Sunday, June 02, 2013 1:36:20 AM
By Ceding Northeastern Syria to the Kurds, Assad Puts Turkey in a Bind
"A Nation of Pain and Suffering: Syria (Part 2)" .. one bit .. "Assad, who had in 1998 thrown out the PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan at the behest of Turkey, now pivoted in the other direction. He cleverly ceded northeastern Syria to various Kurdish groups, who are not averse to the PKK. Assad set a grave chess problem for Erdogan – increased PKK activity in Turkey derived from confidence about the new safe zone in Syria and threatened Erdogan with mayhem (violence broke in Hakkari province, with the PKK seizing control of Semdinli, and in Gaziantep province, where a bomb blast in the main city in August rattled the government)."
By Piotr Zalewski / Istanbul July 27, 2012 1 Comment
Turkpix / Associated Press
In this Tuesday, July 24, 2012 photo, a Syrian boy sits atop a damaged military tank at the border town of Azaz, some 20 miles (32 kilometers) north of Aleppo, Syria. Turkey sealed its border with Syria to trucks on Wednesday, July 25, 2012 cutting off a vital supply line to the embattled nation as fighting stretched into its fifth day in the commercial capital of Aleppo.
The retreat of President Bashar al-Assad’s forces from parts of northeastern Syria .. http://topics.time.com/syria/ .. along the Turkish border might have been welcomed by Turkey .. http://topics.time.com/turkey/ , a key supporter of the Syrian rebellion, except for one thing: The region is predominantly Kurdish, and Ankara fears the resulting power vacuum will be a major boon to its number one enemy, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) whose three-decade separatist insurgency has seen some 40,000 people killed.
Until recently, Syria’s Kurds had been divided. A coalition of roughly a dozen Kurdish parties had tentatively backed the popular uprising against Assad, while the PKK’s Syrian ally, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), appeared to align itself with the Syrian regime, intimidating opposition activists and quashing popular protests. Others sat on the sidelines, wary of closing ranks with a Sunni Arab-dominated opposition that turned a deaf ear to Kurdish demands for new rights in a post-Assad Syria. Two weeks ago – perhaps sensing that the regime’s fall was imminent – the rival Syrian Kurdish political currents put aside their differences, under the coaching of Iraqi Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani. In Irbil, capital of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish Regional Government, they signed a unity agreement that has allowed them to take control of several northeastern towns, Assad’s forces mostly retreating without a fight.
The news sparked a Turkish media and political clamor about the imminent rise of a “PKK Republic” or a “Western Kurdistan” on Turkey’s southern flank. Commentators fear that the rise of a second Kurdish statelet, following the emergence of the one in neighboring Iraq in 2003, would embolden Turkey’s own 12-15 million Kurds to pursue their own dream of autonomy. Worse still, it could potentially provide the PKK — branded as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the U.S., and the EU — with sanctuaries from which to launch cross-border attacks.
(MORE: Five Syria Nightmares: The Middle East Can’t Live with Assad, but Living Without Him Won’t Be Easy)
http://world.time.com/2012/07/24/five-syrian-nightmares-the-mideast-cant-live-with-assad-but-living-without-him-wont-be-easy/
Picking up where the media left off, Turkey’s fiery leader, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan .. http://topics.time.com/recep-tayyip-erdogan/ , banged the war drums. Though he and his government proclaim the Kurds a “brother nation,” Erdogan told a TV interviewer on Wednesday, a Kurdish state in northern Syria would likely become a “terrorist entity”. If need be, he warned, Turkey would not hesitate to hit the PKK inside Syria, as it has done repeatedly in northern Iraq. “If a formation that’s going to be a problem emerges, if there is a terror operation, an irritant, then intervening would be our most natural right.”
It would not be easy. In northern Iraq — where the PKK has come under pressure from a Barzani government that seeks to improve ties with Ankara — the rebels remain ensconced in remote mountain hideouts, making it easier for Turkish forces to target them with relative impunity. In Syria, the PKK-aligned PYD is an urban-based outfit. To bring the fight to them, Turkish troops would have to operate in large population centers, many of them within a stone’s throw of the common border.
Syrian Kurds are quick to counter Turkish alarmism. Ankara is overstating the PKK’s influence in Syria, Abdulhalim, a Kurdish activist in Syria, told TIME via Skype. Even if it is the strongest and best armed of the Kurdish factions in Syria, the PYD is in no position to overwhelm its local rivals. “People will not allow the PYD to control the area,” Abdulhalim insists. “All people here, Arabs, Christians, and other ethnicities, will be in control.” The radicals would also have to contend with Barzani, whose government has provided training to Kurdish defectors from Assad’s army.
(MORE: Is Syria’s Bashar Assad Going the Way of Muammar Gaddafi?)
http://world.time.com/2012/07/23/is-syrias-bashar-assad-going-the-way-of-muammar-gaddafi/
But, Abdulhalim warns, nothing would unite the Kurds of Syria more than resistance to a Turkish incursion. “We are strongly refusing Erdogan talking about any invasion of Syria to protect Turkey from the PYD,” he says.
When the sabre-rattling dies down, writes Oral Calislar, a commentator for Radikal, a Turkish newspaper, Ankara will do the same with a Kurdish quasi-state in Syria as it did with the one in Iraq – learn to live with it. “We used to say we’d never tolerate an autonomous Kurdistan on our border,” Calislar writes. “It was one of our ‘red lines.’ And now we’re buddy-buddy with Barzani.”
For the time being, the most that Turkey can do to contain the fallout from Syria is to make amends with its own Kurds, says Hugh Pope, an analyst with the International Crisis Group. If Erdogan wants to ensure Turkey’s security, he adds, his government will have to do so by addressing the Turkish Kurds’ main grievances – adequate political representation, mother tongue education, some degree of devolution, and a partial amnesty for PKK members.
The situation across the border might be “alarming” for Turkey, says Pope, “but only because Turkey has not solved its own Kurdish problem.”
MORE: In Rebel Syria: Celebrating Assad’s Departure–Even Though He’s Still Staying
http://world.time.com/2012/07/20/in-rebel-syria-celebrating-assads-departure-even-though-hes-still-staying/
http://world.time.com/2012/07/27/by-ceding-northeastern-syria-to-the-kurds-assad-puts-turkey-in-a-bind/
See also:
Dec. 2007 .. A second reason for US caution is the fragile political system within Iraq. America's ally, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, has lost all of his principle backers in the Iraqi government. The Sunnis, represented by the Iraqi Accordance Front, have walked out on him since this summer. So has the Sadrist bloc of Muqtada, which is very powerful among young people in the Shi'ite community. The last on the walkout list is former prime minister Iyad Allawi, who has his eyes set on replacing Maliki and who represents a secular, cross-confessional parliamentary coalition.
Maliki's only allies are what remains of the United Iraqi Alliance, an Iran-backed Shi'ite coalition, and two Kurdish blocs headed by Barzani and President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd. Simply put, Maliki cannot risk alienating Iraqi Kurds - who are supportive of the PKK - or else his government will become unconstitutional. .. http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=25445603
Iraq, warily eyeing Turkey, says tackling PKK .. ouch, i goofed the emphasis ..
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=24184313
Turkey Goes into Iraq after Kurdish Attack
Posted on 10/20/2011 by Juan
Many catastrophes ensued from George W. Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq (launched in order to, he told an astonished and puzzled Jacques Chirac, then French president, thwart the biblical monsters Gog and Magog in the Middle East .. http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=library&page=haught_29_5 .. ahead of the Judgment Day.)
Among them was a revival of the Kurdistan Workers Party guerrilla group (Turkish
acronym PKK), which had been in decline in the late 1990s and early zeroes.
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=68199194
"A Nation of Pain and Suffering: Syria (Part 2)" .. one bit .. "Assad, who had in 1998 thrown out the PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan at the behest of Turkey, now pivoted in the other direction. He cleverly ceded northeastern Syria to various Kurdish groups, who are not averse to the PKK. Assad set a grave chess problem for Erdogan – increased PKK activity in Turkey derived from confidence about the new safe zone in Syria and threatened Erdogan with mayhem (violence broke in Hakkari province, with the PKK seizing control of Semdinli, and in Gaziantep province, where a bomb blast in the main city in August rattled the government)."
By Piotr Zalewski / Istanbul July 27, 2012 1 Comment
Turkpix / Associated Press
In this Tuesday, July 24, 2012 photo, a Syrian boy sits atop a damaged military tank at the border town of Azaz, some 20 miles (32 kilometers) north of Aleppo, Syria. Turkey sealed its border with Syria to trucks on Wednesday, July 25, 2012 cutting off a vital supply line to the embattled nation as fighting stretched into its fifth day in the commercial capital of Aleppo.
The retreat of President Bashar al-Assad’s forces from parts of northeastern Syria .. http://topics.time.com/syria/ .. along the Turkish border might have been welcomed by Turkey .. http://topics.time.com/turkey/ , a key supporter of the Syrian rebellion, except for one thing: The region is predominantly Kurdish, and Ankara fears the resulting power vacuum will be a major boon to its number one enemy, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) whose three-decade separatist insurgency has seen some 40,000 people killed.
Until recently, Syria’s Kurds had been divided. A coalition of roughly a dozen Kurdish parties had tentatively backed the popular uprising against Assad, while the PKK’s Syrian ally, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), appeared to align itself with the Syrian regime, intimidating opposition activists and quashing popular protests. Others sat on the sidelines, wary of closing ranks with a Sunni Arab-dominated opposition that turned a deaf ear to Kurdish demands for new rights in a post-Assad Syria. Two weeks ago – perhaps sensing that the regime’s fall was imminent – the rival Syrian Kurdish political currents put aside their differences, under the coaching of Iraqi Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani. In Irbil, capital of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish Regional Government, they signed a unity agreement that has allowed them to take control of several northeastern towns, Assad’s forces mostly retreating without a fight.
The news sparked a Turkish media and political clamor about the imminent rise of a “PKK Republic” or a “Western Kurdistan” on Turkey’s southern flank. Commentators fear that the rise of a second Kurdish statelet, following the emergence of the one in neighboring Iraq in 2003, would embolden Turkey’s own 12-15 million Kurds to pursue their own dream of autonomy. Worse still, it could potentially provide the PKK — branded as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the U.S., and the EU — with sanctuaries from which to launch cross-border attacks.
(MORE: Five Syria Nightmares: The Middle East Can’t Live with Assad, but Living Without Him Won’t Be Easy)
http://world.time.com/2012/07/24/five-syrian-nightmares-the-mideast-cant-live-with-assad-but-living-without-him-wont-be-easy/
Picking up where the media left off, Turkey’s fiery leader, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan .. http://topics.time.com/recep-tayyip-erdogan/ , banged the war drums. Though he and his government proclaim the Kurds a “brother nation,” Erdogan told a TV interviewer on Wednesday, a Kurdish state in northern Syria would likely become a “terrorist entity”. If need be, he warned, Turkey would not hesitate to hit the PKK inside Syria, as it has done repeatedly in northern Iraq. “If a formation that’s going to be a problem emerges, if there is a terror operation, an irritant, then intervening would be our most natural right.”
It would not be easy. In northern Iraq — where the PKK has come under pressure from a Barzani government that seeks to improve ties with Ankara — the rebels remain ensconced in remote mountain hideouts, making it easier for Turkish forces to target them with relative impunity. In Syria, the PKK-aligned PYD is an urban-based outfit. To bring the fight to them, Turkish troops would have to operate in large population centers, many of them within a stone’s throw of the common border.
Syrian Kurds are quick to counter Turkish alarmism. Ankara is overstating the PKK’s influence in Syria, Abdulhalim, a Kurdish activist in Syria, told TIME via Skype. Even if it is the strongest and best armed of the Kurdish factions in Syria, the PYD is in no position to overwhelm its local rivals. “People will not allow the PYD to control the area,” Abdulhalim insists. “All people here, Arabs, Christians, and other ethnicities, will be in control.” The radicals would also have to contend with Barzani, whose government has provided training to Kurdish defectors from Assad’s army.
(MORE: Is Syria’s Bashar Assad Going the Way of Muammar Gaddafi?)
http://world.time.com/2012/07/23/is-syrias-bashar-assad-going-the-way-of-muammar-gaddafi/
But, Abdulhalim warns, nothing would unite the Kurds of Syria more than resistance to a Turkish incursion. “We are strongly refusing Erdogan talking about any invasion of Syria to protect Turkey from the PYD,” he says.
When the sabre-rattling dies down, writes Oral Calislar, a commentator for Radikal, a Turkish newspaper, Ankara will do the same with a Kurdish quasi-state in Syria as it did with the one in Iraq – learn to live with it. “We used to say we’d never tolerate an autonomous Kurdistan on our border,” Calislar writes. “It was one of our ‘red lines.’ And now we’re buddy-buddy with Barzani.”
For the time being, the most that Turkey can do to contain the fallout from Syria is to make amends with its own Kurds, says Hugh Pope, an analyst with the International Crisis Group. If Erdogan wants to ensure Turkey’s security, he adds, his government will have to do so by addressing the Turkish Kurds’ main grievances – adequate political representation, mother tongue education, some degree of devolution, and a partial amnesty for PKK members.
The situation across the border might be “alarming” for Turkey, says Pope, “but only because Turkey has not solved its own Kurdish problem.”
MORE: In Rebel Syria: Celebrating Assad’s Departure–Even Though He’s Still Staying
http://world.time.com/2012/07/20/in-rebel-syria-celebrating-assads-departure-even-though-hes-still-staying/
http://world.time.com/2012/07/27/by-ceding-northeastern-syria-to-the-kurds-assad-puts-turkey-in-a-bind/
See also:
Dec. 2007 .. A second reason for US caution is the fragile political system within Iraq. America's ally, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, has lost all of his principle backers in the Iraqi government. The Sunnis, represented by the Iraqi Accordance Front, have walked out on him since this summer. So has the Sadrist bloc of Muqtada, which is very powerful among young people in the Shi'ite community. The last on the walkout list is former prime minister Iyad Allawi, who has his eyes set on replacing Maliki and who represents a secular, cross-confessional parliamentary coalition.
Maliki's only allies are what remains of the United Iraqi Alliance, an Iran-backed Shi'ite coalition, and two Kurdish blocs headed by Barzani and President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd. Simply put, Maliki cannot risk alienating Iraqi Kurds - who are supportive of the PKK - or else his government will become unconstitutional. .. http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=25445603
Iraq, warily eyeing Turkey, says tackling PKK .. ouch, i goofed the emphasis ..
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=24184313
Turkey Goes into Iraq after Kurdish Attack
Posted on 10/20/2011 by Juan
Many catastrophes ensued from George W. Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq (launched in order to, he told an astonished and puzzled Jacques Chirac, then French president, thwart the biblical monsters Gog and Magog in the Middle East .. http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=library&page=haught_29_5 .. ahead of the Judgment Day.)
Among them was a revival of the Kurdistan Workers Party guerrilla group (Turkish
acronym PKK), which had been in decline in the late 1990s and early zeroes.
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=68199194
It was Plato who said, “He, O men, is the wisest, who like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing”
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