Turkey's contributions
It's worth pointing out that when the insurgency against the Syrian regime began Turkey was one of the first countries to pour gasoline on the flames. A high proportion of the foreign jihadis charging into Syria did so via Turkey, which imposed no limits as far as I'm aware. Indeed Turkish taxis were kept very busy ferrying them to the Turkish/Syrian border. From the reports published in UK news media just about all of our home-grown - ie second or third generation British - recruits to the self-styled Islamic state travelled to Syria via Turkish airports. Despite which we're now offering Turkey relaxed EU visa restrictions in exchange for their "assistance" in controlling the exodus of migrants leaving Syria, the ingress of further jihadis and their provision of facilities such as those at Incirlik. This is a pretty good illustration of the insane contradictions in play within this situation.
Yet another is the Kurdish paradox. Up to now the main effective opposition to Daesh has come from the Kurdish militias (note the plural), a military force whose previous experience has primarily been gained in decades of internecine fighting - far more than against the Turkish military. The Turks would rather see almost any outcome that doesn't include increased military capability for the Kurds who have been playing a very long game for decades and who are the only likely beneficiaries of this crazy conflict.
Meanwhile we keep hearing about "supporting the moderate opposition" in Syria - as if this chaotic patchwork quilt of competing loyalties and objectives could be neatly sub-divided into "good guys" and "bad guys". This reminds me a bit of the Thatcher government's support of the "moderate Khmer Rouge" seat at the UN. Given the extremely long term relationship between Russia (and previously the USSR) and the successive Syrian Baathist governments it's hardly surprising that they have chosen to offer their support to the current regime. You don't have to like Putin's gang of robber-barons to see this as rational self-interest and foreign policy consistency.
We hear a great deal about how the brutality of the Assad regime is solely responsible for the chaos in Syria as if, even if correct, this was something new. Recall that in 1982 Bashar Assad's father and uncle confronted a previous insurgency by the Muslim Brotherhood by comprehensively exterminating it - killing more than 20K of its adherents in the city of Hama. End of Islamic insurgency with about 10% of the fatalities already incurred in the current conflict. And the West's response at that time? To allow Rifaat Assad (Hafez's brother and head of the security services) to set up home in London. He now lives in Paris; it would be interesting indeed to hear his opinion of the current catastrophe.
The great thing about the West's standards is that we have so many to chose from.
Last edited by skridlov; 24th Nov 2015 at 17:30.
Reason: punctuation