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Mr. Erdogan’s War Against the Kurds: New York Times, Aug. 31, 2015 — It’s not unusual for political leaders in trouble to use diversionary tactics to turn their fortunes around.
Is Turkey’s President Dragging His Country to War for Votes?: Thomas Seibert, The Daily Beast, Sept. 8, 2015 — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is betting that increased pressure on Kurdish rebels in southeast Anatolia will be a vote-getter in snap elections less than two months away.
NATO Allies Making It Easier for Iran to Attack Israel?: Burak Bekdil, Gatestone Institute, Sept. 10, 2015 — In early 2013, NATO supposedly came to its ally's help…
The Mideast Migrant Crisis Requires Mideast Solutions: Noah Beck, Algemeiner, Sept. 8, 2015 — Political responses to crises are often tardy and embarrassingly fad-driven, as with the current global outcry over the image of a three-year-old Syrian boy washed up on the Turkish shore.
Inside Turkey’s Revived War Against the Kurds: Lauren Bohn, The Atlantic, Aug. 18, 2015
'There Will Be a Civil War in Turkey': Welcome to Cizre, the 'Center of Kurdish Resistance': John Beck, Vice News, Aug. 7, 2015
Report: Hamas Recruiting Students in Malaysia, Training Terrorists in Turkey: IPT News, May 11, 2015
Europe's New Migration Era: Prof. Eyal Zisser, Israel Hayom, Sept. 9, 2015
MR. ERDOGAN’S WAR AGAINST THE KURDS
New York Times, Aug. 31, 2015
It’s not unusual for political leaders in trouble to use diversionary tactics to turn their fortunes around. Hollywood capitalized on this theme in a popular 1997 film called “Wag the Dog” in which, right before an election, a political spin doctor distracts voters from a presidential sex scandal by engaging a film producer to create a fake war with Albania.
There are suspicions that a real-time, dangerous version of that scenario is playing out in Turkey, where President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is in a desperate struggle to stay in power after his Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party lost its governing majority in a crucial election in June. Ahead of new elections set for Nov. 1, Mr. Erdogan last month reignited a war with Kurdish separatists, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party or P.K.K., in an apparent effort to rally support for the government and thus salvage his ambitions for continued authoritarian rule and greatly expanded powers.
In recent years, Mr. Erdogan made strides toward recognizing the rights of Turkey’s Kurdish minority and moving toward a fragile peace with the separatists, who had waged a three-decade war against the Turkish government. About 40,000 people were killed, most by security forces. All that diplomacy seems like ancient history, now that Turkish warplanes have resumed strafing targets in northern Iraq where the separatists are based. The pretext for the renewed fighting was the killing of two Turkish police officers. But even if the gunmen were P.K.K., as the government claims, Mr. Erdogan could have found other ways to respond than all-out war.
Mr. Erdogan had long counted on the Kurds to help him achieve the parliamentary supermajority in the June elections that would have allowed him to change the Constitution and create a more powerful presidency. The Kurds make up 18 percent of the population. And while marginalized for years, they had voted for his party in the past. But in June, many of the Kurds, joined by secular Turks, switched loyalties to the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party. Despite strenuous efforts during the campaign by Mr. Erdogan to discredit it, that party won enough votes to help deprive Mr. Erdogan’s party of a governing majority.
By renewing military action, Mr. Erdogan appears to be making an aggressive appeal to Turkish nationalists opposed to self-determination for the Kurds. He is worried about the growing strength of the separatists, whose military affiliate in Syria has become a close and effective ally of the United States in the fight against the Islamic State. More broadly, Mr. Erdogan is fearful that the Kurds, an ethnic group with populations throughout the region in Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey, will push even harder to establish the sovereign state they have long yearned for. They have been emboldened by their Syrian affiliates’ gains against ISIS and the creation of a relatively stable Kurdish province in Iraq.
Mr. Erdogan last month agreed to let the Americans use Incirlik air base and two other bases to fly missions against ISIS, a long overdue commitment that should have been pro forma for a NATO ally but took a year of tough negotiations because of Turkish resistance. He also agreed to join the American-led coalition in the fight against ISIS. But it is clear that his main priority is fighting the Kurdish separatists. The United States should use its influence in the region to stop the fighting and deprive Mr. Erdogan of an excuse to continue a military operation that makes the difficult struggle against the Islamic State even harder.
IS TURKEY’S PRESIDENT DRAGGING HIS COUNTRY TO WAR FOR VOTES?
Thomas Seibert
The Daily Beast, Sept. 8, 2015
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is betting that increased pressure on Kurdish rebels in southeast Anatolia will be a vote-getter in snap elections less than two months away. But a flare-up of Kurdish rebel attacks that have inflicted the heaviest losses on Turkish soldiers in years has Turks wondering whether Erdogan is dragging the country to war to suit his own political needs.
So devastating was the shock of the latest attack by rebels from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) near the Turkish border with Iraq on Sunday that the government and the military waited more than 24 hours before revealing that 16 soldiers had died. It was the highest death toll for the Turkish army in a single combat event since 2011.
Fighters from the PKK, a rebel group designated a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States, and Europe, attacked a military convoy in the town of Daglica and blew up a number of military vehicles with roadside bombs. The well-connected security analyst Metin Gurcan said on Twitter that 500 to 600 rebels attacked the soldiers, while bad weather prevented Turkish attack helicopters from helping the encircled troops. The PKK said at least 31 soldiers were killed. In the aftermath, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu held emergency meetings with advisers and Turkey’s chief of general staff, Hulusi Akar, and requested a meeting with opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu, a rare step in Turkey’s polarized political scene. Addressing the public Monday evening, Davutoglu pledged that the mountains of southeastern Anatolia would be “cleansed” of rebels.
While the government is promising a tough response to the new PKK attack, Kurdish politicians say government security forces are responsible for the killings of six civilians in the southeastern city of Cizre, which the army and police have closed off while they fight the PKK. A delegation of the legal Kurdish party HDP said after a visit to the city that police were stopping ambulances carrying injured and sick people to the hospital. A 10-year-old girl was killed by a police sniper inside her own home, they said.
Following news of the soldiers’ deaths in Daglica, Turkish nationalists attacked HDP offices in several cities around the country. Even before the latest flare-up, violent clashes between Turks and Kurds were on the rise. Turkish right-wingers in Istanbul stabbed a 21-year-old Kurd to death after they overheard him speaking Kurdish on his cellphone, the leftist Evrensel newspaper reported Monday. With tensions heightened across the country, Erdogan declared in a television interview that things would be different if parliamentary elections in June had produced a majority in the house to change the constitution and introduce a presidential system with him at the helm. Critics say Erdogan sabotaged the search for a new government after the June election, in which his AKP party lost its parliamentary majority. They say Erdogan pushed through the new election, scheduled for November 1, in the hope of winning back the AKP majority and, ultimately, getting the presidential system he wanted.
Kilicdaroglu, the opposition leader, has accused Erdogan of stoking tensions in southeast Anatolia to attract nationalist voters to the AKP. “He is responsible for the blood that is being spilled and for terrorism,” Kilicdaroglu said last month, adding of the AKP’s leaders: “They want to stay in power with the help of chaos.” The leader of the Kurdish HDP party, Selahattin Demirtas, echoed Kilicdaroglu, saying Erdogan and his ruling party are hoping a new Kurdish conflict will help to win back their parliamentary majority. “The AK Party is dragging the country into a period of conflict, seeking revenge for the loss of its majority in the June election,” Demirtas said.
Outside Turkey, Eric Edelman, a former U.S. ambassador to Ankara, argues Erdogan is bent on regaining control over parliament in order to push through the presidential system that would give him wide-ranging powers. To that end, Erdogan is portraying the HDP as the political arm of the terrorist PKK and trying to “steal votes” from the right-wing MHP party. Airstrikes against the PKK have reignited “a conflict that had been on the road to resolution,” Edelman wrote in an op-ed late last month in The New York Times.
The question is whether Turks will follow Erdogan. Murat Gezici, a pollster, says his latest survey shows that 56 percent of voters hold Erdogan responsible for the latest flare-up of violence, which began in late July. A suicide attack blamed on the so-called Islamic State that killed more than 30 people on July 20 triggered PKK assassinations of Turkish police officers, with the rebels holding Ankara partly responsible for the ISIS strike. In response, the Turkish government sent warplanes to bomb PKK hideouts in northern Iraq and in Turkey itself, while also bombing some ISIS positions in Syria.
Turkey’s harsh response angered U.S. officials, who said Erdogan’s government was much less interested in fighting ISIS than taking out the PKK. One senior U.S. official was quoted as saying last month that the campaign against ISIS was only a “hook” for the Turks. “Turkey wanted to move against the PKK, but it needed a hook,” the official told The Wall Street Journal. Since then, several dozen soldiers and police officers, and hundreds of PKK fighters, have died, according to Ankara. The renewed fighting shattered a cease-fire between the state and the PKK that had been in force since 2013 and fueled hope for a permanent end to the conflict, which began in 1984. Erdogan says the PKK used the ceasefire to stockpile weapons. The rebels have been attacking security forces in the region on a daily basis and putting up checkpoints.
So far, there is little evidence that Erdogan’s plan of hitting the PKK to win votes is working. Several polls show the AKP has lost even more ground, while HDP is gaining support. There is “no sign that the latest violent clashes have increased any AKP votes,” Ziya Meral, a London-based Turkey analyst, tweeted Monday.
NATO ALLIES MAKING IT EASIER FOR IRAN TO ATTACK ISRAEL?
Burak Bekdil
Gatestone Institute, Sept. 3, 2015
In early 2013, NATO supposedly came to its ally's help: As Turkey was under threat from Syrian missiles — potentially with biological/chemical warheads — the alliance would build a mini anti-missile defense architecture on Turkish soil. Six U.S.-made Patriot missile batteries would be deployed in three Turkish cities and protect a vast area where about 3.5 million Turks lived.
The Patriot batteries that would protect Turkey from Syrian missiles belonged to the United States, Germany and the Netherlands. In early 2015, the Dutch mission ended and was replaced by Spanish Patriots. Recently, the German government said that it would withdraw its Patriot batteries and 250 troops at the beginning of 2016. Almost simultaneously, the U.S. government informed Turkey that its Patriot mission, expiring in October, would not be renewed. Washington cited "critical modernization upgrades" for the withdrawal.
Since the air defense system was stationed on Turkish soil, it unnerved Iran more than it did Syria. There is a story behind this. First, Patriot missiles cannot protect large swaths of land, but only designated friendly sites or installations in their vicinity. That the six batteries would protect Turkey's entire south and 3.5 million people living there was a tall tale. They would instead protect a U.S.-owned, NATO-assigned radar deployed earlier in Kurecik, a Turkish town; and they would protect it not from Syrian missiles with chemical warheads, but from Iranian ballistic missiles.
Kurecik seemed to matter a lot to Iran. In November 2011, Iran threatened that it would target NATO's missile defense shield in Turkey ("and then hit the next targets," read Israel) if it were threatened. Shortly before the arrival of Patriots in Turkey, Iran's army chief of staff warned NATO that stationing Patriot anti-missile batteries in Turkey was "setting the stage for world war."
What was stationed in Kurecik was an early-warning missile detection and tracking radar system. Its mission is to provide U.S. naval assets in the Mediterranean with early warning and tracking information in case of an Iranian missile launch that might target an ally or a friendly country, including Israel. So, a six-battery Patriot shield to protect the NATO radar in Kurecik against possible Iranian aggression was necessary. And that explains why the Iranians went mad about Kurecik and openly threatened to hit it.
NATO and Turkish officials have always denied any link between the Patriot missiles and the NATO radar in Turkey. They have often pointed out that the Patriot batteries were stationed in the provinces of Adana, Kahramanmaras and Gaziantep, while Kurecik was in nearby Malatya province. But the Patriot is a road-mobile system: It can be dismantled easily and re-deployed in another area in a matter of hours (the road distance between Kurecik and Kahramanmaras is a mere 200 kilometers, or 124 miles).
Clearly, Iran did not go mad and threaten to hit all NATO installations in Turkey because it wanted 3.5 million Turkish citizens to die from the chemical warhead of a Syrian missile. It went mad and threatened because it viewed the defensive NATO assets in Turkey as a threat to its offensive missile capabilities, which the Patriots could potentially neutralize.
Why, otherwise, would a country feel "threatened" and threaten others with starting a "world war" just because a bunch of defensive systems are deployed in a neighboring country? Iran did so because it views the NATO radar in Turkey as an asset that could counter any missile attack on Israel; and the Patriots as hostile elements because they would protect that radar. In a way, Iran's reaction to the NATO assets in Turkey revealed its intentions to attack.
It could be a total coincidence that the U.S. and Germany (most likely to be followed by Spain) have decided to pull their Patriot batteries and troops from Turkey shortly after agreeing to a nuclear deal with Iran. But if it is a coincidence, it is a very suspicious one. In theory, the Patriot systems were deployed in Turkey in order to protect the NATO ally from missile threats from Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime. Right? Right.
Assad's regime is still alive in Damascus and it has the same missile arsenal it had in 2013. Moreover, Turkey's cold war with Assad's Syria is worse than it was in 2013, with Ankara systematically supporting every opposition group and openly declaring that it is pushing for Assad's downfall. Why were Assad's missiles a threat to Turkey two and a half years ago, but are not today?
The Patriot missiles are leaving Turkey. They no longer will "protect Turkish soil." Apparently, NATO allies believe, although the idea defies logic, that the nuclear deal with Iran will discourage the mullahs in Tehran from attacking Israel. It looks as if the potential target of NATO heavyweights' decision is more a gesture to Iran than to Turkey.
THE MIDEAST MIGRANT CRISIS REQUIRES MIDEAST SOLUTIONS
Noah Beck
Algemeiner, Sept. 8, 2015
Political responses to crises are often tardy and embarrassingly fad-driven, as with the current global outcry over the image of a three-year-old Syrian boy washed up on the Turkish shore. He was hardly the first innocent victim of this century’s most brutal war. Where has the world been for the last 54 months?
Indeed, the unfolding humanitarian crisis was an entirely foreseeable consequence of Obama’s spineless Syria policy, and the Western European leaders who followed it. So, despite Obama’s efforts to anesthetize the public, it is understandable if some collective shame for Western failures — driven by tragic images that went viral — has prompted Europe suddenly to announce that it will accept more refugees from the war-torn Middle East.
But how did the West become more responsible for the Mideast refugee crisis than the wealthiest Mideast states (whose funding of Islamist rebels helped to create that crisis)? According to news reports and think tanks, Arab Gulf donors have funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to Syria in recent years, including to ISIS and other groups.
Even if Gulf states weren’t at all responsible for aggravating the Syrian refugee crisis by strengthening ISIS, their wealth, proximity and cultural/religious affinities with the refugees should still make these countries far more responsible than Europe is for their welfare. The vast majority of refugees are Muslim Arabs. They therefore share a common language, religion, culture and ethnicity with the wealthy Gulf countries that have shunned them for reasons of national security (as if the West didn’t have such concerns). Any dialect or denominational differences Mideast refugees may have with Gulf states are nothing compared to the cultural, linguistic, ethnic and religious differences between most Middle East refugees and the European countries they hope to enter.
Even more absurd, Gulf countries are bringing in foreign laborers to build up their vast, oil-rich territories. Putting aside their horrific exploitation of those workers (which is a scandal all of its own, even if campus protests, international boycotts and U.N. resolutions never mention it), why aren’t they instead accepting Mideast refugees who would happily accept the work that imported labor is now doing? Similarly, why have no Gulf countries granted Palestinian refugees citizenship if they so readily advocate for them at the U.N. out of some purported concern for their welfare? The cynical hypocrisy is staggering.
By contrast, tiny Israel absorbed nearly a million Jews from the Middle East and North Africa who were similarly made homeless when, in the 1940s and 1950s, their survival meant fleeing the Muslim-majority states where they had lived for milennia. Israel has also accepted plenty of non-Jewish refugees, from the Vietnamese “boat people” in the late 1970s, to African refugees and migrants in recent years. Israel has provided humanitarian medical assistance to countless Syrians and now Israel’s deputy minister of regional affairs Israel (an Arab Druze) has joined the leader of the political opposition in urging Israel to accept Syrian refugees, despite the demographic and strategic risks of doing so.
Yet Europe now tries to hurt Israel’s economy by stigmatizing goods from the West Bank, with no similar economic campaigns against any of the Gulf countries, whose human rights records are exponentially worse on every issue (freedom of speech, women’s rights, religious freedom, minority rights, gay rights, treatment of guest workers, helping refugees, etc.). Such double standards will undoubtedly worsen as Europe becomes increasingly Muslim — a trend that will only intensify with the current refugee crisis. But appeasement hasn’t kept Europe safe from Islamist attacks, as evidenced by the 2004 Madrid bombings, the 2005 London attacks, the 2014 Belgium attack and this year’s attacks in Paris (to name just a few).
Europe clearly failed to integrate Muslim immigrants into its societies, which only reinforces doubts about the wisdom of bringing in more such immigrants. More importantly, the EU’s sudden, politically correct acceptance of refugees addresses the symptoms rather than the root cause: the rise of ISIS — an evil cancer that metastasizes with each day that the world dithers. The longer ISIS survives, the more people are killed, tortured and enslaved, the more Syria’s minorities are persecuted under an extremist Sunni-Islamic rule, and the more refugees desperately try to flee wherever they can…
Notwithstanding the generous island-purchase-offer by an Egyptian billionaire, the best long-term home for these refugees is not some remote Greek island (which only consolidates ISIS’s victory). Rather, the refugees should be able to live in security and dignity in the same region from which they fled, which means defeating ISIS and converting the ISIS-liberated territories into mini-states that will serve as safe havens for moderate Sunnis and the various minorities at risk, including Christians, Kurds, Druze, Yazidis and Alawites (who will become the most targeted after Syria’s Alawite-led regime falls).
The Kurds — who have fought ISIS with more courage and determination than any other party — have more than proven themselves worthy of a state. The fact that Christians once made up 20% of the Middle East and are now safest in the only non-Muslim country in the entire region — Israel — reinforces the need to create a Mideast Christian state. Such a state could exist around Mosul and/or other parts of Iraq/Syria where Christianity has historically existed (Assyria, Antioch, etc.). The Druze — an ancient religion that has often also suffered persecution — could be given a state in southwest Syria. There could be yet another, non-religious state that welcomes any other minorities, like the Yazidis, and moderate Sunni Muslims.
Until ISIS is replaced with stable and sane states, the Gulf countries should welcome all Mideast refugees.
To address the Middle East refugee crisis intelligently, the E.U. should help to defeat ISIS, convert liberated territories into states for the region’s persecuted minorities and pressure Gulf states to absorb all refugees in the interim.
Inside Turkey’s Revived War Against the Kurds: Lauren Bohn, The Atlantic, Aug. 18, 2015—It was nearly midnight on July 23 when a slew of Turkish police officers raided Mehmet Cedinkaya’s home and detained his 17-year-old mentally disabled son, Azat.
'There Will Be a Civil War in Turkey': Welcome to Cizre, the 'Center of Kurdish Resistance': John Beck, Vice News, Aug. 7, 2015 —The trenches have been dug in Cizre. Several feet wide and paired with mounds of earth and torn-up building material, they appeared blocking roads in this Kurdish enclave in southeastern Turkey after Ankara launched an intensive air campaign against the banned Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in July.
Report: Hamas Recruiting Students in Malaysia, Training Terrorists in Turkey: IPT News, May 11, 2015—
Europe's New Migration Era: Prof. Eyal Zisser, Israel Hayom, Sept. 9, 2015 —The migrant crisis transpiring in Europe has, in recent weeks, expedited efforts to find a peaceful solution to the Syrian civil war. It is clear such endeavors are hopeless.
