ISIS support from a NATO member

[sandozer]

Unreal . .

http://www.newsweek.com/isis-and-turkey-cooperate-destroy-kurds-former-isis-member-reveals-turkish-282920

[Pali]

Very real. Turkey may be afraid of united Kurd movement more than ISIS. Kurds as a nation are spread into Turkey, Iraq and Syria and dream of an own state. Turkey fights them for ages.

[ShotOne]

"unreal.." really? Surely what's unreal is believing the world consists only of good guys and bad guys and that everyone else exactly shares our viewpoint despite, in this case, that the Turks have been bitterly fighting the Kurds for decades.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Who did you think was buying ISIS's oil? Esso?

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/6c269c4e-5ace-11e4-b449-00144feab7de.html#axzz3R6BRuqmR

[Easy Street]

Also, Turkey is relaxed about ISIS because it wants rid of Assad. President Erdogan had an almighty falling-out with him a few years ago. Unfortunately, as with other examples of long-running rivalries in the region, these squabbles have all developed sectarian character (in many cases, not because the squabbles are fundamentally religious, but because religious identity politics are an easy way of mobilising support for causes that might not otherwise bother the populace). Once unleashed, these sectarian/identity disputes aren't going to be fixed by negotiation due to the rabid hostility that results. The US has already accepted that NATO contains a Muslim Brotherhood-leaning Islamist government... yes, Erdogan hates al-Sisi as well... It's a screwed-up web of intrigue that I would much prefer we abandon to its fate. But we can't!

Beware identity politics.... I hope it's not going to keep growing in the UK...

[Romeo Oscar Golf]

Just bin Turkey...from the EU and NATO. About as trustworthy and reliable as a Labour "government":yuk:

[Lonewolf_50]

Just bin Turkey...from the EU and NATO.
And then what? You might wish to take a look at how various pipelines get to Turkish ports and their linkage to European commerce, and a few other bits and pieces of the economic side of how Turkey fits into the regional and global puzzle.
They are a mid sized power. They can cause a lot of mischief outside of the orbit, no matter how much of a pain they can be within the alliance.

[MPN11]

Turkey and the PKK were a hot topic in Whitehall over 20 years ago ... and the Kurds won't concede an inch. Given that Turkey is a proud Nation, it's little wonder that they will use any means to scratch that irritating spot on their southern border.

Sadly, their integrity/sense [i.e. Cyprus & Greece] and their general behaviour is unlikely to lead the West/Europe to welcome them with open arms into the EU, although they are slowly creeping ever closer. I suspect this latest revelation might [hopefully, IMO] set that back a bit.

R.O.G. ... agreed :cool:

[rh200]

Turkey is a bit of a worry, could go either way. Most countries have competing forces in them, and for them to stay stable requires a lot of effort, with different means at different times.

As I said in a comment about China a while ago, as they evolve, some people get left behind, some move forward to quickly, this leads to a wide cultural gap, the modern media exasperates this. So the prediction is China will most likely have to get brutal sometime in the future to stay stable. So what about Turkey?

Turkey had the fast track to social evolution though much of the twentieth century, but that leaves a significant amount of the population with a less than enthusiastic view of the west behind. So maybe at the moment the best thing for them is an Islamist in charge, keeps the extreme conservative base at bay. But is he more than that, does he have other aims.

I had the same view about Russia and Putin, figured he was just playing up to satisfy the masses and try and pull the Russians out of their social quagmire. That appears to be sadly wrong. So what about Erogdan?

The common thread with all this, is the west, we are weak, we have basically set a bad example on how to not do things on most metrics that matter to these people.

[BEagle]

Or even the expensive mission turnback cancellations when we were obliged to 'reduce gross weight' over the sea before landing after a 'Turkish Special Mission' had been declared.....:mad:

Hundreds of tonnes of fuel must have been wasted due to late-notice TSMs...:\

[t43562]

I'm living in Istanbul at the moment for a while. There's a substantial number of Turks who are rather western in outlook and very worried about the way things are going. Unfortunately since I'm from Zimbabwe I find it difficult to be hopeful about such situations.

The fact that such a man has been allowed to get into power there at all is odd and one wonders how such a state of affairs which shouldn't happen at all could ever flip the other way. A lot of people would suddenly have to become wiser and that didn't happen back home so I'm not sure how it will happen here.

[Not_a_boffin]

Just wait till the Greeks get their funding from Russia or China as their defence minster is currently suggesting. Might make NATO membership a bit interesting.

One hopes it's all part of a brinkmanship strategy from the Greek government, but the trouble with those strategies is that sometimes they get called.....

Good thing our defence planning assumptions all assume everything largely hunky-dory in Europe - D'Oh!

[darkroomsource]

I don't understand the surprise.
ISIS is claiming to be the continuation of the caliphate.
Turkey was the centre of the caliphate.

[ShotOne]

Can we really blame Turkey? Our policy must seem confusing at best to a third party. Only a year ago we were gearing up to attack Assad; whatever the rights and wrongs of his regime this would have delighted IS. More recently one of his jets, in the act of engaging IS fighters, was downed by the Israelis -to whoops of appreciation on this forum. Yes, it had infringed their airspace but I'm sure IS were grateful anyway.

[Whenurhappy]

I'm living in Istanbul at the moment for a while. There's a substantial number of Turks who are rather western in outlook and very worried about the way things are going. Unfortunately since I'm from Zimbabwe I find it difficult to be hopeful about such situations.

The fact that such a man has been allowed to get into power there at all is odd and one wonders how such a state of affairs which shouldn't happen at all could ever flip the other way. A lot of people would suddenly have to become wiser and that didn't happen back home so I'm not sure how it will happen here.

Rather snowy at the moment, isn't it?

Erdoğan was the mayor of Istanbul and initiated the vast public transportation infrastructure programme. He has raised mean incomes a huge amount over the last 15 years (albeit on cheap foreign credit). He is also behaving like the Sultans of the 19th Century - paying lip service to tanzimat - modernisation - whilst allegedly feathering his own nest and developing rampant cronyism. ('England' was instrumental in removing some Sultans in those days, such was our power). Unfortunately the opposition parties are in disarray and between them split the vote so that AKP will always prevail. The Military have lost the legislative backing that allowed them to 'intervene' and a large number of Lt Cols - 4 Stars were locked up over the last few years on bogus allegations of coup plotting (and planning attacks on shopping malls, inter alia) in the 'Sledgehammer' plot. The result is that the Turkish General Staff seems to lack any guts and drive, and has no appetite for cross-border raids, given that 75% of their manpower are still conscripts.

The US and UK arming the Kurds would be akin to the UK agreeing for France and Germany, let's say, arming PIRA to conduct operations against a theocratic regime in Eire. Whereas the UK would have been happy in years gone by if the Irish Government had eliminated the PIRA threat.

Young educated Middle Class Turks want to move to the west, but at the same time they are 'rediscovering' their Islamic roots. I recently went to lunch with a group of senior Turkish officials; in the past wine would have been served - now it was Ayran - curdled butter-milk. Yum!

[t43562]

I think it's the patronage system which I intrinsically recognise from Zim. It took Bob a while to set it up but it has served him very well in the bad times. There's sort of no way to do anything at all in life without effectively supporting it/paying it off in that country.

Ayran is just yogurt with water and salt added - it's not as bad as you describe but my wife does notice people who change their attitudes because they are sucking up to the AKP. My mother in law lost her flat recently (as a fairly responsible civil servant she got one) and is absolutely sure it was handed off to some AKP person. So sucking up works and that's the lesson everyone learns.

[Whenurhappy]

Yes, Ayran is a somewhat acquired taste, however. The cronyism within the AKP is holding the country back and it has penetrated almost all levels of the civil service, paralysing criticism and investigation of AKP nomenklatura. A very sad state of affairs.

[ORAC]

Perfidious America: The Allegedly Anti-ISIS Turkish Campaign is Objectively Pro-ISIS (http://streetwiseprofessor.com/?p=9481)

Last week the administration breathlessly announced that it had secured Turkey’s participation in the anti-ISIS campaign. This would entail Turkish airstrikes against ISIS positions, and Turkey granting the US use of Incirlik and other airbases for strike and drone aircraft. The straw that supposedly broke the camel’s back was an ISIS suicide bombing of a Kurdish protest on the Turkey-Syria border (by people wanting to cross to Kobane to help in reconstruction) and the subsequent killing of two Turkish policemen by Kurds who blamed Turkey for the bombing.

With great fanfare, Turkey launched an airstrike against ISIS. And then it has spent the last week bombing the snot out of Kurdish PKK positions in Iraq. If Turkey has engaged in further attacks against ISIS, I haven’t seen it reported, whereas there Turkey has attacked Kurdish positions on a daily basis. Nor do I believe that an extensive campaign would be possible without close coordination between the US and Turkey to avoid fratricide, mid-air collisions, etc., if their forces are operating in the same airspace against the same targets. And as I discuss below, it is unlikely such coordination is occurring.

In sum, under the pretext of attacking ISIS Turkey is attacking its real enemy, the Kurds, who happen to be the only effective ground force against ISIS, and who in addition to pushing them out of Kobane have been taking territory from ISIS and pushing it back towards Raqqa. Indeed, the Kurds have pushed ISIS away from virtually all of the Syria-Turkey border. But in addition to inflicting damage on the Kurds, the Turkish attacks will also no doubt divert Kurdish resources into a renewed war against Turkey, thereby further diminishing pressure on ISIS.... (more)...

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

I believe ExxonMobil has just signed some new exploration contracts with the Kurds, which the Iraqis are particularly p!ssed off about as it boosts the prospects for Kurdish Independence. I shouldn't think the Turks are best-pleased either. They will be expecting the US Government to do something about this, not understanding that the Americans can't simply tell a company what to do, like they can. A cynic would suggest it is in fact ExxonMobil that tells the President what to do in America. The Middle Eastern way is to f#ck your supposed partner around as much as you perceive he is f#cking you around until he changes his mind. The Turks can most easily do this by not opposing ISIS. This also allows the ISIS oil trade to continue, large wedges of cash from which end up in Turkish politicians (and their supporters) back pockets, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that in the Sandpit.

[rh200]

I believe ExxonMobil has just signed some new exploration contracts with the Kurds, which the Iraqis are particularly p!ssed off about as it boosts the prospects for Kurdish Independence.

I would have thought that could be challenged legally.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

The contracts do need Iraqi approval, but similar contracts in 2011 and 2014 have been effectively allowed to proceed, although Baghdad considers them illegal*. The p!ssed-off routine just appears to be for internal political consumption and presumably also a way of upping the bribe money. Most commentators seem to think that ExxonMobil do not make these moves until they have been given the nod that they will be approved. There comes a point, however, when the risk of the Kurds having a viable Kurdistan and attempting it increases markedly. The geopolitics is interesting. The Iraqi politicians may feel it's an inevitability, and they have zero political weight up there anyway, so they might as well just make the maxi dosh out of it. The Turks have long felt it threatens their nation state, so their concerns may be of a different nature to the Iraqis, and also more sensitive. A viable Kurdistan, even if incorporating purely currently Iraqi real estate, will (they fear,I suspect rightly) lead to Kurdish regions of Turkey joining it eventually.

* It's a messy one. ExxonMobil also has a large stake in Iraq. After the first Kurdish deal, the Iraqis threatened to ban any further contracts for Exxon. They in turn started negotiations to pull out of Iraq. Iraq reportedly offered sweeteners if they'd stay in Iraq and pull out of Kurdistan. It's all gone very quiet, but Exxon are still drilling in Kurdistan.
Under the U.S.-drafted constitution, Iraq lacks centralized legislation to govern foreign oil companies, revenue sharing and contract negotiation. Hence the "considers them illegal", rather than a definitive "are illegal".

[Whenurhappy]

You need to separate the Kurdish Autonomous Region of northern Iraq from the Kurdish independence movement in SE Turkey. Turkey has good relations with the autonomous administration, who themselves are distancing themselves from the PKK who operate just inside the Iraqi border. There was a Twitter feed today urging the PKK to take the fight elsewhere after unverified reorts of civilian deaths in a TAF air raid on PKK fighters who have melted into local villages. Sadly, even otherwise intelligent Turks become rather emotional about 'the mountain Turks' but the PKK are a rather murderous bunch (40,000 have been killed since the early 80s; the Turkish government downplayed attacks against SF over the last two years, even though many soldiers and police died, in an effort to keep the ceasefire/peace talks with the Kurds on track.

Erdogan finally realises that ISID can and do operate in Turkey and, as such, threaten his regime and kelptocracy of his close family and senior AKP officials. Corruption, in favour of the ruling party pervades almost every aspect of business and political life in Turkey. Luckily the forces remain pretty clean, although it is likely the young conscripts manning border posts could be bought for a few dollars. However, as posted above, go are the days of alcohol and very Western hosting by Turkish officials; also too, head scarves are very common now reflecting the wider Islamist shift of the country.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

You need to separate the Kurdish Autonomous Region of northern Iraq from the Kurdish independence movement in SE Turkey.

I don't need to, but Turkey does! ;)

[Whenurhappy]

There's quite a good summary on the BBC, along with a condemnation from the Irqi Kurds. The UK has tweeted a mild rebuke 'to both sides', but as anyone here can imagine, U.S. and UK need Turkish cooperation to prosecute an effective campaign against ışıd. once again, Turkey needs to decide whether it wants to be a Western or Islamic country. It can't be both...at least not whilst Erdoğan has a controlling influence in domestic politics...the formation of a government (or fresh elections) within the next month will see some rather mendacious behaviour - with his AKP party attacking the Kurdish-friendly and liberal HDP By accusing it of siding with the PKK.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-33747980

This explains the different Kurdish groupings.