Turkey’s invasion of Syria is focused on Afrin, for now, but officials have promised to extend it to Manbij, and ultimately across the entire Syrian border. Apparently that’s not enough, as Turkey is also attacking Iraq again.
Turkish media is reporting that warplanes carried out at least eight different airstrikes across northern Iraq on Tuesday, destroying several shelters across the far north of Iraqi Kurdistan.
Officials have yet to confirm why these targets were attacked, or who they think they killed, but generally speaking strikes made by Turkey are aimed at the Kurds, and in northernmost Iraq, that generally means the PKK.
PKK forces are mostly active in Turkey, but during a ceasefire a few years ago, some of them relocated into Iraq, pending negotiations. Since Turkey scrapped that ceasefire, they’ve attacked Iraq intermittently, though it’s strange to think they’d carry out such strikes now, with the focus so clearly on Syria.
Turkey’s actions along its Southern border are understandable paranoia which goes all the way back to the breakup of the Ottoman empire. If it had not been for Kemal Ataturk several significant land bites might have been taken out of the current Turkey by some of the victorious allies. It was by waging war and not at the negotiating table that the modern Turkey was born.
It was not until Bush’s invasion of Iraq that Turkey began to feel seriously threatened again with the formation of an autonomous Kurdish region or even a Kurdish state at its underbelly and foreign armies at its Southern borders again. Such a Kurdish entity would try to expand into Southeastern Turkey. Add to this the dangerous contest of us and Russia in the Black Sea which has repercussions for the Dardanelles. Voila, understandable paranoia.
Internally the Turkish people have a choice of two: religious nationalism or secular nationalism. Both will demand that Turkey remains unchanged and no Kurdistan at its Southern border. Make no mistake, the secularists will not, cannot be more peaceable than Erdogan. They venerate Ataturk and will fight too.
The problem of autonomous Kurdish regions in Syria and Iraq, or even a Kurdish state along the Southern border of Turkey is that these are nuts in the nutcracker of Turkey, Syria, and Iraq. If our government withdraws all troops from these nuts the nutcracker will begin to close. There will be another war in the Middle East. Our government is now and will be the only force that can keep the nutcracker which we have created open. It will remain a very difficult issue for President Trump because there is no good choice for him. It is a Scylla and Charybdis created by the war on ISIS.
“…created by the war on ISIS.” Which was necessitated by the war on Iraq. And more American intervention is gonna create what??? I’m amazed anyone thinks the USA has any hope or ability to remedy the mess we ourselves have made.
Keep biting Turkey. You’re gonna choke on what you can’t chew.
Seems 2me the Trumperz have baited Turkey too much already, where they are advocating confrontationalist actions which they will control. So the superpower now must dance until the music stops..