Turkey duped the US, and ISIS reaps rewards

[EC]

The disastrous miscalculation made by the United States in signing a military agreement with Turkey at the expense of the Kurds becomes daily more apparent. In return for the use of Incirlik Air Base just north of the Syrian border, the US betrayed the Syrian Kurds who have so far been its most effective ally against Islamic State (ISIS, also known as Daesh). In return for this deal signed on 22 July, the US got greater military cooperation from Turkey, but it swiftly emerged that Ankara’s real target was the Kurds in Turkey, Syria and Iraq. Action against ISIS was almost an afterthought, and it was hit by only three Turkish airstrikes, compared to 300 against the bases of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

President Barack Obama has assembled a grand coalition of 60 states, supposedly committed to combating ISIS, but the only forces on the ground to win successive victories against the jihadis over the past year are the ruling Syrian-Kurdish Party (PYD) and its People’s Protection Units (YPG). Supported by US air power, the YPG heroically defeated the ISIS attempt to capture the border city of Kobani during a four-and-a-half month siege that ended in January, and seized the ISIS crossing point into Turkey at Tal Abyad in June.

The advance of the Syrian Kurds, who now hold half of the 550-mile Syrian-Kurdish border, was the main external reason why Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan offered the US closer cooperation, including the use of Incirlik, which had previously been denied. The domestic impulse for an offensive by the Turkish state against the Kurds also took place in June when the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP) won 13 per cent of the vote in the Turkish general election, denying Mr Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) a majority for the first time since 2002. By strongly playing the Turkish nationalist and anti-Kurdish card, Mr Erdogan hopes to win back that majority in a second election on 1 November.

There are signs of a growing understanding in Washington that the US was duped by the Turks, or at best its negotiators deceived themselves when they agreed their bargain with Ankara. Senior US military officers are anonymously protesting in the US media they did not know that Turkey was pretending to be going after ISIS when in practice it was planning an offensive against its 18 million-strong Kurdish minority.

Read more: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/turkey-duped-the-us-and-isis-reaps-rewards-10478281.html

[rangerrebew]

Turkey's bombing of Kurds could unleash civil war
Washington blasted for 'doing virtually nothing' to stop attacks
Published: 10 hours ago
 

WASHINGTON – Turkey could become engulfed in a civil war if its military doesn’t stop aerial bombing and artillery shelling of Kurdish fighters battling ISIS in Syria, contends a high-level Kurdish official in a report in Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.

The official, who spoke to G2Bulletin on condition of anonymity, also criticized the United States for not getting Turkey to halt its attacks on the Kurds, even though the minority group has sided with the U.S. against ISIS.

The Turks had agreed to fight ISIS and give the U.S. access to its Incirlik Air Base. However, Turkish F-16s began to bomb Kurdish positions of the PKK, the Kurdish Workers’ Party, as well as fighters for its Syrian counterpart, the Yekineyen Parastina Gel, or the People’s Protection Units.

Asked if the Turkish attacks against ISIS are a cover to attack the PKK in northern Syria, Defense Department spokeswoman Laura Seal recently told G2Bulletin: “I’d refer you to the Turks to discuss their motivation.”

Like Turkey, the U.S. regards the PKK as a terrorist group. However, the Yekineyen Parastina Gel, or YPG, is not on the U.S. terrorist list.

“The U.S. is doing virtually nothing about stopping the Turks from bombing the Kurds, even though [the Kurds] are fighting the same enemy,” the Kurdish official said.

“This development,” the source said, “is leading to a possible civil war in Turkey due to targeting (Kurdish) activists and doing raids” on various Turkish towns to “capture these young kids just because they’re Kurdish and want to have a voice.”

Get the full story, and more, at Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.

“If the security situation continues like this, it will even be hard to hold elections in those areas” in November, he said.

‘Homegrown defense force’

According to the Kurdish Project, a non-profit educational effort, the YPG is a homegrown defense force for the Kurdish area of Syria. The force emerged after the civil war in Syria erupted and spilled over into Syrian Kurdistan, now known as Rojava, or Western Kurdistan.

The Kurdish communities in Rojava are drawn from the migration of Turkish Kurds who have fled Turkey as a result of hostilities there between the PKK and the Turkish government since the 1970s. Many of the Syrian Kurds are either PKK members or supporters while the YPG was formed in 2004 by the Kurdish Democratic Union Party, or PYD, an affiliate of the PKK.

The Kurdish source pointed out that the motivation for Turkish military attacks on the Kurds is mainly political.

He said the Turks, especially Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development party, or AKP, have been engaging in hostilities with the Kurds inside Turkey.

The Kurds comprise some 20 million of Turkey’s estimated 82 million people.

Erdogan has called for general parliamentary elections in November in an effort to regain a majority for his party in the Turkish parliament.

The Kurdish source said Erdogan’s resumption of attacks on the Kurds in early August after a two-year hiatus of hostilities is part of the effort to regain a parliamentary majority.

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2015/08/turkeys-bombing-of-kurds-could-unleash-civil-war/#1JMhLOtVgjI0dpeg.99