Turkey
It is also a result of the American politicians being at least somewhat sensitive to the war weariness of the American public, and various sectors of the American public voicing opposition to "let's have another bit of war just because we can" attitude that's been the calling card of three baby boomer presidents in a row (in varying degrees of severity). I note that the Washington Times tends to have an editorial slant that trends anti Obama most of the time, and I think that you can go back a few years and see Washington Times editorials making noise about various red lines in Syria.
Ecce Homo! Loquitur...
Thread Starter
Russia warns of 'new world war' starting in Syria
Russia warned of “a new world war" starting in Syria on Thursday after a dramatic day in which Gulf states threatened to send in ground forces.
Foreign and defence ministers of the leading international states backing different factions in the war-torn country met in separate meetings in Munich and Brussels following the collapse of the latest round of peace talks. Both Russia and the United States demanded ceasefires in the long-running civil war so that the fight could be concentrated against Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) - but each on their own, conflicting terms.
But the Gulf states, led by Saudi Arabia, staged their own intervention, saying they were committed to sending ground troops to the country. Their favoured rebel groups have been pulverised by Russian air raids and driven back on the ground by Iranian-supplied pro-regime troops. They said their declared target was Isil. But the presence of troops from Gulf states which have funded the Syrian rebels would be taken as a hostile act by the Assad regime and its backers, and a sign that they were committed to staking their claim to a say in the final Syrian settlement.
Russia issued a stark warning of the potential consequences. "The Americans and our Arab partners must think well: do they want a permanent war?" its prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, told Germany's Handelsblatt newspaper in an interview due to be published on Friday but released last night.
“It would be impossible to win such a war quickly, especially in the Arab world, where everybody is fighting against everybody. All sides must be compelled to sit at the negotiating table instead of unleashing a new world war.”........
Russia warned of “a new world war" starting in Syria on Thursday after a dramatic day in which Gulf states threatened to send in ground forces.
Foreign and defence ministers of the leading international states backing different factions in the war-torn country met in separate meetings in Munich and Brussels following the collapse of the latest round of peace talks. Both Russia and the United States demanded ceasefires in the long-running civil war so that the fight could be concentrated against Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) - but each on their own, conflicting terms.
But the Gulf states, led by Saudi Arabia, staged their own intervention, saying they were committed to sending ground troops to the country. Their favoured rebel groups have been pulverised by Russian air raids and driven back on the ground by Iranian-supplied pro-regime troops. They said their declared target was Isil. But the presence of troops from Gulf states which have funded the Syrian rebels would be taken as a hostile act by the Assad regime and its backers, and a sign that they were committed to staking their claim to a say in the final Syrian settlement.
Russia issued a stark warning of the potential consequences. "The Americans and our Arab partners must think well: do they want a permanent war?" its prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, told Germany's Handelsblatt newspaper in an interview due to be published on Friday but released last night.
“It would be impossible to win such a war quickly, especially in the Arab world, where everybody is fighting against everybody. All sides must be compelled to sit at the negotiating table instead of unleashing a new world war.”........
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The situation changes more quickly than those paperback writers can type their words of panic:
Syria: World powers agree to 'cessation of hostilities' - CNN.com
Syria: World powers agree to 'cessation of hostilities' - CNN.com
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That will be the ceasefire agreed between the USA and Russia, which only covers the factions on the ground - who haven't been asked or agreed - and which allows the USA, Russia, France et al to continue attacks against "jihadist" groups - with Russia to continue its attacks around Aleppo and the U.K. already stating air attacks against ISIS will continue.
Best bit of paper since the Minsk Protocol......
Best bit of paper since the Minsk Protocol......
Ecce Homo! Loquitur...
Thread Starter
Can Erdogan bully Turkey's armed forces into invading Syria?
"............So, all this boils down to whether the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) will put up enough resistance to Erdogan’s intention to drag Turkey into the war. The ultimate answer remains to be seen, but all indications so far suggest the army has been reluctant to participate in a military intervention since the Syrian conflict began. The latest reports indicate the military leadership is standing its ground. A front-page story Feb. 10 in Hurriyet conveyed the military’s hesitance about an intervention, referring to a “senior official” who was discernible as a military officer.
“The General Staff has two important decisions concerning a military deployment by the international community in Syria. First, the United States is aware it cannot pass a [UN] resolution because of Russia’s attitude, and therefore it is not making any preparations to that effect. Second, the TSK is not going to set foot in Syria without a UN Security Council resolution,” the report read.
Over the years, Erdogan has proved to be a leader who occasionally steps back but tends to never compromise, always playing a zero-sum game. In response to any loss of power, he reflexively resorts to using power again. His sense of grandeur and the cult of personality he has built around himself have only reinforced this political persona.
Having cornered himself in Syria, Erdogan again wants to use force to break free. And the only force he has at his disposal is the TSK, which seems reluctant to be exploited for that purpose. In short, the resistance the TSK puts up to Erdogan is the only mainstay that Turkey presently has to avoid an adventure doomed to drag it into a catastrophe."
"............So, all this boils down to whether the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) will put up enough resistance to Erdogan’s intention to drag Turkey into the war. The ultimate answer remains to be seen, but all indications so far suggest the army has been reluctant to participate in a military intervention since the Syrian conflict began. The latest reports indicate the military leadership is standing its ground. A front-page story Feb. 10 in Hurriyet conveyed the military’s hesitance about an intervention, referring to a “senior official” who was discernible as a military officer.
“The General Staff has two important decisions concerning a military deployment by the international community in Syria. First, the United States is aware it cannot pass a [UN] resolution because of Russia’s attitude, and therefore it is not making any preparations to that effect. Second, the TSK is not going to set foot in Syria without a UN Security Council resolution,” the report read.
Over the years, Erdogan has proved to be a leader who occasionally steps back but tends to never compromise, always playing a zero-sum game. In response to any loss of power, he reflexively resorts to using power again. His sense of grandeur and the cult of personality he has built around himself have only reinforced this political persona.
Having cornered himself in Syria, Erdogan again wants to use force to break free. And the only force he has at his disposal is the TSK, which seems reluctant to be exploited for that purpose. In short, the resistance the TSK puts up to Erdogan is the only mainstay that Turkey presently has to avoid an adventure doomed to drag it into a catastrophe."
Ecce Homo! Loquitur...
Thread Starter
Syria: World powers agree to 'cessation of hostilities' - CNN.com
Syria conflict: Bashar Assad vows to retake whole country
Ecce Homo! Loquitur...
Thread Starter
Turkish forces shell Kurdish camp in Syria, reportedly hit govt forces
The Turkish army has shelled Kurdish targets near the city of Azaz in northwest Syria, including an air base recently retaken from Islamist rebels, with a massive attack. It also hit Syrian forces across the border, according to media reports.
Anatolia news agency reported that the Turkish military hit Syrian government forces on Saturday, adding that the shelling had been in response to fire inflicted on a Turkish military guard post in Turkey’s southern Hatay region.
Turkish artillery targeted Syrian forces again late on Saturday, according to a military source quoted by RIA Novosti. The attack targeted the town of Deir Jamal in the Aleppo Governorate........
The Turkish army has shelled Kurdish targets near the city of Azaz in northwest Syria, including an air base recently retaken from Islamist rebels, with a massive attack. It also hit Syrian forces across the border, according to media reports.
Anatolia news agency reported that the Turkish military hit Syrian government forces on Saturday, adding that the shelling had been in response to fire inflicted on a Turkish military guard post in Turkey’s southern Hatay region.
Turkish artillery targeted Syrian forces again late on Saturday, according to a military source quoted by RIA Novosti. The attack targeted the town of Deir Jamal in the Aleppo Governorate........
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Twas as I stated before, the Kurds have held the line against ISIS, but now both Turkey and Saudi Arabia will attempt to eliminate them.
And we will standby and just let it happen.
And we will standby and just let it happen.
Last edited by glad rag; 14th Feb 2016 at 19:06.
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The preoccupation with Regime Change has caused far more troubles than it can ever have been expected to solve yet our politicians are convinced that getting rid of Assad is and remains the main aim. I support the Russian involvement in Syria as they are achieving their aim of destroying rebel forces. We on the other hand are just fannying around, waving our hands ineffectually and having yet more talks. As these talks involve many speakers and interminable speeches we can see they are (with the lack of action) doomed to failure. The Kurds deserve their own homeland but none of the countries involved will give that idea the time of day. I wish the United Nations was 'fit for purpose' but it obviously isn't.
Ecce Homo! Loquitur...
Thread Starter
At least five killed in car bomb attack in Turkish capital Ankara
At least five people were killed and 10 others were injured in a bomb attack on Feb. 17 targeting shuttles carrying military personnel in the Turkish capital Ankara late yesterday.
Ankara Governor Mehmet Kılıçdar said the attack was carried out with a car bomb. The attack occurred in the center of the city, hundreds of meters away from the top military headquarters, parliament and prime minister's office.
“We are looking into details of the explosion,” Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu said. "Terror has attacked treacherously in Ankara. We curse this attack," AKP spokesman Ömer Çelik said on Twitter.
According to locals, the sound of explosion could be heard from many spots around the capital.
Details to follow...
At least five people were killed and 10 others were injured in a bomb attack on Feb. 17 targeting shuttles carrying military personnel in the Turkish capital Ankara late yesterday.
Ankara Governor Mehmet Kılıçdar said the attack was carried out with a car bomb. The attack occurred in the center of the city, hundreds of meters away from the top military headquarters, parliament and prime minister's office.
“We are looking into details of the explosion,” Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu said. "Terror has attacked treacherously in Ankara. We curse this attack," AKP spokesman Ömer Çelik said on Twitter.
According to locals, the sound of explosion could be heard from many spots around the capital.
Details to follow...
Ecce Homo! Loquitur...
Thread Starter
Hurriyet: Gearing up for the mother of all wars
"Tensions are building up. It is as if several key actors are collaborating viciously to send the world into a catastrophe. Will it be a third world war, as some pundits have started talking about, or will it be the “mother of all wars” – as the propaganda minister of the devastated dictator Saddam Hussein of yesterday’s Iraq talked about while the Americans almost occupied all of Baghdad?
Obviously, where this region is heading is not a joyful place at all, even if the Iraqi quagmire or the hellish situation in Syria is miraculously brought to some sort of a normalcy. Was Iraq ever a normal place? Was Syria ever a peaceful country? The past dictator of Iraq and both the father and son al-Assads in Syria never allowed their countries to be a “normal country” – at least to large chunks of their societies. A look at the recent history of both two countries shows vividly that the peoples of both have been aspiring for normalcy for so long. Unfortunately, it won’t come anytime soon.
All key actors have become sources of aggravation making things worse. Turkey, on the one hand, has been stressing it will not allow its security to be threatened, while also bombarding key positions in Syria, an act that might be considered to be tantamount to stirring up a hornet’s nest. The Saudis and the Qataris, together with Turkey and some other 30 Sunni Muslim countries, have set up a Sunni alliance supposedly to fight a Sunni political Islamist, Salafist or jihadist group. Doesn’t this region has sufficient sectarian problems? Don’t the Saudis know well before initiating such a program that by doing so perhaps they could open Pandora’s Box to further strife, calamity and pain in the region?
Worse, aren’t the rulers in Ankara literate people? Isn’t the prime minister versed in foreign policy affairs as a professor who authored that “Strategic Depth” book, explaining to the international community what a great country Turkey has always been? Isn’t the president a graduate of an Islamist theology school where he received lectures on the glories of the Ottoman Empire, the sectarian problem in Islamic societies and, of course, the outstanding success of Muslim societies in fighting each other? Why, then, did Turkey not only participate in the Saudi-led Sunni alliance but more than that (as we have now discovered), the beast was fathered by Turkey’s well-versed premier?
The battle for Aleppo, the biggest city in Syria whose fall would cut off a logistical supply line to the “mild” Islamist opposition from Turkey, will determine the fate of al-Assad. Why have Russia, Turkey, the Democratic Union Party (PYD) – the Syrian wing of Turkey’s separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) gang – and the Bashar al-Assad regime focused so much on the control of the Azez corridor? Simple: whoever controls that corridor will be in a strategic position to cut or allow supplies from Turkey to the opposition.
For Turkey, the stakes are very high. Its Kurdish opening strategy has collapsed, the government has been trying to restore government control over Kurdish-populated towns and cities of the southeast that have been turned into the dens of separatists during the three-year failed opening and Turkey is frightened of the creation of a hostile Kurdish state by the PYD along the country’s border with Syria. To prevent it, Turkey may even take the risk of engaging in a land war and engage directly in the Syrian war. Even before Turkey takes such action, irritated by Turkey’s long-range bombardment of the YPG and other military positions around the Azez corridor, Russia might test Turkey’s nerves by sending a fighter jet a few miles into Turkish territory. Will Ankara down that plane again and risk further devastating its already moribund ties with Russia because of the first jet downing in November 2015? Will NATO rush to Turkey’s help? If so, will there be a NATO-Russia confrontation?
The Turkish foreign minister declared that Turkey’s involvement in a land operation in Syria together with the Saudis, Qataris and some other Muslim states was on the cards. The Saudis made a similar statement. Furthermore, Saudi fighter jets have been deployed to the İncirlik Airbase in Turkey, and there are claims that they are preparing to start operative actions over Syria.
Every country, of course, has its own priorities and obsessions. As much as Turkey is obsessed with a probable Kurdish state being carved from Syrian territory, the Saudis are scared of the probable advance or spread of influence of Shiite Iran in its hinterland. Russia has been trying to best use the situation and coil up over Syria as the protector of the al-Assad regime. For the U.S. and the West, the prime target might appear to the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) terrorists, but control and security of energy resources and lines remain high on their agenda. The refugee crisis has become just an added source of attention for Europeans scared of the probability of an exhausted or frustrated Turkey opening the “flood gates” and allowing refugees to flood Europe.
Is this photograph not rather bleak?"
"Tensions are building up. It is as if several key actors are collaborating viciously to send the world into a catastrophe. Will it be a third world war, as some pundits have started talking about, or will it be the “mother of all wars” – as the propaganda minister of the devastated dictator Saddam Hussein of yesterday’s Iraq talked about while the Americans almost occupied all of Baghdad?
Obviously, where this region is heading is not a joyful place at all, even if the Iraqi quagmire or the hellish situation in Syria is miraculously brought to some sort of a normalcy. Was Iraq ever a normal place? Was Syria ever a peaceful country? The past dictator of Iraq and both the father and son al-Assads in Syria never allowed their countries to be a “normal country” – at least to large chunks of their societies. A look at the recent history of both two countries shows vividly that the peoples of both have been aspiring for normalcy for so long. Unfortunately, it won’t come anytime soon.
All key actors have become sources of aggravation making things worse. Turkey, on the one hand, has been stressing it will not allow its security to be threatened, while also bombarding key positions in Syria, an act that might be considered to be tantamount to stirring up a hornet’s nest. The Saudis and the Qataris, together with Turkey and some other 30 Sunni Muslim countries, have set up a Sunni alliance supposedly to fight a Sunni political Islamist, Salafist or jihadist group. Doesn’t this region has sufficient sectarian problems? Don’t the Saudis know well before initiating such a program that by doing so perhaps they could open Pandora’s Box to further strife, calamity and pain in the region?
Worse, aren’t the rulers in Ankara literate people? Isn’t the prime minister versed in foreign policy affairs as a professor who authored that “Strategic Depth” book, explaining to the international community what a great country Turkey has always been? Isn’t the president a graduate of an Islamist theology school where he received lectures on the glories of the Ottoman Empire, the sectarian problem in Islamic societies and, of course, the outstanding success of Muslim societies in fighting each other? Why, then, did Turkey not only participate in the Saudi-led Sunni alliance but more than that (as we have now discovered), the beast was fathered by Turkey’s well-versed premier?
The battle for Aleppo, the biggest city in Syria whose fall would cut off a logistical supply line to the “mild” Islamist opposition from Turkey, will determine the fate of al-Assad. Why have Russia, Turkey, the Democratic Union Party (PYD) – the Syrian wing of Turkey’s separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) gang – and the Bashar al-Assad regime focused so much on the control of the Azez corridor? Simple: whoever controls that corridor will be in a strategic position to cut or allow supplies from Turkey to the opposition.
For Turkey, the stakes are very high. Its Kurdish opening strategy has collapsed, the government has been trying to restore government control over Kurdish-populated towns and cities of the southeast that have been turned into the dens of separatists during the three-year failed opening and Turkey is frightened of the creation of a hostile Kurdish state by the PYD along the country’s border with Syria. To prevent it, Turkey may even take the risk of engaging in a land war and engage directly in the Syrian war. Even before Turkey takes such action, irritated by Turkey’s long-range bombardment of the YPG and other military positions around the Azez corridor, Russia might test Turkey’s nerves by sending a fighter jet a few miles into Turkish territory. Will Ankara down that plane again and risk further devastating its already moribund ties with Russia because of the first jet downing in November 2015? Will NATO rush to Turkey’s help? If so, will there be a NATO-Russia confrontation?
The Turkish foreign minister declared that Turkey’s involvement in a land operation in Syria together with the Saudis, Qataris and some other Muslim states was on the cards. The Saudis made a similar statement. Furthermore, Saudi fighter jets have been deployed to the İncirlik Airbase in Turkey, and there are claims that they are preparing to start operative actions over Syria.
Every country, of course, has its own priorities and obsessions. As much as Turkey is obsessed with a probable Kurdish state being carved from Syrian territory, the Saudis are scared of the probable advance or spread of influence of Shiite Iran in its hinterland. Russia has been trying to best use the situation and coil up over Syria as the protector of the al-Assad regime. For the U.S. and the West, the prime target might appear to the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) terrorists, but control and security of energy resources and lines remain high on their agenda. The refugee crisis has become just an added source of attention for Europeans scared of the probability of an exhausted or frustrated Turkey opening the “flood gates” and allowing refugees to flood Europe.
Is this photograph not rather bleak?"
