One of the reasons I’ve been boycotting imports from Türkiye for years.
Shock.
Surprise.
For those who don’t know, Turkey hates the Kurdish people. Iraq and Iran are too powerful for them to go after the Kurds very well there. The SDF along the northern border of Syria is Kurdish and is unprotected. Expect no quarter by either side. The Turks will also kill civilians if they get into population centers. This enmity runs to the Ottoman Empire who also mistreated the Kurds in favor of the Turks. When Ataturk turned to focus on the Kurds after the Armenian Genocide the Kurds took up arms rather than be next.
The SDF previously relied on the stalemate of the war to not be bothered by NATO. But with that over and Trump returning (who gave the Turks the greenlight to occupy sections of Syria last time) it’s obviously time for the Turks to go after the Kurds again. Because God forbid the Kurds actually get self determination and peace.
The kurds have been one of the most betrayed people by the West. They were one of the only ones to put themselves directly in front of the ISIS hordes. Men and women fought and lost their lives to stop ISIS from spreading their reign of terror even further. The West promised in turn to help them gain their territorial autonomy. After defeating ISIS the Americans then pulled out of all of their promises to the Kurds, abandoning them, and are now actively supporting Turkey in destroying the kurdish autonomous region. What an utterly disgusting move on their part, and surely telling for all the movements looking to collaborate with them in the future.
And that’s after being abandoned after fighting Saddam Hussein as well.
Wait. I thought Turkey was happy about so many Syrian refugees leaving. And now they’re following them to bring more war? WTF?
The Turks can always make room for killing more Kurds.
The main reason why turkey supported HTS is this right here. Watch as the country continues getting broken into many pieces and eaten up by these vultures.
I have met more good Kurds than good Turks while I have met a lot more Turks.
Note that the SDF/PKK/YPG Kurds are not representative of Kurds in general. They are mix of various “secular” faction, some being marxist, some being just your run of the mill warlord. They have recently killed protestors in Aleppo and they run torture prisons and use mass executions as means to keep the people in their control “aligned”.
They managed to get themselves a good reputation with leftists in western countries, who are sympathetic to the struggle of the Kurdish people, but liberation will not come from these groups.
I don’t know where you getting this from, but Rojava is generally considered the most democratic faction in Syria. They’re not marxists, they instead follow democratic confederalism (a form of libertarian socialism). As per Wikipedia:
While entertaining some foreign relations, the region is neither officially recognized as autonomous by the government of Syria, state, or other governments institutions except for the Catalan Parliament.[19][20][21] The AANES has widespread support for its universal democratic, sustainable, autonomous, pluralist, equal, and feminist policies in dialogues with other parties and organizations.[22][23][24][25] Northeastern Syria is polyethnic and home to sizeable ethnic Arab, Kurdish, and Assyrian populations, with smaller communities of ethnic Turkmen, Armenians, Circassians, and Yazidis.[26][27][28]
I’d say they’re the best chance Syria and the Kurds have at liberation.
https://syriadirect.org/protests-and-sdf-defections-discontent-simmers-in-eastern-deir-e-zor/
EDIT: People downvoting evidence of human right abuses and authoritarian crackdowns against protestors. PAthetic.
Nice truck. Hammond should take it to a McDonald’s sometime.
A new dictator takes the land, amazing
Watch the US abandon them too, after basically using them to squash ISIS. A concern though, is Turkey won’t want to hold territory, so it’ll end up creating the same power vacuum that spawned ISIS after it drives the Kurds out. A better solution would be for the US to just broker a deal between all parties.
Turkey would love to expand their borders. They already exist on a war footing because they insist on treating domestic Kurds like Native Americans were treated and sending military expeditions into northern Iraq and Syria. The only difference would be staying there.
Turkey is performing this act for the sake of the historical three cities which are present in Syria to be included in their current map.
Erdogan himself gave such a blaoted nationalistic speech after the fall of Assad.
You sure about them not wanting to hold territory?
I can imagine the Turks keeping the “safety zone”, not to annex as a part of Turkey, but keep subdued to make sure the Kurds don’t try to come backTurkey wants HTS to take full control of the Syria land so they don’t have to deal with PKK’s sidearm right next to their borders in the first place. This whole operation is made for that.
A full-scale invasion of Syria by Turkey, without any political adjustments to the situation, would mean Turkish troops seizing land currently co-held (together with the AANES / SDF) by American troops. Without coordination, Turkish drone and artillery strikes would land near US troops, which would call in reinforcements to remove the drones and artillery.
Needless to say, one NATO ally going at territory held by another is a pretty bad idea.
So, in some parts of Syria, proceeding with their plan requires a US president - and most likely not Biden - to give them the green light and withdraw US special forces from SDF land. Basically, it requires the US to screw its allies in the fight against the Islamic State. Which would not be out of character for Trump, since Kurds cannot “pay him for protection”. The protection was based on principles (the Autonomous Administration of North-Eastern Syria was the only player in the region that tried sticking to democracy and human rights) and a common enemy (ISIS).
I hope all of this doesn’t happen, but if I were the Kurds, I’d be keeping drone batteries charged and knocking on every diplomatic door for assistance.
In case of things hitting the fan, it might be useful to remember a link to the Kurdistan Red Crescent - Heyva Sor a Kurdistanê. (They can’t supply drone batteries, but deliver medical and humanitarian aid to the region.)
Biden hasn’t proved to be an ally either. He might not support Turkey but he isn’t going to allow US troops to return fire. It will be like the UN Outposts Israel just goes around.
As far as I know, procedures for returning fire don’t require calling the president. There already was an incident about a week ago - they just shot down the drone that threatened them.
Basic stuff like that they can do. But stray artillery rounds aren’t going to get a response. Anything more than their rifle or short range anti air requires permission from higher up. And even those are on a short leash because the local commander will be under orders to hold fire unless they’re actually attacked.
On the other side there will be an American officer telling the Turks exactly where American troops are and acting as the first line of deconfliction if there are any mistakes. Turkey will listen to that officer because of the balance of power in the US-Turkey relationship and the knowledge that the US is capable of disabling their entire military overnight.
Basically, it requires the US to screw its allies in the fight against the Islamic State. Which would not be out of character for Trump, since Kurds cannot “pay him for protection”. The protection was based on principles (the Autonomous Administration of North-Eastern Syria was the only player in the region that tried sticking to democracy and human rights) and a common enemy (ISIS).
The US using and abandoning Kurdish people is a repeated pattern long since before Trump. Heck, the US helped Saddam Hussein massacre thousands of Kurdish people in Iraq in the deadliest nerve gas attack in recorded history.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halabja_massacre
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Iraq_during_the_Iran–Iraq_WarAlso the DAANES you mention as “trying to stick to democracy and human rights” runs torture camps and mass executions and the US helps funnel new people into them.
Thanks for pointing that out.
Until this report, it was my impression that they tried sticking to democracy and human rights - but had a problem with recruiting underage people, which they admitted and dealt with.
This report is new to me, so I think it might be new to others - I recommend it.
Which would not be out of character for Trump, since Kurds cannot “pay him for protection”.
It’s not just in character for Trump, it’s something he has already done. He abandoned the Kurds in 2019 when Turkiye launched an offensive against them
They’re going to co-ordinate with the Americans. Erdogan is going to ask Trump “can I go kill some Kurds on Syria”, and Trump will go “sure”. That’s what happened last time.
Yeah, Turkey has never liked the Kurds
Everyone in the region seems to fear the formation of a Kurdish state. :(
So much that Kurds can spend 24/7 assuring they only want autonomy within some provinces, and every neighour still has nightmares of an independent Kurdistan…
…which, to be fair, they should have got - when the Ottoman empire fell apart - but everyone kind of forgot them.
Less “forgot” and more “decided by European powers that it wasn’t up to anyone non-white to be in charge.” At least not in the British and French Mandate areas.
Hard to trust the kurdish rebel when they are supported by Israel and the US. My fear is that they will become another protection for Israel
No worries the US reliably abandons the Kurds the second it doesn’t need them. Every time.
Which is kinda weird since they’re all NATO buddies with Turkey. Friend of a friend?
More like never liked terrorist supporters.
Turkey’s population consists of roughly %18 kurds, claiming Turkey doesnt like them would be an outrageous claim considering they are citizens of the country and their votes make a significant impact in the selection of the governing parties.
They have pushed the government enough to try out a peaceful resolution against the PKK, only for PKK to bomb trap civilian buildings while the peace negotiations were going on. After that whole ordeal, a significant amount of the Kurds in Turkey see PKK as a terrorist organization that does more harm than good.
SDF is pretty much a sidearm PKK located in Syria, and it’s pretty understandable why Turkey doesn’t want them right next to their border.
Turkey’s population consists of roughly %18 kurds, claiming Turkey doesnt like them would be an outrageous claim
How can there be Kurds in Turkey if Kurds don’t even exist? And this is not a thing of the past, school books denying an independent identity of Kurds were printed as recently as 2021.
Turks do happen to suck at acknowledging their genocides. The Armenian is often spoken about outside of Turkey, everyone always forgets the Kurds.
This is outright misinformation. Kurds are specifically mentioned in history classes as in “ethnic groups that lives in various regional areas of Turkey”, I recall this from my college times, roughly 2016.
There is nowhere close to a genocide against Kurds considering the amount of Kurds that live there; however Turkey has every right to stop a extremist rebellion idea that would make it lose territory and distrupt the unity between its citizens.
So you deny the existence of those newer school books? Do you deny that the Kurdish language was outlawed for a very long time which constitutes genocide on its own, do you deny the various forced relocations and massacres the Turkish army committed against Kurds before the PKK was even founded? Decades before?
You might have heard the term “Kurd”, yes, but chances are you also learned stuff like “Kurdish is a Turkish dialect” (Kurdish is not even part of the same language family), “Mountain Turk”, “Atatürk did nothing wrong”, etc.
Kurdish language is still outlawed in official mediums, similar to all languages except Turkish and English. While this does not ban individuals speaking it (as in, an syrian can speak arabian within their circle; or a kurd can speak kurdish), this does ban its usage on billboards, signs and any government related documentation. That’s pretty much how this goes in rest of the countries.
Kurdish wasn’t mentioned under language families, but the language family behind Turkish (Ural-Altaic) is diven more deeply into compared to other families (which are given less examples of), and dialects of Turkish are explicitly stated, so it’s a logical conclusion they’re not a part of it.
Ataturk did nothing wrong. Turkey’s foundation times had seen quite a lot of revolt attempts and conflicts were unavoidable to stop them.
Sure conflict becomes unavoidable if you’re brutally repressing your minorities. The minorities don’t tend to like that. The whole idea to found Turkey as a nation state while simultaneously claiming non-Turkish inhabited territories was bound to lead to conflict, and yes that’s all Atatürk. Small minorities can be incorporated in such a project, kinda like mascots, larger ones? Forget it. They must go, or the project must go. Turkey opted for the former.
Ataturk did nothing wrong.
How about his daughter, personally bombing civilians?
The Kurds in Turkey are policed by the military, not allowed to speak their language, and largely forced to the bottom of society. They’re treated worse than the Isrealis treat the Arabs who legally live in Israel proper. We’ve also seen what military reprisals look like in Turkey and Northern Iraq.
The Turks never wanted peace. They wanted Genocide but the Kurds armed themselves.
I am not the best person to characterize the situation, but…
…it seems that Turkish authorities have always felt very threatened by any ideas of Kurdish autonomy (even cultural autonomy). Domestically, they have been locked in a fight with PKK, that is true. But in recent times - since the civil war started in Syria - they have great difficulty telling PKK apart from YPG. One is an underground terrorist organization, the other is a uniformed military. But when the PKK does something, very often as a result - YPG get bombed.
On the brighter side, Turkey has had a president of partly Kurdish ancestors (Turgut Özal). But the darker side of the coin is: he died of poisoning right before he could negotiate for peace with the PKK.
I have a guess. When Turkey starts approaching peace with PKK, either PKK members commit an act of terror to break down negotiations, or Turkish special services kill their own negotiator. Because both organizations contain people who - tragically - think that peace would not be good for their business. Their business is war and they don’t want it entirely stopped.
I hope I’m wrong - or that I have gradually become wrong as times have changed.
They are threatened, look at the Wikipedia page for the current Kurdish party, and then check the past parties and what they have been accused of
If anything is a plus, making 20% of the nation a direct enemy is never good so they have never gone beyond banning parties with plausible reasons, they have always been able to reform them back again and the Kurdish language has been preserved and culture deeply integrated.
Wow, so many lies.
Wouldn’t this mean Turkey will do a proxy war against Russia and Israel?
