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2016-11-22 The Grand Turk

Turkish police detain veteran Kurdish politician in southeast: Sources

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Posted by trailing wife 2016-11-22 00:00|| || Front Page|| [4 views ] Top
File under: Sublime Porte

#1 Bush didn't do enough, and Obama totally screwed things up. Perhaps Trump's people can see a way through all this; there are ways to support the Kurds far better than we have done. We should push for a free Kurdistan and a plebiscite for a home-rule Kurdish area in Turkey as well. All Trump needs to do is ask because there are people with long relationships and memories in the region, and a lot of willingness to serve. If he asks, then all he needs is to have the guts to stick it out while the agencies and military do the work.

For those of you not familiar with the region, we have allies there other than (and in addition to) Israel, who will happily support the Kurds - we have been ignoring them (during the Bush administration) or shitting on them (during the Obama administration). I hope Trump supports them.

Posted by OldSpook 2016-11-22 01:19|| 2016-11-22 01:19|| Front Page Top

#2 Long editorial. You have been warned.

Full Disclosure: I have friends, former trainees, and former fellow service members who I know are involved in supporting various Kurdish aid and medical activities in the region. I also know and know of people who are working to support Kurdish military efforts in the region. I have supported food & medical relief/supply efforts as well. So this is somewhat personal to me.

I wish the coup had actually been a coup and not a Reichstag fire set up by the government. I would have celebrated Erdogan's execution after a drumhead court martial.

From what I can see, Erdogan is on the path to criminalizing being Kurdish in Turkey as a means of cementing political power and Islamist behavior along side Turkish racialism. Yes, Turks even now are ever bit as racist as the Germans were about "being Aryan" 80 years ago. If Erdogan succeeds, he will be triggering more support for the PKK and more military and terror actions by the PKK's most radical elements. Unlike the Jews in pre-WW2 Germany, these people will not be scapegoats, they will fight viciously. The bloodshed will go up - and when it starts to happen in the non-Kurdish parts of Turkey it will be especially bloody.

If the Kurds were ever to manage to liberate their homeland part of Turkey, Turkey will cease to be able to extract mineral wealth while returning very little to the people who live there - while also repressing the liberty of the people who live in the region. The Turks would have to modernize their government and economy, or else become a poorer Islamic version of Greece. Their position would become untenable for anything other than a return to Ataturk style secularism.

I, for one, will applaud all the destruction of Edogan's fascisiti racist MB-style bastards that is done. I've seen their work, they deserve to be systemically reduced and then hunted to extinction for being SS-style racist bastards. The biggest mistake Bush made was not making Erdogan pay a hard price for his treachery during OIF - perhaps even a military coup would have been in order. The biggest mistake in this area Obama made is giving the Turks any leeway in their conduct during which they were tacitly allowing ISIS support to flow across their border into Syria. Like the mess in Libya, he knew, but chose to ignore it until it blew up on him. Also Obama ignored the Erdogan regime's lies about "striking ISIS" when all the Turks did was to use minor and ineffective strikes against ISIS as a fig leaf for large and coordinated strikes against Kurdish liberation forces in Syria, Iraq and the border area.

We should have supported the Kurds with artillery, ammunition and heavy arms, plus full on air campaign to close the Turkish rat lines for ISIS. We should also have provided CAP like we did during Operation Northern Watch (and Provide Comfort, as well as Operation Desert Fox), to protect their forces training areas and field operations from the Turks.

Instead we coddled this MB bastard and allowed him to strike cross-border against people who should be our allies.

All of Kurdistan, including the parts in Turkey and Iran, deserves liberation, and regardless of that, the Kurds deserve better support from the US. They also deserve better liberation organizations than the PKK: in Kirkuk and the Kurdish areas of Iraq there is solid secular leadership that is oriented toward Western values and they should be helped to organize civil resistance and movement for self-government inside Turkey and Iran. But Obama's inactions and the professional idiots at State are letting Erdogan push everything into those radicals of the PKK in order to coddle the Islamists in Turkey.

Trump can do better, and there are plenty of people and allies that can help. Oppose Salafists and Shias and pay attention (unlike Obama), and have the courage to support his "inconvenient" allies whom the Saudis and Wahabbis may not like (unlike Bush).

All Trump has to do is appoint the right people - and have them ask the right questions. The capabilities and possibilities are there, unused for nearly a decade. It would be nice to see someone actually pay attention to the end results, instead of looking for angles to exploit everything as a domestic political agenda opportunity

Posted by OldSpook 2016-11-22 01:40|| 2016-11-22 01:40|| Front Page Top

#3 I was just thinking about this, unsure about how to articulate it. Thanks, OldSpook, for cutting to the chase. Pushback on two fronts.

Posted by Raj 2016-11-22 01:41|| 2016-11-22 01:41|| Front Page Top

#4 One last thing - if we are ever forced to withdraw from Incirlik, we should crater the entire facility as we leave. We built it, we sure as hell shouldn't leave it for those bastards to use against us.

Posted by OldSpook 2016-11-22 01:44|| 2016-11-22 01:44|| Front Page Top

#5 One more thing from me (and aping OldSpook juuuust a bit) - Turkey fucked us over by not allowing the 4th ID over their territory when we needed them. Granted Erdogan (Gollum lookalike) wasn't in charge then, but that doesn't matter. Payback's a bitch and they need to be taught a harsh lesson in geopolitical politics, in spades. Arm the Kurds to the teeth.

Posted by Raj 2016-11-22 02:05|| 2016-11-22 02:05|| Front Page Top

#6 For those of you not familiar with the region, we have allies there other than (and in addition to) Israel, who will happily support the Kurds

Except for Christians - who nowadays have no power, who, OS?

Posted by g(r)omgoru 2016-11-22 03:16|| 2016-11-22 03:16|| Front Page Top

#7 Erdogan is on the path to criminalizing being Kurdish in Turkey as a means of cementing political power and Islamist behavior along side Turkish racialism.

Yes. There is an existential dimension underlying this as well, according to this Hurriyet editorial; David P. Goldman, who used to write under the nom de plume of Spengler has discussed it as well. The Kurdish birth rate within Turkey is well above replacement at 3.4, while the Turkish birth rate has fallen below replacement at 1.9, held up by the poor, religious Turks in the villages; around Istanbul the birthrate of the educated and prosperous denizens is 1.5. President Erdogan has spoken about 2038 as the year when the tipping point is reached -- and despite elevating and keeping him in power the Turkish population has not responded by making more babies, though his wife did her bit by having four. Killing Kurds is his only remaining option to slow the Darwinian race.

Posted by trailing wife 2016-11-22 05:48|| 2016-11-22 05:48|| Front Page Top

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