The Turkish-Kurdish Dilemma

[mapuc]

Was thinking of asking if some of you could foresee what would happen if this Turkish invasion of Northern Syria turns into a regular war between these two countries.

So far they have been fighting against each other by proxy.

Later in the evening I heard on the News Russian forces have placed them between Turkish and Syrians forces.

Trying to negotiate a cease fire

I doubt they will succeed. Erdogan is firm in his goal.

Furthermore, if Syria engage Turkish forces, wouldn't Turkey not see this as:

Ok we have to eliminate the Syrian threat to reach our goal.

Just a thought.

Markus

[Skybird]

I think it is the other way aorund than you thik. Most likely Erdoghan currently learns that he can do little without Putin's approval. The Russian defence ministry is in close contact with the Turks. America is in a weak poosition now toweards Ankara, their sanction thread is a weak threat. Pence and Pompeo have no clubs and sticks to carry when they travel to Ankara soon. Washingtoin is pissed, and relatiosn are quickly eroding further. Moscow is filling the seat the more the more it becomes vacant, its a great opportunity to erode and weaken NATO from within.

What we see in Syria is not just a changing of regional game rules. Its the end of "the West" as it once was known. America is in self-chosen withdrawel. Europe is militarily too impotent to pose as an actor on the world stage. "The West" as a political infleunce and military force to count with, is no more.

Syria has become for Russia much more than just a foothold in the mediterranean. I do not know and am not certain whether Putin has indeed forseen that when he started to play the Syria card many years ago - if he had planned this outcome, then I have to compliment him for that strategic foresight. Well played. Not to our European pleasure, but in Russia'S own Russian interest: damn well played. Shows good strategic instinct. Considering that Russia is under eocnomic sanctions still, and some years ago they already sung requiems for its economy - and today they are stronger than ever before since the USSR collapsed, and have gotten rid of their dollar reserves practically completely, and buy gold like crazy.

The requiem definitely was sung too early.

America weaklens itselkf with Trumpo. Europe ios weak as always, and yearns to becom e ever weaker. They now want to get Albania and North Mazuedonia as new EU members. Not really new members with a net contribution to the EU. In other words: the EU turns weaker.

I think that historians in the future will see Europe's failure in Syria as an important timestamp marking a significant achievement in its ongoing fall into irrelevance.


And then there is Israel. It must really hate what is taking place in recent years. It must hate it.

[mapuc]

^ If those Middle east expert who now and then appear on Danish and Swedish tv are correct, then you are right-USA are loosing more and more influens in the Middle East.

Another thing-reading some of your comments like the last one gave me a sort of Deja Vu.

Like history is repeating itself.

Markus

[ikalugin]

@skybird
Our strategy in Syria is emergent not deliberate, ie beyond few core goals (fighting terrorism, securing coastal bases - both of which have already been achieved) we are open to whatever deal is available. Back after the Su24M shot down we were open to, for example, supporting Kurds against Turks, up to and including Yemen style deal with Tochkas popping up in Kurdistan.


Now I think Russia is mostly playing a powerbroker, in this case negotiating a compromise where Kurds surrender to Assad (the least evil for them) on terms of good autonomy, but restrictions on political activity (esp cross border kind), with a buffer zone where Turks can dump their refugee/imigrant camps.

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by Skybird

I think it is the other way aorund than you thik. Most likely Erdoghan currently learns that he can do little without Putin's approval. The Russian defence ministry is in close contact with the Turks. America is in a weak poosition now toweards Ankara, their sanction thread is a weak threat. Pence and Pompeo have no clubs and sticks to carry when they travel to Ankara soon. Washingtoin is pissed, and relatiosn are quickly eroding further. Moscow is filling the seat the more the more it becomes vacant, its a great opportunity to erode and weaken NATO from within.

What we see in Syria is not just a changing of regional game rules. Its the end of "the West" as it once was known. America is in self-chosen withdrawel. Europe is militarily too impotent to pose as an actor on the world stage. "The West" as a political infleunce and military force to count with, is no more.

Syria has become for Russia much more than just a foothold in the mediterranean. I do not know and am not certain whether Putin has indeed forseen that when he started to play the Syria card many years ago - if he had planned this outcome, then I have to compliment him for that strategic foresight. Well played. Not to our European pleasure, but in Russia'S own Russian interest: damn well played. Shows good strategic instinct. Considering that Russia is under eocnomic sanctions still, and some years ago they already sung requiems for its economy - and today they are stronger than ever before since the USSR collapsed, and have gotten rid of their dollar reserves practically completely, and buy gold like crazy.

The requiem definitely was sung too early.

America weaklens itselkf with Trumpo. Europe ios weak as always, and yearns to becom e ever weaker. They now want to get Albania and North Mazuedonia as new EU members. Not really new members with a net contribution to the EU. In other words: the EU turns weaker.

I think that historians in the future will see Europe's failure in Syria as an important timestamp marking a significant achievement in its ongoing fall into irrelevance.


And then there is Israel. It must really hate what is taking place in recent years. It must hate it.

Most insightful Sky.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by ikalugin

@skybird
Our strategy in Syria is emergent not deliberate, ie beyond few core goals (fighting terrorism, securing coastal bases - both of which have already been achieved) we are open to whatever deal is available. Back after the Su24M shot down we were open to, for example, supporting Kurds against Turks, up to and including Yemen style deal with Tochkas popping up in Kurdistan.

Now I think Russia is mostly playing a powerbroker, in this case negotiating a compromise where Kurds surrender to Assad (the least evil for them) on terms of good autonomy, but restrictions on political activity (esp cross border kind), with a buffer zone where Turks can dump their refugee/imigrant camps.

I see Putin's cleverness in the fact that he ran from beginning on a strategy in Syria that optimally manipulated chances to maximise his degrees of freedoms in the future, no matter how the specific details of such future would look. It compares a bit to how you play Backgammon: you cannot forsee all the dice results coming in the future, but you can lay out your own pieces as optimal as you can with te diece you already got, to optmise your options for any dice result coming in the future. In this understanding, yes, his strategy was an emerging one, as you called it - but also one with a very well laid fundament. I think he has seen the deep-reaching geostraeteic relevance of Syria very early, thats why he e,barke don it so early and with such brute detem,rination, leavign no doubt that Russia's interest to keep syria was absolutely serious. Compared to that the European and American stomping blindly around in the Middle East, is clueless and shortsighted. It is here where Russia has had a strong interest for sure to get a headless, emotion-driven shortsighted stupdi like Trump into the WH - if the psychological profile they must have done of him was correct (and apparently it was!), then he was the ideal American opponent for Russia in that he would allow Russia by his decision-making and general attitude to do what russia wanted to do, and to run its own game with no serious american opposition, and America not even preventing that the rift between the US and Europe, the rift inside NATO, is widening. I am convinced that the Kremlin did what it could to influence the elections and make Trump the winner. They must have wanted him, else they would have been stupid. And look what Russia got: an America that is almost taken off the global playfield and is fully engaged in playing with its own little Willie, while doing so being no threat to Russia's game of dealing new cards in the ME, and Europe. The opposition in America also is deadlocked and taken out, is fixiated on Trump and does not have time left to direct attention to foreign policies.



Seen this way, Russia is currently the by far most aggressively acting player at the table beside China. And it is extremely clever and competent in hiding this. Trump on the other hand collects translucent wins. Putin also can build on a revival of the youth's strong interest and love for left, socialist conceptions throughout the Westm, the money crisis and debt crisis play sinto Russia hands again, for it raises anger at the capitalist base structure of the West, weakening it further. . Herr ein germany, Germans are kind of Americaphobe by genes it seems, and Russophile at the same time. Putin might not be able to indeed serve to these interests (he is no old Marxist and also no Stalinist, but he knows how to use the popularity of the Stalin cult for his purposes), but they provide him an inherent willingness to give Russia the benefit of doubt under circumstances where America already would have been condemned once again. A subtle game. A game with high pay-offs. A game of long breath and foresight. None that Trump knows how to play. He is just marching from day to day, on stomping feet.



Everybody doing martial arts knows that cowboy-walking with wide legs and long steps - gives you a very weak stand. Its not strength, but just posing.

[ikalugin]

About the strategy, here is a good take:
https://eng.globalaffairs.ru/book/Wh...in-Syria-19404
By Kofman&co

In general I would point out that we tend to lack a long term strategy, the leadership style of Putin is that he solves issues as they arise.

p.s. Remember the West backed Syrian rebels (FSA&co)? I don't either.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by ikalugin

In general I would point out that we tend to lack a long term strategy, the leadership style of Putin is that he solves issues as they arise.

That could very well be so. But he tries to manipulate chances for issues rising so that once they rise they are more in his favour or of a kind that he can handle them. My comparison to Backgammon desroibes best, imo, what I mean. You cannot forsee the dice results coming,. but you can optimise your pieces' positions so to maximise your degrees of freedom for eny future dice rolls coming, no matter what they are. By that you are prepared for a greater number of possible dice results, you have more possible good moves in a higher number of possible dice results. You will still lose some single games that way, when in one game the dice are too often against you - but by laws of probability, over the many games of a full match you will win the match nevertheless.

[Jimbuna]

Could this be a partial consequence of what has happened regarding the Kurds?

This week has seen a full ceremonial 21-gun salute for President Vladimir Putin in the capital, an audience with the king and crown prince, a host of bilateral deals and a seismic strategic recalculation in the region as Saudi Arabia's US allies effectively abandon the Kurds to their fate in northern Syria.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-50054546

[Skybird]

The article you linked to, focusses, amongst others, on why Russia went into the Syrian match so determined, and lists the factors in the years before. That is what I mean by my earlier epxlanations: to see the current situation emerging form the olpast events (your hinting) and trying to influence the present and the imminent future for getting better chances to get an outcome in the distant future by taking influence with all determination on the curren situation - my hinting. Back then the West was clueless over what to do in the face of such a drastic Russian detmeirnaiton by which Putin made it clear that Russia engaged itself in sYria and meant to stay, many in the West had not expected that and thought it was almost irrational. In those early years I said that the West would be best advsied to stay out of Syria compoletely, and leave it to the Russians, sincer they had more solid and - at least in my opinion -obvious interests there. The article describes these quite well. I was against the Wetsen engagement, becasue as I saw it it would just help the rebels to extend the duraiton of the war tzhat envertheless they could not win once the Russia started to do what was needed to do in order to guarantee Assad surviving - and even victoriously so. But for the West, prjecting this outcome was thing never wans meant to be because it never should be, and so the Russian interests got ignored and almost ridiculed.



And now we are where we are. Well. I stick to it: game, set and match Putin. The Kurds, and politically also the EU, are the big loosers in all this. The EU's diplomatic "strategy" over this issue, is in ruins, and all mockery is at the EU's cost. And deservedly so. To say their way to play it was amateurish, would be an understatement. But look closer at their political top staff, and you hardly can be surprised.

[mapuc]

Heard some very interesting stuff on the radio today.

It was in the 3 o'clock news.

A Danish Journalist from a Danish Newspaper said in an interview that this Turkish invasion of the Northern Syria was due to some secret agreement between these two states.

Hmm very interesting theory I must say.

Lets play some war game scenario.

1. The Syrian government carry out a full-scale attack on the Kurds, with military support from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and this terrorist group (forgot their name) And perhaps with logistical help from the Russians.

What type of response could we expect from USA and Europe(NATO)

2. Syria carry out a full-scale attack on the Kurds, with military aid from Russia, Iran and this terror group

Response from our Western leaders ?

There could be many more scenarios.

Markus

[Mr Quatro]

Israel is concerned: https://biblehub.com/jeremiah/50-3.htm

Jeremiah 50:3

For a nation from the north will come against her; it will make her land desolate. No one will be living in it-- both man and beast will escape. For a nation from the north will go up against her. It will make her land into an object of horror, and no one will live in it.

Christians have long held that the true enemy of the Holy Land of Israel will be Russia, but I go a step farther and think perhaps Turkey after a nuclear war with Russia leaves them too davasted to fight a normal war.

Did you know that Turkey is holding 50 old cold war nuclear weapons in storage and that America has been trying to negotiate a way to remove them for years?

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Mr Quatro

Did you know that Turkey is holding 50 old cold war nuclear weapons in storage and that America has been trying to negotiate a way to remove them for years?

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/14/w...key-syria.html

Because that is a subscription site now, here is the text:

President Trump’s acquiescence to Turkey’s move to send troops deep inside Syrian territory has in only one week’s time turned into a bloody carnage, forced the abandonment of a successful five-year-long American project to keep the peace on a volatile border, and given an unanticipated victory to four American adversaries: Russia, Iran, the Syrian government and the Islamic State.
Rarely has a presidential decision resulted so immediately in what his own party leaders have described as disastrous consequences for American allies and interests. How this decision happened — springing from an “off-script moment” with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, in the generous description of a senior American diplomat — probably will be debated for years by historians, Middle East experts and conspiracy theorists.
But this much already is clear: Mr. Trump ignored months of warnings from his advisers about what calamities likely would ensue if he followed his instincts to pull back from Syria and abandon America’s longtime allies, the Kurds. He had no Plan B, other than to leave. The only surprise is how swiftly it all collapsed around the president and his depleted, inexperienced foreign policy team.
Day after day, they have been caught off-guard, offering up differing explanations of what Mr. Trump said to Mr. Erdogan, how the United States and its allies might respond, and even whether Turkey remains an American ally. For a while Mr. Trump said he acted because the Islamic State was already defeated, and because he was committed to terminating “endless wars” by pulling American troops out of the Middle East. By the end of the week he added 2,000 — to Saudi Arabia.
One day he was inviting Mr. Erdogan to visit the White House; the next he was threatening to “totally destroy and obliterate” Turkey’s economy if it crossed a line that he never defined.
Mr. Erdogan just kept going.
Mr. Trump’s error, some aides concede in off-the-record conversations, was entering the Oct. 6 call underprepared, and then failing to spell out for Mr. Erdogan the potential consequences — from economic sanctions to a contraction of Turkey’s alliance with the United States and its standing in NATO. He has since threatened both, retroactively, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said later Monday that the president had signed an executive order authorizing sanctions on individuals or associates of Turkey’s government who “endanger civilians or lead to the further deterioration of peace, security and stability in northeast Syria.” But it is not clear whether Mr. Erdogan believes that poses a real risk.
The drama is nowhere near over. Out of necessity, the Kurds switched sides on Sunday, turning their backs on Washington and signing up with President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, a man the United States has called a war criminal for gassing his own people. At the Pentagon, officials struggled with the right response if Turkish forces — NATO allies — again opened fire on any of the 1,000 or so Americans now preparing to retreat from their positions inside Syria. Those troops are trapped for now, since Turkey has cut off the roads; removing them may require an airlift.
And over the weekend, State and Energy Department officials were quietly reviewing plans for evacuating roughly 50 tactical nuclear weapons that the United States had long stored, under American control, at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey, about 250 miles from the Syrian border, according to two American officials.
Those weapons, one senior official said, were now essentially Erdogan’s hostages. To fly them out of Incirlik would be to mark the de facto end of the Turkish-American alliance. To keep them there, though, is to perpetuate a nuclear vulnerability that should have been eliminated years ago.
“I think this is a first — a country with U.S. nuclear weapons stationed in it literally firing artillery at US forces,” Jeffrey Lewis of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies wrote last week.
For his part, Mr. Erdogan claims nuclear ambitions of his own: Only a month ago, speaking to supporters, he said he “cannot accept” rules that keep Turkey from possessing nuclear weapons of its own.
“There is no developed nation in the world that doesn’t have them,” he said. (In fact, most do not.)
“This president keeps blindsiding our military and diplomatic leaders and partners with impulsive moves like this that benefit Russia and authoritarian regimes,” said Senator Jack Reed, the Rhode Island Democrat and longtime member of the Armed Services Committee.
“If this president were serious about ending wars and winning peace, he’d actually articulate a strategy that would protect against a re-emergence of ISIS and provide for the safety of our Syrian partners,” Mr. Reed added. “But he has repeatedly failed to do that. Instead, this is another example of Donald Trump creating chaos, undermining U.S. interests, and benefiting Russia and the Assad regime.”
The other major beneficiary is Iran, perhaps Mr. Trump’s most talked-about geopolitical foe, which has long supported the Syrian regime and sought freer rein across the country.
Mr. Trump tried another defense on Monday, via Twitter. Clearly sensitive about the critique that he was abandoning a longtime ally, he wrote that “anyone who wants to assist Syria in protecting the Kurds is good with me, whether it is Russia, China, or Napoleon Bonaparte. I hope they all do great, we are 7,000 miles away!”
It was another example of Mr. Trump’s taking a 1930s view of how to defend the nation, ignoring the power vacuums filled by adversaries and making the case that distance is the ultimate protection. The lessons of economic interdependency, the Sept. 11 attacks and the era of cyberconflict suggest otherwise.
As the situation continued to devolve, senior administration officials stepped forward to try to reverse the damage.
In an unscheduled appearance in the White House driveway, Vice President Mike Pence told reporters that Mr. Trump had asked Mr. Erdogan for an immediate cease-fire — part of the executive order that Mr. Pompeo announced — adding that the president had not given a “green light” for Turkish forces to invade Syria.
“The United States of America wants Turkey to stop the invasion,” Mr. Pence said, “to implement an immediate cease-fire and to begin to negotiate with Kurdish forces in Syria to bring an end to the violence.”
He said the president had directed him to lead a delegation to Turkey alongside Robert O’Brien, the president’s new national security adviser, to negotiate directly with Mr. Erdogan.
The horrors that have played out with lightning speed were clearly not anticipated by Mr. Trump, who has no fondness for briefing books and meetings in the Situation Room intended to game out events two or three moves ahead. Instead, he often talks about trusting his instincts.
“My gut tells me more sometimes than anybody else’s brain can ever tell me," he said late last year. He was discussing the Federal Reserve, but could just as easily have been talking foreign policy; in 2017 he told a reporter, right after his first meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, that it was his “gut feel” for how to deal with foreign leaders, honed over years in the real estate world, that guided him. “Foreign policy is what I’ll be remembered for,” he said.
But in this case the failure to look around corners has blown up on him at a speed that is rare in foreign policy and national security. The closest analogue may date to 1950, during Harry Truman’s administration, when Secretary of State Dean Acheson described America’s new “defense perimeter” in a speech, saying it ran from southern Japan through the Philippines. That left out the Korean Peninsula, and two weeks later Joseph Stalin, the Soviet leader, appeared to have given Kim Il-sung, grandfather of the current North Korean leader, permission to launch his invasion of the South. The bloody stalemate that followed lives with the United States today.
At the time, the United States kept a token force in South Korea, akin to the one parked along the Turkish-Syrian border. And it is impossible to know whether the North Korean attack would have been launched even without Mr. Acheson’s failure to warn about American action if a vulnerable ally was attacked — just as it is impossible to know if Mr. Erdogan would have sent his troops over the border if that phone call, and Mr. Trump’s failure to object, had never happened.
It was Mr. Trump himself who, during a presidential debate with Hillary Clinton in 2016, blamed President Barack Obama for a similar error. “President Obama and Secretary Clinton created a vacuum the way they got out of Iraq,” he said, referring to the 2011 withdrawal. “They shouldn’t have been in, but once they got in, the way they got out was a disaster. And ISIS was formed.”
Even his allies see the parallel. “If I didn’t see Donald Trump’s name on the tweet I thought it would be Obama’s rationale for getting out of Iraq,” Senator Lindsey Graham, one of Mr. Trump’s most vociferous defenders in recent years, but among his harshest Republican critics for the Syria decision, said last week.
As James F. Jeffrey, who worked for Mr. Obama as ambassador to Turkey, then to Iraq, and now serves as Mr. Trump’s special envoy for Syria, noted several years ago, it is debatable whether events would have played out differently if the United States had stayed in Iraq.
“Could a residual force have prevented ISIS’s victories?” he asked in a Wall Street Journal essay five years ago. “With troops we would have had better intelligence on Al Qaeda in Iraq and later ISIS, a more attentive Washington, and no doubt a better-trained Iraqi army. But the common argument that U.S. troops could have produced different Iraqi political outcomes is hogwash. The Iraqi sectarian divides, which ISIS exploited, run deep and were not susceptible to permanent remedy by our troops at their height, let alone by 5,000 trainers under Iraqi restraints.”
Mr. Trump may now be left to make the same argument about Syria: That nothing could have stopped Mr. Erdogan, that the Russians would benefit in any case, that there are other ways to push back at Iran. Perhaps history will side with him.
For now, however, he has given up most of what little leverage he had.





Well. Instinct cannot replace intellect and insight, Donald. And sometimes claiming "instinct" serves as a foul excuse for lacking intellect and insight.

[Mr Quatro]

He (meaning VP Pence) said the president had directed him to lead a delegation to Turkey alongside Robert O’Brien, the president’s new national security adviser, to negotiate directly with Mr. Erdogan.

Just one problem Mr Erdogan has said that he won't order a cease fire nor will he meet with VP Pence and that he will meet with President Trump only.

[Rockstar]

OK gents, I know in the news "the Kurds"seem to be the latest most talked about subject. And I think have lead you all to believe there is some united front for an independent state founded on freedom and democracy who got screwed, blah blah. But when you say' the Kurds' were this or 'the Kurds' were that, 'the Kurds' were our friends etc. etc. Which tribe of Kurds are you speaking about?

The Jalali, Milan, Ḥaydaranlu, or the Shiʿite Turki-speaking tribes Calabianlu, Moḥammad Ḵanlu, Ḥosaynaklu, Ḥaji ʿAlilu, Ḥasan Beglu, and Qaracorlu? What about the Sarsiv, Tilakuʾi, Bani Ardalan, Jaf, Hulilan, Guran, Kalhor, Sanjabi, Sarafbayani, Kerindi, Bajalan, Nanakuli, and Zangana? The ones I mentioned above are only a small fraction of the others I did not. Which ones even give a rats arse about independence or what going in Syria? Which Kurdish tribe are you all lamenting over and paying so much attention too here when the headlines and news outlets keep bringing up "the Kurds"?