The Clarion Project posts a brutal summary of the beating and torture of military personnel by Turkey's Islamist police in the aftermath of the supposed coup attempt last week. It finishes off with this:
Since 1952, Turkey has been a member of NATO, which is supposed to
defend freedom and democracies. However for decades, Turkey has been a
center of torture and other human rights abuses of the worst magnitude.
If the Turkish government authorities, police officers and so many
average citizens are capable of torturing, starving and raping even
their own soldiers and citizens, how can they be worthy of being
recognized as a Western ally and partner?
Moreover, we can only imagine that if
this is what they do to their own soldiers, imagine what they have been
doing to their minority citizens, who they fundamentally see as
“enemies” -- Greeks, Armenians, Assyrians, Jews, Kurds, Alevis and
others.
By the way, is their EU application still live? And what on earth is the President of the United States doing hugging Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan?
Report: Erdogan's daughter running clinic for wounded ISIS fighters
Over the weekend, there were numerous reports that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (President Hussein Obama's best friend forever) had ordered his troops to attack Kurds in Turkey and Iraq as part of his 'help' in combating ISIS (Islamic State).
But Erdogan's assistance to ISIS is not limited to the indirect assistance of allowing its fighters to regroup by attacking the Kurds who had them on the run. Erodgan's daughter, Sümeyye Erdoğan, is running a clinic in Southeastern Turkey that is treating wounded ISIS fighters, providing direct assistance to the people her father has told the world he is fighting.
Living in a dilapidated apartment in Istanbul’s outskirts along with
her two children, a 34-year- old emaciated nurse who spoke on the
condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, disclosed her seven-week
agonizing ordeal of working in secret military hospital in Şanlıurfa,
150 km (93 miles) east of Gaziantep and 1,300 km (808 miles) southeast
of Istanbul. “Almost every day several khaki Turkish military trucks
were bringing scores of severely injured, shaggy ISIS rebels to our
secret hospital and we had to prepare the operating rooms and help
doctors in the following procedures.
I was given a generous salary of $ 7,500 but they were unaware of my
religion. The fact is that I adhere to Alawite faith and since Erdoğan
took the helm of the country the system shows utter contempt for Alawite
minority – Alawite faith is an esoteric offshoot of Shia Islam,” Said
the nurse, recoiling in horror from the thought of imminent persecution
by Turkish much-vaunted secret police, known by its acronym MİT.
And Sümeyye is not the only member of the Erdogan family helping ISIS. So is the President's son, Bilal.
Mr. Erdoğan who always sheds crocodile tears for the plight of Syrian
trapped between the hammer of hunger and the anvil of ISIS’ extremism,
conceals the fact that his own son, Bilal Erdoğan, is involved in
lucrative business of smuggling the Iraqi and Syrian plundered oil.
Bilal Erdoğan who owns several maritime companies, had allegedly signed
contracts with European operating companies to carry Iraqi stolen oil to
different Asian countries.
Turkish government unwittingly supports ISIS by buying Iraqi
plundered oil which is being produced from the Iraqi sized oil wells.
Bilal Erdoğan’s maritime companies own special wharfs in Beirut and
Ceyhan ports transporting ISIS’ smuggled crude oil in Japan-bound oil
tankers. The Turkish opposition parties also accuse the belicose
President Erdoğan of desperately trying to whitewash inordinate number
of scandals concerning Bilal’s involvement in transporting Iraqi oil and
thus making ISIS the wealthiest global terrorist group. “President
Erdoğan claims that according to international transportation
conventions there is no legal infraction concerning Bilal’s illicit
activities and his son is doing an ordinary business with the registered
Japanese companies, but in fact Bilal Erdoğan is up to his necks in
complicity with terrorism, but as long as his father holds office he
will be immune from any judicial prosecution,” Gürsel Tekin ,a senior
CHP party official said in Ankara on Tuesday.
The leading CHP official further underscored that Bilal Erdoğan’s
maritime company, BMZ Ltd, is considered a family business and president
Erdoğan’s close relatives hold shares in BMZ and they misused public
funds and took illicit loans from Turkish banks. Weak, dependent,
lugubrious though defiant; the Turkish nurse pleaded for Turkish
judiciary help, imploring the last bastion of freedom, Turkish Army, to
overthrow Erdoğan’s corrupt regime.
Of course, if that happened, President Hussein Obama would step in to protect his friend....
It's amazing that the world continues to ignore Erdogan's duplicity. What hold does he have on NATO and Europe? It seems that his hold is his friendship with US President Obama. One may only hope that the next US President will relate to Erdogan more honestly.
Given that this is Turkey and that we're talking about President Hussein Obama's Best Friend Forever, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, I suppose that we have to consider the possibility that today's election results will not be honored. Nevertheless, it is significant that in a special election in Turkey that was marred by violence and fraud - both of which may have been perpetrated by Erdogan's AKP - the AKP has lost its parliamentary majority.
The election results represented a significant setback to Mr. Erdogan,
an Islamist who has steadily increased his power as president, a partly
but not solely ceremonial post, after more than a decade as prime
minister, and indicated that Mr. Erdogan’s efforts to accumulate power
had run aground. And it was a significant victory to the cadre of Kurds,
liberals and secular Turks who found their voice of opposition to Mr.
Erdogan during sweeping antigovernment protests two years ago.
Mr. Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party, or A.K.P., still won by far
the most seats in Parliament, but not a majority, according to
preliminary results released Sunday night. The outcome suggested
contentious days of jockeying ahead as the party moves to form a
coalition government. Already, analysts were raising the possibility
Sunday of new elections if a government cannot be formed swiftly. Many
Turks were happy to see Mr. Erdogan’s powers curtailed, even though the
prospect of a coalition government evokes dark memories of political
instability and economic malaise during the 1990s.
With
99 percent of the votes counted, the A.K.P. had won 41 percent of the
vote, according to TRT, a state-run broadcaster, down from nearly 50
percent during the last national election in 2011. The percentage gave
it an estimated 259 seats in Turkey’s Parliament, compared with the 327 seats it has now.
“The
outcome is an end to Erdogan’s presidential ambitions,” said Soner
Cagaptay, an expert on Turkey and a fellow at the Washington Institute
for Near East Policy.
Almost
immediately, the results raised questions about the political future of
Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who moved to that position from that of
foreign minister last year and was seen as a loyal subordinate of Mr.
Erdogan. Mr. Davutoglu, who during the campaign vowed to resign if the
A.K.P. did not win a majority, told reporters on Sunday evening in brief
comments, “whatever the people decide is for the best.” Mr. Davutoglu
was due to speak later in the evening in Ankara.
Mr.
Erdogan, who as president was not on the ballot Sunday, will probably
remain Turkey’s dominant political figure even if his powers have been
rolled back, given his outsized personality and his still-deep well of
support among Turkey’s religious conservatives, who form the backbone of
his constituency. But even among those supporters, including ones in
Kasimpasa, the Istanbul neighborhood where Mr. Erdogan spent part of his
youth, there are signs that his popularity is flagging, partly because
of his push for more powers over the judiciary and his crackdown on any
form of criticism, including prosecutions of those who insult him on
social media.
...
The election turned on the historic performance at the ballot box of
Turkey’s Kurdish minority, which aligned with liberals and secular Turks
opposed to Mr. Erdogan’s leadership to win almost 13 percent of the
vote, passing a 10 percent legal threshold and earning representation in
Parliament. The People’s Democratic Party, a largely Kurdish bloc known
as H.D.P., was able to broaden its base by fielding a slate of
candidates that included women, gays and other minorities and appealed
to voters whose goal was to curtail Mr. Erdogan’s powers.
...
The performance positioned the Kurds as kingmakers in the next
Parliament, and highlighted the evolution of the Kurdish movement, from
the battlefields of the southeast, where a bloody insurgency raged for
nearly 30 years, to the halls of power in Ankara, the capital.
...
“Erdogan’s salvos over the past week show how nervous he is about the
outcome of this election,” said Ugur Kaplan, 24, a student who voted in
Istanbul. “The A.K.P. has lost votes, and it’s because of him. People
are tired of having their lives dictated by one nutty man. It’s time for
change.”
'Nutty'? Despotic is more like it. Here's hoping he goes and soon.
US and European aid money going to support Islamic State
Humanitarian aid being provided by the United States and European countries and intended for Syrian refugees is instead going to support the Islamic State terror group (Hat Tip: Memeorandum).
The aid—mainly food and medical equipment—is meant for Syrians displaced
from their hometowns, and for hungry civilians. It is funded by the
U.S. Agency for International Development, European donors, and the
United Nations. Whether it continues is now the subject of anguished
debate among officials in Washington and European. The fear is that
stopping aid would hurt innocent civilians and would be used for
propaganda purposes by the militants, who would likely blame the West
for added hardship.
...
“The convoys have to be approved by ISIS and you have to pay them: the
bribes are disguised and itemized as transportation costs,” says an aid
coordinator who spoke to The Daily Beast on the condition he not be
identified in this article. The kickbacks are either paid by foreign or
local non-governmental organizations tasked with distributing the aid,
or by the Turkish or Syrian transportation companies contracted to
deliver it.
And there are fears the aid itself isn’t carefully monitored enough,
with some sold off on the black market or used by ISIS to win hearts and
minds by feeding its fighters and its subjects. At a minimum the aid
means ISIS doesn’t have to divert cash from its war budget to help feed
the local population or the displaced persons, allowing it to focus its
resources exclusively on fighters and war making, say critics of the
aid.
...
“I am alarmed that we are providing support for ISIS governance,” says
Jonathan Schanzer, a Mideast expert with the Washington D.C.-based think
tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “By doing so we are
indemnifying the militants by satisfying the core demands of local
people, who could turn on ISIS if they got frustrated.”
...
Aid coordinators with NGOs partnering USAID and other Western government
agencies, including Britain’s Department for International Development,
say ISIS insist that the NGOs, foreign and local, employ people ISIS
approves on their staffs inside Syria. “There is always at least one
ISIS person on the payroll; they force people on us,” says an aid
coordinator. “And when a convoy is being prepared, the negotiations go
through them about whether the convoy can proceed. They contact their
emirs and a price is worked out. We don’t have to wrangle with
individual ISIS field commanders once approval is given to get the
convoy in, as the militants are highly hierarchical.” He adds: “None of
the fighters will dare touch it, if an emir has given permission.”
...
Many aid workers are uncomfortable with what’s happening. “A few
months ago we delivered a mobile clinic for a USAID-funded NGO,” says
one, who declined to be named. “A few of us debated the rights and
wrongs of this. The clinic was earmarked for the treatment of civilians,
but we all know that wounded ISIS fighters could easily be treated as
well. So what are we doing here helping their fighters, who we are
bombing, to be treated so they can fight again?”
What becomes even
more bizarre is that while aid is still going into ISIS-controlled
areas, only a little is going into Kurdish areas in northeast Syria.
About every three or four months there is a convoy into the key city of
Qamishli. Syrian Kurds, who are now defending Kobani with the support of
U.S. warplanes, have long complained about the lack of international
aid. Last November, tellingly, Syrian Kurds complained that Syria’s
Kurdistan was not included in a U.N. polio vaccination campaign. U.N.
agencies took the position that polio vaccines should go through the
Syrian Red Crescent via Damascus when it came to the Kurds.
...
Mideast analyst Schanzer dismisses the notion that ISIS can use an aid
shutdown as leverage in its PR campaign: “I think this is false. In
areas they control everyone understands they are a brutal organization.
This is their basic weakness and by pushing in aid we are curtailing the
chances of an internal revolt, which is the best chance you have of
bringing down ISIS.”
Does anyone believe that it's any different in Gaza?
Could Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan be a candidate for a Nobel peace prize? (Hat Tip: MFS - The Other News) (Given that they gave one to President Hussein Obama for his 'future potential' how much worse could this be)?
Well, there's a small catch....
Turkish Family and Social Policies Minister Fatma Şahin held talks with
Secretary General of the Council of Europe Thorbjørn Jagland, who is on a
visit to Turkey. After the meeting she said that “the process of EU
integration strengthens Turkey’s positions and weight”, Turkish NTV reported.
Later on the minister wrote on her twitter page about her impressions
from the meeting with Mr Jagland, as follows: “Apart from Secretary
General of the Council of Europe Thorbjørn Jagland, who told me literary
the following: “Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is a Noble
Prize candidate if he manages to solve the Kurdish issue”, is also
Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee”.
At the meeting Minister Şahin confessed that the violence over women in
Turkey was a problem of the society and there was a need to take the
necessary steps in this field.
I'd be amazed if Erdogan were to manage to 'solve the Kurdish issue' (unless genocide is a 'solution'), let alone his Islamist government do anything to ameliorate violence against women. 'Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me'?
Turkey’s concerns, from its point of view, are easy to grasp. Contrary to endless media reports that the situation in Syria has entered its “endgame,” the civil war now under way in that country shows no signs of nearing conclusion. Rather, the various sides are entrenching themselves in their sectarian strongholds and preparing for a long and drawn-out struggle.
Central government in Syria no longer exists in a meaningful sense. The Kurds of Syria’s northeast have taken advantage of the regime’s desire to entrench and consolidate its forces. The Syrian Kurds are natural opponents of the Arab nationalist Assad regime.
But there is also deep suspicion of the Turkish-backed, Muslim Brotherhood dominated Syrian National Council.
There is a strong desire in the Kurdish northeast of Syria to stay out of the fight. Kurdish paramilitaries in that area have sought to prevent the rebels of the Free Syrian Army from activity that could bring down regime retribution.
The regime is now seeking to concentrate its forces in the most volatile and vulnerable areas and is pouring troops into the battle for Aleppo. To free up personnel from its limited pool, it has carried out a withdrawal from the main parts of Kurdish-dominated Hasakah governate.
This area is now under the de facto control of a coalition of Kurdish forces. These forces, in turn, are dominated by the PYD (Democratic Union Party).
This is the franchise of the PKK among the Syrian Kurds. The area now controlled by the coalition led by the PYD includes a long swathe of the 900-kilometer border between Turkey and Syria. This raises the possibility of a new front, directed by the PKK and its allies, from an area of Kurdish autonomy.
The PKK currently maintains its main stronghold in the Qandil mountains between Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq and southern Turkey. Ankara is now dealing with the possibility of this situation being duplicated on another of its borders.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyep Erdogan has made clear that Turkey sees intervention against rebel bases in northern Syria as its “most natural right.”
Turkish forces and missile batteries were moved to positions adjacent to the Kurdish enclave in Syria in recent days.
Ankara maintains good relations with the Kurdish Regional Government of Massoud Barzani in northern Iraq. But Turkey was further concerned by Barzani’s brokering in his capital, Erbil, of the agreement between the PYD and the non-PKK-affiliated Syrian Kurdish factions of the KNC (Kurdish National Council), which has made possible joint Kurdish control of the areas abandoned by Assad.
According to reports by Turkish intelligence agencies, Heron unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) operated by Israel that have been observed in Hatay and Adana provinces in recent months spied for the terrorist Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK).
Turkish intelligence agencies prepared a report after the detection of two Israeli Herons in Hatay and Adana roughly two months ago, claiming that the Herons are collecting intelligence on Turkish military units in order to aid PKK operations in those regions.
The report asserts that the PKK's training camps in northern Syria, near Turkey's Hatay border “where Turkish military border posts are relatively weak” were established in those locations based on intelligence collected by the UAVs.
The report also claims that Kenan Yıldızbakan, a PKK member who commanded an assault against a Turkish naval base in İskenderun in 2010, has made repeated trips into Israeli territory, reinforcing suspicions of a possible link between Israeli and the PKK.
I hope this story is true. It's long overdue. One of the first rules of life here in the Middle East is 'my enemy's enemy is my friend.' And the Kurds of Turkey are (or can be) a lot more to us than our enemy's enemy.
35 civilians killed in airstrike... Israel not involved... Who cares?
35 civilians were killed in an air strike on Wednesday night. No soldiers or terrorists were killed. But the world doesn't care. Israel had nothing to do with it.
The country that carried out the air strike was Turkey, and the victims were Kurds. For many years, the Kurds' army - the PKK - has been declared a terror organization by the US and the EU to keep Turkey's Muslim rulers happy. And Turkey feels free to do whatever it pleases to the Kurds (Hat Tip: Joshua I).
The outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) called today for an uprising after an air strike killed 35 villagers near the Iraqi border in what the ruling party admitted could have been a mistake.
As locals prepared to bury their dead, the admission from Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's party did little to assuage their anger.
"Damn you, Erdogan ... One day you too will know our pain," shouted a group of protesters in Uludere, the main town in the region of the bombing.
And the call for a new "serhildan" (uprising) also served to ratchet up tensions further.
"We urge the people of Kurdistan... to react after this massacre and seek a settling of accounts through uprisings," senior PKK leader Bahoz Erdal said in a statement. "This massacre was no accident ... It was organized and planned.”
The PKK, which is listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union, uses the term "uprising" for sweeping civil disobedience, as well as clashes with the police.
Turkey's military command said it carried out an air strike on suspected PKK militants after a spy drone spotted a group moving toward its sensitive southeastern border under cover of darkness late Dec. 28 in an area known to be used by militants.
The Kurds are indeed reacting. On Saturday, a Turkish government official was attacked by Kurds in a nearby village.
Let's go to the videotape.
But since Israel is not involved, no one cares. The same thing happened four months ago.
Delicious: 'If they screw Israel, they screw themselves too'
Guy Bechor argues that by voting in favor of a 'Palestinian state,' Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria would be sealing the future existence of a Kurdish state on major portions of their current territories. And to make it even better, that Kurdish state will be an ally of Israel (Hat Tip: Joshua I).
Some 850 Kurdish politicians and leaders from Turkey convened in Diyarbakir [on July 15] in order to declare the democratic autonomy’s formation. The participants included 30 Kurds who are Turkish parliamentarians. Five such representatives are in prison, by the way.
When Erdogan heard about the declaration he was furious, as the possible future implication of this is Turkey’s collapse. Turkish prosecutors then undertook an illogical step, declaring that they will indict all participants in the declaration ceremony, a move that will get Turkey in trouble with the world. The Turks were also mulling the dismissal of Kurdish parliamentarians in Ankara. These were desperate moves. The Turks can address violence and refer to it as terror, but what can they do against politicians?
...
And in Syria, that very same day, we saw another important development. For the first time, a Kurdish liaison committee was established that brings together all the new Kurdish parties in Syria on the basis of the “Kurdish people’s unity.” They demand Kurdish autonomy in the wake of the Assad regime or at least a federation within Syria.
The Syrian Kurds enjoy a particularly sympathetic home front in the Kurdish autonomy in Iraq. Slowly, the pieces of the Turkish puzzle in Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran are connecting into a giant state that will be home to 18 million people. At this time already, the Kurdish region of Iraq is in fact a state with its own flag, leadership and sovereignty. In Iran too, the Kurds are rebelling and closely monitoring the progress achieved by their brethren in neighboring countries. Autonomy in one place will draw a demand for autonomy and sovereignty elsewhere.
If the two million Palestinians in Judea and Samaria deserve a state, why shouldn’t there be a state for the 18 million Kurds, who were discriminated against and exploited in the past 100 years? We can now understand the kind of dilemma faced by the four above-mentioned states – Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey – with the notion of a unilaterally declared Palestinian state. They realize that if today the Palestinians do it, the clear implication is that tomorrow the Kurds may have a UN majority. Suddenly these states understand: If they screw Israel, they screw themselves too.
And another thing: The Kurdish state will be a close ally of Israel, just like South Sudan. The Kurds are close to Israel and view it as a twin sister with a difficult history and non-Arabic identity. What we see are four states hostile to Israel in one way or another that will have to fall apart in order to give rise to an ally of Israel.
4 people charged in New York with running drugs, weapons for Hezbullah, Taliban
Four people have been charged in New York with running drugs and arms for the Taliban and Hezbullah.
The charges highlighted "the growing nexus between drug trafficking and terrorism," Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara told reporters.
In the operation targeting Hezbollah, two of the men told people secretly working for the US anti-drug agency that they wanted to purchase anti-aircraft missiles and handguns for the group, court documents said.
The men, Cetin Aksu and Bachar Wehbe, were charged with one count of conspiracy to provide material support to a known terrorist group. Aksu, a Turkish Kurd, was arrested in Bucharest, Romania on Monday. Wehbe, a Lebanese national, was in custody in Manhattan.
Siavosh Henareh, an Iranian Kurd residing in Romania, also was arrested in the operation in Bucharest on Monday. He faces drug charges after offering to sell heroin to the US agents, court papers said. He faces a minimum of 10 years in prison if convicted.
Aksu and Wehbe also face heroin distribution charges. Each faces a minimum of 25 years in prison if convicted.
In a separate operation, US officials charged an Afghan man, Taza Gul Alizai, with selling heroin and weapons to a US law-enforcement source posing as a member of the Taliban, which the US considers a terrorist organization.
Alizai faces narco-terrorism and drug distribution charges, He faces a minimum of 20 years in prison if convicted. He was arrested on Monday and is in custody in Manhattan.
You will note that two of the people arrested were Kurds. Lately, I have written some posts calling for the establishment of a state of Kurdistan, and I have been contacted by people in that area who read my blog. I stand by those posts.
I have no idea whether the two people arrested just happen to be Kurds, or whether they are connected to the PKK or other Kurdish revolutionary forces. I hope that they just happened to be Kurds and are not connected to the Kurdish revolutionary forces.
The Kurdish people have to decide whether they are with Israel, and want Israel to help open the West to them, or whether they are with the likes of Hezbullah and the Taliban. They cannot have it both ways.
Will the Arab spring be followed by a Kurdish summer in Turkey and other countries that include parts of Kurdistan? If Turkey continues to make dumb moves like this one (Hat Tip: Joshua I), I'd bet on it.
Turkey’s High Election Board ruled yesterday that the 12 Kurdish candidates were ineligible to run in the June 12 election due to previous criminal convictions. The ruling meant the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party may boycott the vote, party official Selahattin Demirtas said, according to the state- run Anatolia news agency.
A boycott would raise the probability that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party may win a two-thirds majority in parliament at the election, allowing it to pass legislation including constitutional amendments unopposed, Inan Demir, chief economist at Istanbul-based Finansbank AS, said in an e-mailed report today.
...
The election board’s decision “will lead to heightened tensions in the long-troubled southeastern region, with a likely end to a ceasefire” by militant Kurdish separatists affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, Demir said.
Peace and Democracy is the only serious challenger to the governing party in the mainly-Kurdish southeast, Erdogan said in an interview, Milliyet newspaper reported yesterday.
Parliament speaker and ruling party member Mehmet Ali Sahin said today that the election board’s ruling “weakens parliament’s mission” and should be reviewed, Anatolia reported.
Kemal Kilicdaroglu, leader of the main opposition Republican People’s Party, called for an emergency session in parliament to find a solution and to debate the 10 percent vote threshold for parties to win seats in parliament, according to televised comments from Ankara.
The banned politicians, who are allied to Peace and Democracy, were running as independent candidates to circumvent the 10 percent threshold.
The politicians won’t be able to name substitutes, Hasan Gerceker, head of Turkey’s Supreme Court, told Anatolia.
“If they were running for a party, then maybe they could run a new candidate,” he said. “Because they’re running as independents, I don’t think that’s possible.”
We see that the “Arab Spring” has begun to affect Turkey indirectly.
Discussions over “a Turkey/AKP model for Arabs” due to the “Arab Spring” have put Turkish democracy into an X-ray machine, and made more visible the weaknesses, discrepancies, but more importantly, the course of events leading in the direction of authoritarianism.
After all, if many in the West say, “A country where journalists are arrested and where press freedom is spirited off cannot be presented as a model to Arab countries,” it is not Arabs but Turkey that loses.
What’s more important, however, is the historic overlapping between “masses in the Middle East turning into actors,” and “popularization of the Kurdish question.” Plus, any kind of cause and demands defended by the popularization in consequence of the “Arab Spring” in the region become legitimate in the eye of the world.
Popularization has now become a machine of legitimacy.
Fierce struggles between those who skillfully use this machine and those who stand against it wait for the Middle East.
Expected victory of the ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, in the June 12 elections will not change the fact that the Kurdish question is the “Achilles’ heel” of Turkey.
Even more so, the Kurdish question has become more sensitive “Achilles’ heel” of Turkey because of the “Arab Spring.”
Here's yet another reason why Israel should be helping out the Kurds. This week, the governments of Syria and Turkey signed an agreement to work together against the Kurds (Hat Tip: Joshua I).
Syria and Turkey have approved a counter-insurgency accord. Officials said the CI agreement would enhance security cooperation between Ankara and Damascus. They said the accord would focus on the Kurdish Workers Party, which operates in Iraq, Syria and Turkey. "This will formalize procedures that have already been taking place between our two countries," a Turkish official said.
Officials said the CI agreement would pave the way for the extradition of PKK members to either Syria and Turkey. They said several of the Kurdish insurgents captured by Turkey over the last year were identified as Syrian citizens or residents.
Another element of the accord was the establishment of a so-called hotline between the security establishments of Damascus and Ankara. They said one hotline has already been operating between the offices of the military chiefs of both countries.
Even if the Kurdish cause were not just (they are far more deserving of a state than the fake 'Palestinians'), the rule in this region is 'my enemy's enemy is my friend.' There are more than ample reasons for Israel to be helping the Kurds out.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
