Posted on 07/26/2012 3:37:17 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday Turkey could act against a "terrorist" organisation in northern Syria if it sees it as a threat, in a warning to Kurdish militants believed to be active in the region.
Erdogan's talk of possible intervention marked a new escalation in tensions between Turkey and its southern neighbour, which have been increasingly at odds since Syrian President Bashar al-Assad failed to heed Ankara's calls to quit...
His comments were Ankara's first acknowledgement of concern about the growing influence of Syria's Democratic Union Party (PYD) - linked to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) which has fought a 28-year separatist conflict in Turkey in which more than 40,000 people have died.
Syria's Kurdish areas have been spared the worst of the violence in the 16-month-old revolt against Assad and Kurds are seizing the opportunity to exert their authority in the north, where the PYD has reportedly taken control of four towns.
Syrian opposition figures have accused the PYD of acting as enforcers for Assad, putting down demonstrations in Kurdish areas and assassinating anti-Assad activists.
In recent years Turkey has carried out regular attacks with air strikes and artillery fire against PKK militants based in the mountains of northern Iraq and Erdogan's comments triggered speculation about what action Turkey might take in Syria.
There has been previous talk about the creation of a buffer zone along the Syrian border and Erdogan said that was among the options which could be considered. However Turkey was not expected to act unilaterally and a U.N. resolution was unlikely given Russian opposition.
(Excerpt) Read more at in.reuters.com ...
(Additional reporting by Ayla Jean Yackley; Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by Myra MacDonald)
More Turks in body bags - not a bad outcome at all. Lest we forget, it was the Ottoman Turks who laid siege to Vienna and almost conquered Europe for Islam.
And of course, the abortive Syrian unified opposition claims that the Kurds have carried out atrocities on behalf of Assad. :’) Wonder what their nicks’ are?
Syrian Kurds united against Assad — an interview with an insider
By Michael Weiss World Last updated: July 26th, 2012
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/michaelweiss/100172668/syrian-kurds-united-against-assad-an-interview-with-an-insider/
Naturally Huffpo has an op-ed in which it is claimed that Turkey and Israel are moving closer together due to Syria, a claim that is not true, because the Islamofascist regime in Turkey remains in power.
Huffpo also bemoans that the “Palestinians” have been swept up in and victimized in the Syrian civil war. Wake me when there’s anything from Huffpo about the decades of systematic first-degree murder by the “Palestinians”.
In Syria crisis, stakes high for Hezbollah
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/25/us-syria-crisis-hezbollah-idUSBRE86O1JM20120725
The 3-Step Method to Analyzing Videos from Syria: The Case of Heat-Seeking Missiles
http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/26/the-3-step-method-to-analyzing-video-of-weapon-systems-in-syria/
Sounds like Syria is becoming an “Open state” for all comers.
” Sounds like Syria is becoming an “Open state” for all comers. “
Perhaps more of a “Free Fire Zone” - kinda like Chicago...
They’ve always been a welcoming place for “Palestinian”, Iraqi, and other terrorists.
Wrong title, it should have said: Turks may use excuse of Syrian strife to go after Kurds in Syria. [since Assad is not likely to do anything about such an incursion right now].
Maybe Turkey is worried about some independence or autonomy Syrian Kurds may obtain in a post-Assad Syria. If that were to happen, that would be the second strike (Iraq & Syria) in favor of “the Kurds”.
If Turkey acts against the Syrian Kurds, watch for tensions on the Iraqi-Kurdish border with Iran.
The Case for Intervening in Syria
To be sure, some level of sectarian violence and refugee crisis may be inevitable after Assad falls -- but the longer that this one-sided bloodbath continues, the costlier Syria will be down the road for its neighbors and for Western powers. That is because violence begets violence. The amount of parochial revenge killings, sectarian fighting, and internally displaced persons (IDPs) will be far worse if we let Assad's militias run rough-shod over towns like Homs and Houla.
Kinda sounds familiar.
They must taste great in garlic butter or something. Why are all these godless-towelhead despots so anxious to cross borders and kick Kurdish butt?
Kurdistan should be a nation-state, and the territory where the Kurds live is basically contiguous, and lies in Turkey, Syria, Iran, and Iraq. The Turks refused to let us use Turkish bases during the liberation of Iraq, imho, mostly due to concerns about what would happen with the Kurds. While it has returned to its traditional role as the enemy of each and every one of its neighbors (except for Azerbaijan), Turkey is the cork in the bottle, a buffer state between the idiotic a-hole Arabs and Europe/Russia.
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