Air strikes against ISIS in Kobani are just a PR exercise, Turkey says

[bemildred]

ANKARA — American-led attacks on jihadists in Kobani are a “public relations” campaign that is doing little to defeat them or resolve the conflict in Syria, Turkey’s prime ministerial advisor has told The Daily Telegraph.

The battle for the Syrian Kurdish town on the Turkish border has become the central focus of the international coalition’s war against the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham (ISIS) in recent weeks.

Anwar Muslim, the Kurdish leader in the town, said Thursday that Turkey’s refusal to allow much-needed weapons across the border to aid its defence “raised questions” about Ankara’s loyalties.

But in an interview, Cemal Hasimi, adviser to Ahmet Davutoglu, the Turkish prime minister, said Kobani was a distraction from the need for a wider settlement to end the war in Syria, including the defeat of ISIS.

http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/10/17/air-strikes-against-isis-in-kobane-are-just-a-pr-exercise-turkey-says/

[bemildred]

1. Conrad Black: The Middle East’s strange, strange bedfellows

Still no clue at all ...

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2014/10/18/conrad-black-the-middle-easts-strange-strange-bedfellows/

[onecaliberal]

2. If Turkey is so worried about ISIS and Iran

Maybe they should send THEIR OWN army to deal with them.

[bemildred]

3. Turkish oppositon attacks dropping of anti-graft case

World Bulletin/News Desk

The Republican People's Party has criticized Istanbul's prosecutor for deciding not to prosecute 53 people at the center of Turkey's "December 17" corruption investigation.

The launch of a wide-ranging corruption probe on December 17, 2013 shook Turkey as many well-known businessmen and children of ministers were taken into custody, including Baris Guler, the son of then-Turkish Interior Minister Muammer Guler and Salih Kaan Caglayan, the son of then-Economy Minister.

But the Prosecutor's Office said on Friday that there were problems with evidence necessary to prove the accusations of corruption.

Tekin Bingol, Vice Chairman of the Republican People's Party (CHP), said on Saturday: "The verdict is the most concrete indicator of how justice ends in Turkey."

http://www.worldbulletin.net/turkey/146525/turkish-oppositon-attacks-dropping-of-anti-graft-case

[The Magistrate]

4. Sounds Pretty Much Like Blather To Me, Sir

They seem to be having some impact on the fighting there.

The Turkish government is in a rather odd place here. What they want, a NATO drive against Assad, is not going to happen. What they do not want, increasing militancy and autonomy among the Kurds in the region, they are going to get regardless of what they do. If they continue on present course, however, the form in which they get what is coming will be worse for them.

[bemildred]

6. Indeed. Sir.

The blather coming from Turkey has gotten strange of late, since Obama decided to bomb ISIS, that's why I'm paying attention to it. Erdogan stopped making sense around the time the Mavi Marmara was raided, but he has parted with reality entirely of late.

One suspects that events have exposed the inconsistencies in Turkey's policies too, specifically with respect to the Kurds, Sir. Since I have felt for some time that Turkey was surprisingly casual about the progress the Iraqi Kurds have made in setting themselves up independently, that interests me. Perhaps Uncle Sugar reassured them the Iraqi Kurds were going to stay part of Iraq, and now that it is clear that is not so, they feel disgruntled? And then there is the matter of PKK, they sure don't want PKK looking heroic or anything like that.

[The Magistrate]

7. Even If They Did Receive Such Assurances, Sir, They Ought To Have Known Better Than To Believe Them

I think they put too much faith in U.S. designation of the P.K.K. as a 'terrorist organization', which was really just a sort of last reflexive twitch in the corpse of the Cold War rather than a heart-felt judgement.

Erdogan I have never liked, and view his progressive deterioration as simply the normal course of 'political Islam' once in control of government, complicated by corruption in the upper ranks ( something I think endemic to people in power ). Regardless of how its promoters might speak, 'political Islam' is necessarily anti-democratic --- popular feeling might condition how rapidly the will of the deity might be put into full force in a polity, but popular feeling cannot alter that will, nor be allowed to brook it decisively should it come to cases. Being possessors of revealed truth, they can only enter politics in the character of a 'vanguard party', speaking for the true desires of the people and leading them to their realization, whatever people might actually think or desire. The similarity of mental structure and political practice to Communist parties is obvious, however dissimilar the ideological content may be.

[bemildred]

8. Yeah, it seems naive. That's kind of what I mean.

It smacks of believing in things because you want them, childishness, believing your own bullshit.

And a wised-up chump can get into all kinds of trouble. Or get you into all kinds of trouble. They bear watching, either way.

He ought not have thought we could keep it in the first place. We are pretty good at disarticulating countries, but have not had that much success with keeping them together by force of arms, or with money either.

[AtomicDryad]

10. AKP <3s KDP

Erdogan and Barzani have been on friendly terms...the Iraqi kurdish leader is generally opposed to the KCK groups (which are left leaning communalist movements such as PYD, PKK, and PJAK). He's dabbled at playing imperialist in Syria with an opposition party to PYD, the KNC...and it seems Turkey's whining was enough to make the US hold talks with that (irrelevant) movement instead of PYD, in '12.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/10/07/washington_secret_back_channel_talks_with_kurdish_terrorists_turkey_syria_robert_ford_exclusive

Kurdish politics is a big mess....but with the help of ISIS and Erdogan's batshit-insanity when it comes to Kobani, they're starting to cooperate more.

[bemildred]

11. Nothing like a external enemy (ISIS) to get politiicans to put their little personal disputes aside

for a while. I'm just learning about the Syrian Kurd cantons and their political arrangements.

[AtomicDryad]

12. At the risk of being pelted with tomatos... (Also, links for Rojava politics)

...yeah that thing the Regan said about the aliens and the world unity and stuff.


Here's a few interesting articles on Rojava and democratic confederalism:

http://new-compass.net/articles/obama%E2%80%99s-best-ally-against-isis-force-associated-bookchin%E2%80%99s-communalism

http://new-compass.net/articles/bookchin-%C3%B6calan-and-dialectics-democracy Murray Bookchin and Abullah Ocalan's ideological shift away from marxism to (left) libertarianism

http://thedisorderofthings.com/2014/10/15/kobani-whats-in-a-name/ Rojava and it's politics within the political bucket of crabs that is Kurdistan(s)


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-schumacher-and-debbie-bookchin/the-kurdish-experiment-in-radical-decentralism_b_5996184.html op-ed about US support for Rojava, and Hungary '57

http://new-compass.net/article/kurdish-communalism interview with a north kurdistan activist

https://www.libcom.org/library/nation-state-not-solution-rather-problem Ocalan on nation states

http://new-compass.net/ Communalism site with alot of articles about the west/north kurdistan, naturally

[TwilightGardener]

5. The State Dept. has started meeting with Syrian Kurds. That probably burns Turkey's butter--

that, and the fact that the Kurdish fighters are still hanging on, with our help. Turkey probably hoped they'd have been wiped out by now.

[bemildred]

9. After repelling ISIL, PKK fighters are the new heroes of Kurdistan

ERBIL, Iraq — The body of Zanyar Kawa is making its final journey to Sulaymaniyah, in northeastern Iraq. The slain fighter died 500 miles from his hometown battling the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL, in Kobane, a Syrian town near the Turkish border.

Though an Iraqi Kurd, Kawa did not die serving the Iraqi Kurdish security forces, known as the peshmerga. Rather, he was killed fighting alongside guerrillas associated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which seeks self-determination for Kurds in Turkey and across the region. Both Turkey and the United States consider the PKK a terrorist organization.

Nearly a hundred people have gathered on a grassy plaza in the city’s center to receive Kawa’s body and accompany it home. PKK flags are flying, along with banners of Abdullah Öcalan, the group’s founder. While most in the crowd are Turkish Kurds who live in exile, there are Iraqi Kurds, too.

In the past, the PKK did not count many Iraqi Kurds among its members, nor was the separatist group a critical player in Kurdistan’s internal affairs. But since ISIL fighters swept through northern Iraq this summer, that has changed. Increasingly, Iraqi Kurds are embracing the PKK fighters as heroes, lauding them for recapturing the northern Iraqi town of Makhmour and its surrounding villages and for rescuing thousands of members of the Yazidi ethnic group who were trapped in nearby Sinjar.

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/10/17/pkk-s-rise-in-iraqikurdistan.html