Turkey now against ISIS

[Thanas]

no I don't, which is why I am asking for others to provide current sources for accusations of turkey currently aiding isis add opposed to news from early 2014 or 2013 when the American concensus was Syria was the larger threat and we should be arming the rebel groups.

Btw, just because a group is claiming injustice doesn't mean it's true. The American south made claims unjust oppression from the north too in justifying their split from the union.

Here we fucking go again, your wall of ignorance is breathtaking. It has been provided to you in now three threads running, yet every thread you continue this "NO SUPPORT" Spiel.

[K. A. Pital]

I love how you say "the American concensus was Syria was the larger threat", ArmorPierce. Threat to whom exactly? The US? No. Israel? Not bloody likely. Iraq? Please! So, it was a state in civil war and no threat to any of its neighbors. So what exactly does this consensus mean? It just doesn't make any sense.

[Channel72]

I'm also skeptical of these claims.

Can someone please provide evidence that Turkey is intentionally aiding ISIL while bombing Kurdish installations?

No major Arab news outlet confirms this. And yes - I can read Arabic.

Neither the Qatari-based, usually anti-Saudi Al-Jazeera, nor the pro-Saudi Al-Arabiyah are claiming this. What they are saying is that Turkey is actively targeting ISIL in Syria, while also hitting PKK targets, which Erdogan clearly said he wanted to do during his conversation with Obama. Turkey doesn't like ISIL or the PKK, and just because they don't like the PKK doesn't mean they're not actually actively bombing ISIL as well.

Al Jazeera English
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinio ... 29968.html

And from Al-Arabiyah (with google translate)
http://www.alarabiya.net/ar/saudi-today ... D8%A7.html

- basically saying that the Saudi understanding on this is that Erdogan is committed to defeating ISIL.

Obviously Turkey is going to use this opportunity to attack PKK targets, but it's not like this is some "secret" - Erdogan is open about it, and he's actually also legitimately hitting ISIL targets as we speak. There is no fucking evidence they are actually AIDING ISIL.

[Thanas]

They are now bombing ISIS after aiding them against the Kurds. Now they just bomb both.

[ArmorPierce]

no I don't, which is why I am asking for others to provide current sources for accusations of turkey currently aiding isis add opposed to news from early 2014 or 2013 when the American concensus was Syria was the larger threat and we should be arming the rebel groups.

Btw, just because a group is claiming injustice doesn't mean it's true. The American south made claims unjust oppression from the north too in justifying their split from the union.

Here we fucking go again, your wall of ignorance is breathtaking. It has been provided to you in now three threads running, yet every thread you continue this "NO SUPPORT" Spiel.

Each thread failed to demonstrate current support.

Medical humanitarian aid is not support neither unless you consider the red cross to be a supporter of terrorist organizations.

Regarding whether Syria was the later that or not, I did not make any such claim. The claim I did make wad that American consensus was that Syria wad the threat and there was plenty of calls from American right to am groups that layer became affiliated with isis.

With this being the case it is quite hypocritical to reach back to news stories of Turkish involvement at that time and point to it as them supporting terrorists.

Additionally, I feel that a lot of anti Turkish sentiment is driven from Western desires to destabilize a strong Muslim county that isn't a complete puppet.

[ArmorPierce]

Each thread failed to demonstrate current support.

Medical humanitarian aid is not support neither unless you consider the red cross to be a supporter of terrorist organizations.

Regarding whether Syria was the greater threat or not, I did not make any such claim. The claim I did make was that American consensus at the time was that Syria was the threat and there was plenty of calls from American right to am groups that later became affiliated with isis.

With this being the case it is quite hypocritical to reach back to news stories of Turkish involvement at that time and point to it as them supporting terrorists.

Additionally, I feel that a lot of anti Turkish sentiment is driven from Western desires to destabilize a strong Muslim county that isn't a complete puppet.

Corrections for spelling, posted on my phone previously on the fly

Further, this thread is demonstration of why Turkey should not take action purely in an attempt to appease opinions in the international community and should instead consider their own nation's priorities. Don't do anything and they are accused of perpetuating genocide through inaction, take action and they are accused of using it as a front for operations against Kurds.

How many European nations are out there providing support to Ukraine from the Russian non-invasion btw? It looks like it's 0, why? Because it is not to their benefit to do so.

[cosmicalstorm]

Senior Western official: Links between Turkey and ISIS are now 'undeniable'

Natasha Bertrand

Jul. 28, 2015, 8:57 PM

ISIS turkeyREUTERS/Umit BektasAn
ISIS fighter walks near a black flag belonging to the Islamic State as a Turkish army vehicle takes position near the Syrian town of Kobani, as pictured from the Turkish-Syrian border near the southeastern town of Suruc, Sanliurfa province, October 7, 2014.

A US-led raid on the compound housing the Islamic State's "chief financial officer" produced evidence that Turkish officials directly dealt with ranking ISIS members, Martin Chulov of the Guardian reported recently.

The officer killed in the raid, Islamic State official Abu Sayyaf, was responsible for directing the terror army's oil and gas operations in Syria. The Islamic State (aka ISIS, ISIL, or Daesh) earns up to $10 million a month selling oil on black markets.

Documents and flash drives seized during the Sayyaf raid reportedly revealed links "so clear" and "undeniable" between Turkey and ISIS "that they could end up having profound policy implications for the relationship between us and Ankara," senior Western official familiar with the captured intelligence told the Guardian.

NATO member Turkey has long been accused by experts, Kurds, and even Joe Biden of enabling ISIS by turning a blind eye to the vast smuggling networks of weapons and fighters during the ongoing Syrian war.

The move by the ruling AKP party was apparently part of ongoing attempts to trigger the downfall of Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime.

Ankara officially ended its loose border policy last year, but not before its southern frontier became a transit point for cheap oil, weapons, foreign fighters, and pillaged antiquities.

isis controlREUTERS

In November, a former ISIS member told Newsweek that the group was essentially given free rein by Turkey's army.

"ISIS commanders told us to fear nothing at all because there was full cooperation with the Turks," the fighter said. "ISIS saw the Turkish army as its ally especially when it came to attacking the Kurds in Syria."

But as the alleged arrangements progressed, Turkey allowed the group to establish a major presence within the country — and created a huge problem for itself.

"The longer this has persisted, the more difficult it has become for the Turks to crack down [on ISIS] because there is the risk of a counter strike, of blowback," Jonathan Schanzer, a former counterterrorism analyst for the US Treasury Department, explained to Business Insider in November.

"You have a lot of people now that are invested in the business of extremism in Turkey," Schanzer added. "If you start to challenge that, it raises significant questions of whether" the militants, their benefactors, and other war profiteers would tolerate the crackdown."

AkcakaleREUTERS/Osman OrsalAn armed man, believed to be an ISIS militant, seen near the northern Syrian town of Tal Abyad as he is pictured from the Turkish border town of Akcakale, southeastern Sanliurfa province, January 29, 2015.

A Western diplomat, speaking to The Wall Street Journal in February, expressed a similar sentiment: "Turkey is trapped now — it created a monster and doesn’t know how to deal with it."

Ankara had begun to address the problem in earnest — arresting 500 suspected extremists over the past six months as they crossed the border and raiding the homes of others — when an ISIS-affiliated suicide bomber killed 32 activists in Turkey's southeast on July 20.

Turks subsequently took to the streets to protest the government policies they felt had enabled the attack.

Read more: http://uk.businessinsider.com/links-bet ... z3hICGH9hQ

[madd0ct0r]

no I don't, which is why I am asking for others to provide current sources for accusations of turkey currently aiding isis add opposed to news from early 2014 or 2013 when the American concensus was Syria was the larger threat and we should be arming the rebel groups.

Btw, just because a group is claiming injustice doesn't mean it's true. The American south made claims unjust oppression from the north too in justifying their split from the union.

Here we fucking go again, your wall of ignorance is breathtaking. It has been provided to you in now three threads running, yet every thread you continue this "NO SUPPORT" Spiel.

Each thread failed to demonstrate current support.

How recent must an incident be for you to accept it as current?

[Thanas]

Additionally, I feel that a lot of anti Turkish sentiment is driven from Western desires to destabilize a strong Muslim county that isn't a complete puppet.

Turkish small-dicked nationalism, case A.

[ArmorPierce]

Each thread failed to demonstrate current support.

How recent must an incident be for you to accept it as current?

Thank you for the response my friend. Recent events would mean when both the international community and American policy turned against isis as the greater as opposed to Syria. So, this would mean events that took place after the American right ceased pushing to arm rebels against assad.

To use examples of when turkey was supporting rebel groups from before this time is disingenuous and hypocritical. It's like claiming that Americans are supporting the taliban and pointing to support during the 1980s against the Soviet Union.

Is it unreasonable to believe the goal of western countries is to destabilize middle eastern Muslim countries? That had been what western countries have been doing for the past several decades. If it has been done in error, then those responsible are just completely incompetent in handling middle east policies. I find it hard to believe that the best and brightest are this incompetent however.

[Thanas]

For your analogy to work there must have been a time when the US actively supported ISIS.

[ArmorPierce]

The American right did indeed push for arming groups that later became affiliated with isis. In fact, obama was pushing for the international community to do something about assad using chemical weapons. That was all quickly forgotten when isis started hitting the headlines.

Also, I'm not a Turkish nationalist lol. I don't like hypocrisy and folks throwing rocks from glass houses especially when it is being compounded with biases and discrimination. Definitely not saying you are guilty of it, but the movement against turkey does have that large component to it that you can observe in comments.

[madd0ct0r]

Each thread failed to demonstrate current support.

How recent must an incident be for you to accept it as current?

Thank you for the response my friend. Recent events would mean when both the international community and American policy turned against isis as the greater as opposed to Syria. So, this would mean events that took place after the American right ceased pushing to arm rebels against assad.

OK, lets chase this limit.
More recent then Feb: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/f ... fight-isis
(although here they are being armed against both isis and assad.)

More recent then March: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/ ... 1I20150324
(although here they are being armed against both isis and assad.)

More recent then March: http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/1.659340
"The report Tuesday that Syrian President Bashar Assad is cooperating with Islamic State, which appeared on the Twitter feed of the American embassy in Damascus, should surprise nobody."

Not sure what is happening in May: http://aranews.net/2015/05/turkish-sold ... -in-syria/


It basically boils down to whether you see a particular anti-Assad group as belonging to Da'esh or independent. It seems to be agreed that Turkey was shipping arms to rebels in Syria. It depends who they were destined for and who actuality got them.
There was a wonderful rant by a young female counciller from Birmingham on Question Time months ago that predicted all this, but sadly can't find a clip.

[Welf]

Further, this thread is demonstration of why Turkey should not take action purely in an attempt to appease opinions in the international community and should instead consider their own nation's priorities. Don't do anything and they are accused of perpetuating genocide through inaction, take action and they are accused of using it as a front for operations against Kurds.

No one has been accusing Turkey of using the attack on ISIS as front to attack the Kurds. They have been accused of openly attacking the Kurds and making this a explicit aim of the strikes.

[ArmorPierce]

Regardless of what folks call it, Turkey has the right to maintain the integrity of its country against organization encouraging the use of violence to achieve these ambitions. The United States did go into Pakistan to get Osama without obtaining Pakistani government permission first after all... and the United States didn't allow the south to go fuck off on their own just because they wanted to do their own thing.

The west has used this strategy to divide and conquer the rest of the world quite effectively for at least the past several centuries. Demonize the foreign folks as barbarians and savages to justify your actions as civilizing them (white man's burden), support local insurgent groups to create dissent, the supported group requires the backing of the west to maintain their position of control. It allowed the west to control most of the world while only needing to maintain a token force.

[ArmorPierce]

I do want to qualify:

1. Erdogen is power hungry and should be removed.

I don't foresee this occurring unfortunately. Only chance of this occurring was military intervention on the political process, but due to hesitation (thanks EU) their power and ability to do this has been broken. I don't see this happening again.

2. Turkish-Kurdish relationship.

Solution is economic development of Kurdish areas and affirmative action programs. Unfortunately, nation itself is not that prosperous.

[Thanas]

Turkey send arms and recruits to ISIS, carried out by state security services. Anybody who denies that is incapable of reading Turkish newspapers.

[K. A. Pital]

ArmorPierce, you do realize that Kurds are communists and are not getting "western support" to create a Kurdistan in Turkey. Instead, for decades they have been fair game to killfor Turkish military which is enjoying full NATO support and is itself a NATO member - and with Erdogan's discourse of neo-Ottomanism, quite possibly a future large subimperialist in the Middle East.

I feel that territorial integrity is not something you can defend by appealing to an abstraction such as the nation-state. What matters is the ideology. The slave South was ideologically much worse than the abolitionist North... But if it was vice-versa, quite certainly the secession would be a necessity and only callous people would say integrity matters more.

[ArmorPierce]

ArmorPierce, you do realize that Kurds are communists and are not getting "western support" to create a Kurdistan in Turkey. Instead, for decades they have been fair game to killfor Turkish military which is enjoying full NATO support and is itself a NATO member - and with Erdogan's discourse of neo-Ottomanism, quite possibly a future large subimperialist in the Middle East.

I feel that territorial integrity is not something you can defend by appealing to an abstraction such as the nation-state. What matters is the ideology. The slave South was ideologically much worse than the abolitionist North... But if it was vice-versa, quite certainly the secession would be a necessity and only callous people would say integrity matters more.

Yes my friend, I was indeed aware of that fact. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Muslims have become the new boogeyman hence you have folks calling for Turkey to be kicked out of NATO.

Your point that ideology matters as opposed to abstract notions of nation-state rights does give rise to interesting questions, at what point is the difference in ideology enough to warrant a separation? In the past there has been a black separatism movement within the United States, given that Black folks were being enslaved, discriminated against, killed, and still are, do they have the right to declare independence? Do the Chechens in Russia have a right to declare independence? I would absolutely say that black folks have had a far worse experience than Kurds have had... The Turkish people believe in cultural assimilation and have a diverse ethnic background themselves, Americans actively sought to exclude black folks from the greater part of society.

Does the difference boil down to taking up arms and fighting for independence in great enough numbers and not being ideologically despicable?

Just a fact nugget, when the American south declared independence, a lot of European nations supported southern independence, some straight up stating that a divided United States worked in their favor. By support I mean supported the idea as opposed to supporting with arms and such.

[K. A. Pital]

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Muslims have become the new boogeyman hence you have folks calling for Turkey to be kicked out of NATO.

I have been calling for non-expansion of NATO as a minimum goal, and its abolition as a maximum goal. "You folks" - you do know that I'm not a Westerner?

Your point that ideology matters as opposed to abstract notions of nation-state rights does give rise to interesting questions, at what point is the difference in ideology enough to warrant a separation?

Good question. Too bad I don't know the answer to that. There are cases that are mostly clear (East Timor, for example), there are cases when it's not so clear cut (the US versus the British Empire in the early 1800s), but certainly I think that it's not for us to judge. However, supporting "territorial integrity" by default is not a viable answer either.

In the past there has been a black separatism movement within the United States, given that Black folks were being enslaved, discriminated against, killed, and still are, do they have the right to declare independence?

I would say yes - they had at least a moral right to go their own way.

Do the Chechens in Russia have a right to declare independence?

They had such a right in the first war; but at that point, it was not clear what sort of ideology they were pursuing. The rise of Central Asian dictatorships and the rapid radical islamization of Chechnya blew that away - currently the ideology the Chechens have is repugnant. Doesn't mean they shouldn't be let go, too.

I would absolutely say that black folks have had a far worse experience than Kurds have had... The Turkish people believe in cultural assimilation and have a diverse ethnic background themselves, Americans actively sought to exclude black folks from the greater part of society.

True. But the US has also changed to be more inclusive (slowly, sure enough). Personally, I think that the Kurds did have a bad experience with Turkey in the recent past - and if they wish to separate, they can. But the problem is not that they actively fight to separate (they had a truce with Turkey), the problem is Turkey has broken the peace by attacking the Kurdish positions and also sought to undermine the ties of Turkish Kurds with the Syrian Kurds... Understandable behaviour from a "national security" standpoint, but not for me: I'm on the side of secularism and socialism, and if someone pursues these goals as part of their separatist ideology, good for them and they have my support. I am not trying to be objective..

[ArmorPierce]

Excuse me for any errors and briefness, writing from my phone.

I have been calling for non-expansion of NATO as a minimum goal, and its abolition as a maximum goal. "You folks" - you do know that I'm not a Westerner?

I'm not directing that to you specifically, I am referring to certain elements of western anti Turkish and anti Muslim sentiment.

The obvious follow up question is the turkey and Cyprus issue. The international community including the European Union has chastised turkey for militarily supporting the Turkish cyprus schism from the rest of Cyprus.

Anyone feel free to throw in their two cents here.

For those who do believe that a population has a right to break away a segment of a country to self govern, how do you reconcile being against the break up of cyprus? Or do you feel that the international community is wrong in this instance?

In addition to not possessing a repugnant ideology, I am assuming here that a minimum qualifier for a people having a right to secede and break away a part of the nation would require a bare minimum amount of people and self sufficiency. Otherwise you get into ridiculous situations ofa single person deciding that he is no longer part of the country.

[Thanas]

For those who do believe that a population has a right to break away a segment of a country to self govern, how do you reconcile being against the break up of cyprus? Or do you feel that the international community is wrong in this instance?

I don't have any opinion on the division itself except that there should be free and open elections on the topic, but that is quite different from being against the Turkish government because they invaded the place.

And btw, now spouting about a decade-long plot to break up the Turkish nation?

You claim you are not a Turkish nationalist, but you damn sure act like one.

[ArmorPierce]

Not decade long plot, decades long plot part of centuries of western imperialism. The west have used this strategy to exercise western control and interest for centuries.

The Turkish invasion followed a military coup supported by the Greek government fit the purpose of annexation. I am against the occupation, but one line of thinking lends credibility to the other.

Me being anti hypocrisy does not make me a Turkish nationalist. I especially don't like it when it comes from from a place of privilege.

[ArmorPierce]

I do also think that the element of western pressure is necessary to keep turkey in check and accountable however.

[Thanas]

Not decade long plot, decades long plot part of centuries of western imperialism. The west have used this strategy to exercise western control and interest for centuries.

Over Turkey of all places? For what purposes would they want to break up Turkey, considering its centuries long record of being incapable of being any threat to a civilised power? Why would anybody in the west break Turkey up?

BTW, if the West would be in control of Turkey it would have stopped its support of ISIS long ago, not persecuted journalists over it etc. These are Turkish aims carried out by Turkey. They are decidedly not the aim of the west.