In a statement Sunday evening on Twitter, President Trump announced that
he will establish a 20 mile “safe zone” between Turkey and the
US-backed Syrian Kurds as part of the US pullout from Syria. He also
threatened to “devastate Turkey economically if they hit Kurds.”
Trump appeared to downplay the pullout itself, saying the US would
attack ISIS from existing nearby bases if they reform. This presumably
refers to US bases being set up on the Iraqi side of the Syrian border.
Overtly threatening Turkey is a new tactic,
after a month of puzzling policy proclamations. The evidence, early on,
was that President Trump’s pullout was announced immediately after
speaking with Turkey’s President Erdogan, amid Erdogan’s open talk of
invading Syrian Kurdistan.
After early talk that the US was “betraying” the Kurds, administration
officials have previously said that they would ensure the Kurds were
protected, without saying how. It seems this is being built around a
threat of economic devastation of Turkey, a large US ally and NATO
member.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he remains optimistic of a “good outcome,” but also added that the Kurdish YPG “who are not terrorists and fighting alongside us for all this time deserve to be protected.“
This isn’t leaving Erdogan any wiggle room, as he has long maintained
the YPG are terrorists under Turkish law, and called the claims that
they were helping the US “a huge lie.” With Turkish officials saying
they’d invade Syria irrespective of US excuses just days ago, any
back-down is going to be very difficult for their government without
appearing to surrender to US demands.
I don’t see the Kurds as being betrayed as the Kurds have been fighting on the winning side all along . Against the same forces fighting Assad . Syria will be happy to fight with the Kurds any time it becomes needed . Sorry I can’t say that same thing about NATO or the USA .
No they haven’t that’s CNN’s version of events. Kurdish nomads are not indigenous to Syria. They constitute 2% of the population in US occupied east (or 1.5 million out of 18 million Syrians in total), mainly refugees from Turkey under PKK terrorist command or YPG as they are known in Syria, toss in a bunch of Isis cutthroats and the US call that particular flavour “SDF”.
They live mainly in two villages bordering Turkey up north Manbij and Ain al Arab, a town ethically cleansed from Arabs by the kurds with “a little help from uncle Sam and uncle Schmuel. After that US changed the name to the more Kurdish sounding Kobane (where have wee seen that before? Ah yes, former Yugoslavia, where US Muslim clients in Bosnia suddenly were called “Bosniaks” by the US, and their orthodox Serb brethren with whom they shared same religion and culture and dna not too long ago before the Turkish occupation, well, just Serbs (or the new Hitlers) But I digress you know the drill))
The rest constitutes of Arabs that don’t want to be governed by these former guests turned opportunistic occupiers, land grabbers and looters. US and the kurd commanded cutthroat merc’s SDF are having a hard time enforcing kurd rule outside of these two towns and Arab militias and NDF troops are now in nightly raids, bumping off kurd commanders and cutthroats on almost a daily basis.
Despite being supposedly “friendly”,they have been fighting and killing SAA on and off around al Qamishli for no particular reason at all probably on a US whim. The town lies within US occupied Eastern syria, not ethnically cleansed, defended by the Syrian Arab army, a Syrian “enclave” if you like with daily flights to Damascus, on occupied Syrian land.
Apart from that they have been (in both Iraq and Syria) buddies with al Qaeda and Nusra letting them do the dirty job of ethnically cleansing land that doesn’t belong to them, for them. Not a nice bunch of you ask me. Not at all different from fanatical squatters in occupied Palestine with whom they of course have been trying to create a “israel2.0”.
Now that the US couldn’t care less about them and supposedly are handing back eastern Syria, Kurds suddenly want to become Syrians again….
Threats on Turkey has the same effect it had on Russia, i.e the opposite.
The Astana three +Iraq and Syria determine the immediate future of the region, not the US nor it’s Zionazi pariah offshoot in occupied Palestine. US’s terror reign with wahhabi cutthroat mercenaries and kurds only worked for so long, now they have no cards left to play.
Erdogan is an opportunist and a jihadist true but he is also a realist. Turkey want stability so cutting ties with the surrounded US supported cutthroats in Idlib and facilitate the Syrian clean up operation was the right thing to do and their commitment to smoke out terrorist Kurds of whichever flavour remain firm so if the US won’t accept defeat of it’s ” israel 2.0″ project and leave soon enough the Astana three through Turkey will in no uncertain way make them, which is why they will.
The partnership between Washington and the Kurdish YPG illustrates that alliances are formed out of common interest . Unfortunately the pursuit of interest (ie power) has led every nation/civilization to the war it was trying to avoid: utter defeat. https://www.ghostsofhistory.wordpress.com/
I have every sympathy for the plight of the Kurds, but is it in America’s best interest to place Turkey in a position where it cannot back down?
Again this pretense of “helping allies” as in NATO arguments, but the Kurds are not able to rely on such friends.
The Trump Doctrine: Everything means nothing and nothing means whatever the f**k we want it to mean.