war. What Trump just did managed to basically hand all of that good work straight over to Putin and lose the USA the only ray of sunshine in the whole ugly conflict with a bow tied round its neck. Straight up treason is what I call it. Every time trump goes in to bat against Russian interests he utterly folds. We can pretend that it is incompetence, but it is completely deliberate.
 
It could be that Erdogan simply said 'Pull out Donald, or I will release all the refugees into Europe'.

Does seem a bit co-incidental that the Turks had been gathering forces at the border ready for a move immediately before Trump pulled the US out.

And even the news people are beginning to put the question, considering that Saudi Arabia is paying for US troops, 'does this make them mercenaries'. And what do the troops think about being 'hired out'.
 
It could be that Erdogan simply said 'Pull out Donald, or I will release all the refugees into Europe'.
Donald wouldn't care. They aren't coming to the USA any time soon, there's an ocean in the way, and a lot of green card laws besides.
Does seem a bit co-incidental that the Turks had been gathering forces at the border ready for a move immediately before Trump pulled the US out.
I completely concur. I would call it suspicious.
And even the news people are beginning to put the question, considering that Saudi Arabia is paying for US troops, 'does this make them mercenaries'. And what do the troops think about being 'hired out'.
Yeah, as Smedley Butler said "war is a racket". On the other hand, the short answer is no, it doesn't make them mercenaries, as they remain under US control, not Saudi control. Furthermore, they are in the region to support US allies (Israel and KSA) against Iran, in a political climate where things could get ugly quickly. There is a good practical argument for getting the nation that most benefits from the aegis of US military protection to cover the cost of deployment if that is possible to arrange. In fact this sort of defrayed cost for US deployment is pretty common, and it saves the USA a lot of money, but Trump pretends otherwise. LINK
 
Interesting speech by Trump today on the Syria affair.

And he didn't mention Russia once. Not one word. Plenty on Syria, Turkey and the Kurds though. One wouldn't have suspected that Erdogan and Putin had just spent a day tet a tet.

But he did say that a contingent of US troops were remaining in the area around the oil fields. To secure the oil. And that 'We would decide what to do with it '

So there is is, the whole dirty game.

Just look at how many of the countries that have major problems are oil producers.

INT21.
 
Agreed, it is very low down the list. This was mentioned by the CNN reporter on the spot.

According to POTUS, the Kurds are happy with the outcome.

So a country who is one of the biggest providers of oil (for a variety of reasons, other oil producers are not producing as much as they could ; but we shan't go into that) and feels the need to spend around seven times more on defense than any other country, feel the need to keep a few troops guarding the oil of a state it wants to pull out of.

Turkey, now free of it's restrictions, must be ecstatic.

Problem is, it's a NATO ally. In bed with Putin.

But Donald doesn't like NATO.

INT21.
 
Basically the move goes against the idea that the US does not put troops in a country if the country does not request them.

Syria (via Turkey) can simply say 'Thanks for the protection, now please go away'.

Trump says ISIS is defeated. Hence no reason for him to keep troops in Syria. Iraq doesn't want them there either.

Are we waiting for the next big ISIS attack on the USA ? It would be like them to do so just to show that they can.
 
According to POTUS, the Kurds are happy with the outcome.
I strongly doubt that is true, and I know I am not alone. It would be to the USA's everlasting shame to abandon the Kurds again. They have been the one sign of hope in the Syrian conflict, for a better future for the region, having been secular, tolerant and humane to civilians.
Basically the move goes against the idea that the US does not put troops in a country if the country does not request them. Syria (via Turkey) can simply say 'Thanks for the protection, now please go away'. Trump says ISIS is defeated. Hence no reason for him to keep troops in Syria. Iraq doesn't want them there either. Are we waiting for the next big ISIS attack on the USA ? It would be like them to do so just to show that they can.
Syria has never consented to the USA's presence in the region. The Asshat Regime are Russian clients, and the USA is there to fight ISIS due to the fact that Iraq wasn't coping, and the fighting spilled over the border. Of course Erdogan wants the USA out because Turkey hates Kurds and is heavily invested in insuring that they never become a state. The issue of Kurdish independence is a hot one. The Syrians, Turks, Iraqis and Iranians all have Kurdish minorities, and the situation is somewhat similar to the division of Poland between Germany, Russia and Austria prior to WW1. Perhaps the only decent thing that ISIS did was to say they were tearing up the Sykes-Picot Agreement borders, and I don't think they meant it quite the way I would.
 
It positions Russian troops right up against the Turkish border. That could be a problem in the future.
 
It positions Russian troops right up against the Turkish border. That could be a problem in the future.

They're on good terms at the moment.

Unless a secular regime takes power again in Turkey and moves it back into the centre of NATO there won't be problems.
 
Warning: this article contains images that some readers may find distressing.

A volunteer doctor in northeast Syria believes that the Turkish armed forces are using chemical weapons in civilian areas.

Turkish-led forces invaded Rojava on 9 October. The NATO member has faced accusations of ethnic cleansing and war crimes, and its illegal invasion has so far killed over 300 civilians, created around 300,000 displaced people, and allowed hundreds of Daesh (Isis/Isil) supporters to escape detention.

The Times recently reported that British “ministers have issued more than 70 export licenses for military products that can contain phosphorus to Ankara in the past two decades”. The equipment included “smoke and pyrotechnic ammunition, decoy and countermeasure equipment and signalling devices and illuminators”.

https://www.thecanary.co/global/wor...ons-use-against-civilians-in-northeast-syria/
 
Back
Top