STRANGE TIMES

The next big Ukraine push back is still to unfold and could still be weeks away but I don’t think so. I think this is now days. But events are unfolding that have caused me to pause and rethink what might be delaying this ‘long awaited’ counter offensive.

How devastated Russian troop morale is, and how ‘evident’ it is, could be the big issue that further delays the big push. Shaping operations for the Russian morale structure is also important and delay may save a lot of lives.

We are about to see that it is the masses that make war, and the mass of Russian soldiers just don’t want to be killed or injured! They will again donate large quantities of heavy ‘stuff’ when they turn and run from the swift moving hard hitting Armed Forces of Ukraine. (AFU)

Anyway, my money is still on almost ‘now’ and I expect to see quite a bit of ‘Market Gardening’ activity about to get underway (with naturally the appropriate lessons drawn from that historical over stretch). BTW I always thought Montgomery has been over rated but as usual I digress.

What is going on in Bakhmut is now doing huge damage to the Russian war fighting spirit. It amounts to a serious point of infection and could become the issue that provokes a more wide spread surrendering from these pitiful trenches. Russian troops surrendering in very large numbers is quite obviously the best hope of solid progress when this push finally does get fully underway.

It’s a realistic hope that a mass bolt from the front lines (in any car that’s to hand and that is how a rout will begin till the last ones grab the nearest bike) will smash what is left of Russian morale. The Russian high command would be terrified of the example set last time, particularly in the north and this time the AFU come calling they are going to be far more deadly than last year. The coming hard fought and costly victories will smash the Russians.

There will undoubtedly be some small areas where a rout quickly sets in and when it does the exploitation of those weak points will cause this long front line and the vast in depth defensive networks to then turn into a Russian Maginot Line.
These defensive structures are in essence all a delusion. All that effort will have produced a replay of the attack through the ‘impenetrable’ Arden.

Those that remain on the long front line will either retreat in good order or they will do so in bad order. But retreat they will, and it is only a question of how far and how fast before they get caught up with! Then they won’t be defending troops holding any sort of advantage but rather a series of badly organized columns running out of everything that had made them an invading army. Most that make it back to Crimea and the northern retreat will do so without any heavy weapons systems or any supplies at all. The Italians being routed in Nth Africa is the ‘look’ that I am fully expecting but there are plenty of other examples. Everything calls for momentum! The big MO is everything for the next 3 months.

IMV the rate of artillery loss by the Russians is going to become the most important of the various KPI’s and this is because the AFU out-range and are far more accurate (and that is a devastating combination) and the Russians are an army built on the power of their artillery. Break the artillery and you break the back of this beast. Once a couple of thousand fighting vehicles and their supporting infantry etc are across the mighty Dnipro river the attacks will be swift and significant territory liberated.

I would take a bet that Crimea will be in range of artillery and HIMAR’s etc by the end of June! Even if it’s not there are now Storm Shadow and other long range missiles that will be able to destroy what has to be destroyed in that most crucial of all target territories!

I think the lack of F16’s to deal with the Glide bomb menace is very unfortunate but other Ground based air defense -GBAD- will have to do for now, but at least some western political leaders NOW get it! Well done by the British!

The momentum that the breakthroughs (my guess is there will be ‘1’ across the river and ‘2’ from the Zaporozhye front) will generate, make this phase of this bloody war predictable and so Putin could 3 or 4 months down the track face a revolt and/or he could do something unexpected. But whatever he does now he is a dead man walking! How many further deaths he brings is the only issue. He is slowly turning into a paper tiger and this process will pick up speed.

The Russian defense trenches do not stand a chance. We can hope and even expect thousands of prisoners to be swept up and a vast liberation in the next 100 days and it will soon be time to try to sink every ship in the Sevastopol Harbor!

I think the process of this war in however many phases it takes, will change the way the world works for the rest of this century but that is another story for those that follow us, it is certain to change the next twenty years!

Glory to the Ukrainians. Onward to phase 4 and the liberation of Crimea! But first…

Around WW1 the industrialized empires of Britain and France with their very powerful navies smashed up much of the backward Ottoman empire.  But those naval forces were not very important in the final analysis. In the 4 decades leading to WW1 the Ottoman empire had often been the target of the equally vicious and murderous European imperialists.  An ongoing and massive dismemberment of its once vast empire was both historically important and was achieved during and after the world war by the land forces sweeping in from the deserts, from Greece and up from Egypt etc. Even Italy had jumped in with the support and encouragement of the British and the French, creating Libya from two of the Ottoman empire’s territories.

The pre-war activities and the success they had met with, was I think what lured the ‘believers’ like Churchill into the overreach disaster of the Gallipoli campaign .

It turned out that the big ships were a vast waste of effort when countered by the, mostly German-made, big guns on the land.  This was the period when the dreadnoughts were still thought to be the apex beasts and it was soon to be proved that they were no such thing.  Like the dinosaurs their time was coming to an end and yet even the upcoming military powers did not foresee this and expended huge effort on building and manning these massive money pits.  The new era required a new navy.

What all actually needed particularly the central powers, was U and E boats and lots of little aeroplanes.  The era when aircraft carriers were queen of the seas had arrived.

In the end, the Turks were pushed back by the army that did the work coming out from Egypt and then mostly with T E Lawrence mobilizing the locals and using them to do the bulk of the killing and dying or so the story goes.  The truth is a bit different as the conventional army pushed up the east coast of the Mediterranean.  But even the colonial cannon fodder Australians, New Zealand and Indian soldiers did much of this work for nothing but the ‘glory’ of allowing the wealthy English and French imperialist minded ruling elites to map make at the end of the war and carry on with their colonial claptrap for another few decades!  An era now so thankfully gone with the wind.

The Ottoman Empire was reduced to a country that was made ‘secular’ by a modern military man’s diktat.  The leader that began the transformation of what remained of the collapsed Ottoman empire and so modernized the Turkey that emerged, was a general, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.  After a few years at the helm, he turned the Hagia Sophia into a museum.  This doing has now been undone by the Islamist Erdogan and it has been returned to the -second hand- religious function it once had.

Hagia Sophia was once the greatest cathedral in Christendom and that’s not been forgotten by some prominent Christians! But there we were in 2020 and a Turkish court (not to be confused with a puppet Egyptian court mind but not a fully western court either) and then a democratic Islamist leader (who continues to modernize Turkey and again not to be confused with an Egyptian military coup leader but who is both a democrat and a conservative) took quite predictable steps.

Whingers the world over like the inbred journalists of the ABC/BBC started carrying on as if this was some kind of outrage! It wasn’t. I say it’s a TINA issue for democrats!

Islamist’s have control of a country as a result of peaceful democratic contest and they wanted the building back.  The democrats that run Turkey have said that it will be treated by the Turkish state just like Europe’s great cathedrals.  How good is that compared to the KSA or IRAN?  Compare Turkey to Pakistan.

100 years on and after a huge struggle it’s not run by a military man’s diktat anymore! Democracy has taken root and naturally conservative Islamists win the vote and form the government.  But we all recall that the struggle against the military taking over in a bloody coup is still a real, life and death struggle.

If you were wanting to go to 21stcentury western style democracy you wouldn’t want to start from anywhere else in the MENA.

This building has been subjected to a legitimate bourgeois legal process and so the outcome is obviously good news for democrats!

Democracy continues to unfold in Turkey.    The Islamist peoples that vote for Erdogan continue to insist that they can believe what they want AND systematically undo the work of others!   Now that’s the way to ‘pull down’ a statue!   Put a whole museum under the microscope.  How did ‘their’ building get taken over for a museum?  If democracy now is to mean anything why are they not to have it back!  Court cases are decided that don’t please everyone.  After all, they stole it fair and square in the first place.

In the corporate liberal media off we go on a wild romp of but-what-a-bout and quite a bit of sympathy for the military and others caught up in the coup.  The struggle goes ever on.

There is -for just one glaring example- no gay marriage in Turkey!  Just like there wasn’t under the Australian government of Julia Dullard (don’t you love spell check)!  But then gays are not thrown off high buildings like they were and are by gangs in places like Libya and Syria!  That is how the Islamofascists in Iran have carried on for all my adult life.  In Syria and Libya they are not thrown by the government’s laws!  But they are ‘thrown’ and are as dead as those at the foot of the Sydney cliffs 3 and 4 decades ago!

The Islamists defeat their islamofascist foes in Syria and Libya and in their home base of Turkey not by becoming secularists but by declaring that -just like the great Western churches- their world-class church will be open to all even as it is used as the religious building that it is.

Naturally, the BBC/ABC has a vastly different spin on how decisions taken by ‘secularists’ can’t or at least ought not to be undone!  No surprise that some secular-minded people don’t like religious services resuming in this old religious building.  But TINA for democrats!

I wonder what the 1/2 theorists make of this demonstration of what a democratic country looks like in action.  Being a persona-non-grata among my old crowd what the almost silent Australian Marxists think is unknown to me.

From the mess that emerged from a defeated WW1 Ottoman Empire, a modern state was created.  Like the USSR that emerged from a VERY similar mess, it was born and carried on in grand style with more than just a few glaring blemishes.   The sight of these blemishes to any 21st C western liberal is of course disturbing, but though shocking to say yet it’s true that by Ottoman and Czarist standards even Putin’s Russia is progress! That is just not much to write to another continent about! So western liberal democracies are currently with no peers! That might be pathetic but that is where humanity is at.

So along comes yet more struggle for democracy!  2 forwards 1 back goes our little dance and here we are with Russia and Turkey in a ‘proxy’ war again.  The fascists make war every day and the democratic Islamists fight back every day but the Australian Marxists are silent.

What strange times we live in!

‘Why bother?… because I believe in a bright future and want to help make a difference. And I refuse to allow the likes of John Pilger, Tariq Ali and Tim Flannery to be seen as leftists.’  Good oh!

HIRISE, is my acronym for the loose ‘coalition’ of forces from Hezbollah, Iran, Russia, Iraqi Shia militias, Syrians still backing Assad, and Egypt that have collectively kept the Assad regime going, and that control various parts of what used to be Syria.
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The ‘new’ HIRISE developments in Libya point to the spread of the complex region wide wars that are now a permanent state in our current era of a slow-motion great depression.

Egyptian thug ruler Sisi has just threatened to intervene if the Libyan government continue their offensive saying “Sirte and Jufra are the red line.” so naturally there has been a response from the Libyan government

I don’t think a major war is imminent but if a major war eventually breaks out, after the years of slaughter in Syria, it wouldn’t surprise many in the region. I wonder how many Marxists it would surprise?

No doubt ½ theorists are all aware that penniless Putin-not-quite-Tsar of all the Russians, has sent a small ‘mercenary’ (Wagner group) air force contingent to a Libyan base and that those aircraft have overflown Sirte.

Then a couple of days ago the Egyptian coup leader Sisi declared this Jufra air base right at the center of Libya part of his ‘red line’ Club Med Protectorate.  This coalition of the willing anti-democrats includes the UAE as a banker for the project and has both Saudi and even French support. This coalition is defying the UN arms embargo, and the UN recognized government, protected as it is by Turkey (supported by Italy).

Having lost the fight for the whole of Libya another enclave ‘solution’ is being established with a foundation of Russian air power. The inland air base and the city of Sirte on the coast splits the country. Libya is currently being broken into chunks -like Syria, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine have been from previous renditions of the Putin playbook.

Putin obviously has a belief in Russian ‘greatness’ and the basic method of war fighting that made it a great power.  Peter, Catherine even Stalin and now Putin apparently.  Grab and hold territory seems to be about as crude as it gets. He knows how the territory he controls was historically established; looks like he didn’t get the memo about this being the 21st century.  But I suppose he could reason that if it’s good enough for Israel to annex other people’s land…

In the 21stC, long after it was well known that nation’s want liberation and ‘countries want independence’, the democratic revolution for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is being vigorously resisted by the fascists in a peculiar new COW.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and the UAE have got on board with Russia and Egypt and at the same time have backed right off in the case of Syria.  The KSA having threatened the country of Qatar (that was then granted complete protection by the Turks as a response) and then after murdering Khashoggi in Turkey have fallen out with Turkey completely.  They know that Turkey is serious about bringing their own system -democracy- to Syria.  The ruling elite of the KSA and UAE know what’s in their interests and it’s not democracy.   Wahhabi extremism is however being wound back in the UAE and the KSA.  Even as the hated Shia are still being targeted in the northern parts of the country and down in Yemen.

Predictably, the currently in power cliques are fighting back so that gangster-ism is preserved in these countries just as it is being extended or more accurately deepened across the world in places like Hong Kong.  ‘All political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.’

Push is at shove and western leadership is not up to the task of effectively resisting the gangster regimes, so western interests that actually start with the spread of the democratic revolution are and will continue to suffer. The ‘west’ is a headless chook and sanctions are virtually all the current western ruling elites are using to push back.  Like a Maginot line policy, it can’t work!  The US military sits brooding on the sidelines while the enemy flaunts their interventions and simultaneous shameless denials.

Putin started his rule by turning the Chechen capital of Grozny to rubble; and then running the whole region as a gangster region. He couldn’t hold all of the Ukraine so he simply invaded and took what ‘Russian sectors’ he could get hold of. He did the same earlier with Georgia when the Georgians wanted to stop gangsters operating in their country. It’s what he has done in Syria where he has run up against an immovable opponent in democratic Turkey. Putin can’t put in the effort that the democratic Turks can and do, so thankfully, this ‘problem’ of the democracy seeking Syrian peoples -now with a people’s army backstopped by Turkey- won’t go away.

Putin can and does make sure that they do have to put in that huge effort for every square kilometre.

Putin thinks he’s a world scale map maker. He isn’t. He’s a slow acting poison that’s destroying the Russian economy. He makes enemies on every border and he has distant but unstable ‘friends’.

Eventually, Europe will have to accept the price that must be paid for it’s clear self interest and effectively help Turkey as it continues pushing back against Russia. Eventually, so the theory goes, no respectable country will do business with the Russians and a repeat of the collapse of the USSR will unfold. But how long that takes is an unknown known.

How many ‘non-respectable’ countries will do the required business is a relevant factor. How long can the fascists in countries like Egypt and Iran keep their people terrorized and prevent them achieving democratic norms?  Democratic revolution for the MENA is underway and will not be stopped because draining this swamp is the big picture. Syria has shown the world what preventing democracy looks like and does so is a direct comparison to the US enabling democracy in Iraq by destroying just the mechanized aspect of the Baathist army.  That revolutionary destruction still left the vast bulk of the trained human element of that fascist army still around for the untrained Iraqi masses to take on over a protracted period of war.  There had not been the years of systematic fighting comparable to the annihilation of the Nazi troops in WW2 and of course there had to be.  These fighters were not just going to vanish.  BUT the Iraqi peoples could now realistically deal with them and they did!  All through this period the rotten western liberals lamented the new conditions in Iraq.  Lamented the terrible mistake of this war of liberation!  We can all see the price that dealing with these fascists cost in an inescapable war that democrats must wage and we can all see the comparison with not destroying the mechanized element as Obama who agrees with Trump demonstrated to the world in Syria!

Jump to 2020 and ‘In late May, USAFRICOM reported that at least 14 MiG-29s and several Su-24s were flown from Russia to Syria, their Russian markings were painted over to camouflage their Russian origin! These aircraft were then flown into Libya in direct violation of the United Nations arms embargo.’ https://www.africom.mil/pressrelease/32941/new-evidence-of-russian-aircraft-active-in-li

This is a textbook Russian deployment to oppose democracy. These airplanes are more than ‘ trip wire’ platforms and they will be at work soon enough killing any advancing revolutionaries. The Russian and the Egyptian fascists know they will be fighting ‘soon’. When they eventually start their attacks the danger of a clash with the Turks-or the US-is very real. So they would rather win by bluff.  This is push and shove enclave building! But if something does go wrong what then? Would this spread a consequence back to Syria? Who knows.  Often enough ‘from little things big things grow’ so we’ll all watch this space with more than just a little interest.

I for one hope something does ‘go wrong’ because it’s better to fight now than to let the Russians and the Egyptians take over half of Libya (and the oil rich half at that).

It seems that the Turkish ‘push’ in defense of democracy has brought on the anti-democratic shove back and the big picture for the MENA is all moving along as not much more than another front to the Syrian adventure for Russia. All just another logical step for the Russian military adventurers. But in 2020 NATO is split and the US is openly in LA LA land with a self obsessed POTUS. The prize for Russia could be seen or imagined to be potentially very big and the UAE and even the KSA is footing the bill no less. That thinking is a total illusion but look at the track record of Russian war making since Putin took charge. His type rather obviously sees the world very differently than I do.

At this point (4 years into the ‘Wagner’ meddling in Libya) it resembles a rerun of the Syrian play of almost 5 years ago. So it looks like Putin is a reasonably predictable gangster and this time he has huge numbers of allied ‘infantry’ from Egypt ready to occupy. This time Russia is fully backed by the neighborhood power who has made everything crystal clear. This time it ALSO includes the KSA and the UAE and has French and even some US support -sort of- yet it’s almost the same beast that has turned vast amounts of built Syria to rubble.  Russia is still central to the whole coalition project. Russia is a massive arms dealer!  What could be better than another display and the constant rat-a-tat use of the expensive ammo?  Not to mention some blood for the oil that Libya is full of, and boy are the Russian and Egyptians keen on that black ‘gold’.

It’s not really a major escalation to this part of this region’s wars at all. It’s as predictable as reminding everyone that Sisi and Putin are world class gangsters. It very effectively lays a godfather’s claim to dominating not just ½ the country of Libya but as time goes on it must be expected to build and eventually present a size 14 footprint in Africa where Russia is already, according to a US report ‘… the number one arms dealer
in Africa. Russia continues to profit from violence and instability across the continent. Russian government backed PMCs, such as the Wagner Group, are active in sixteen countries across Africa. It is estimated that there are about 2,000 Wagner Group personnel in Libya.

These Russian aircraft are being run by so-called mercenaries! Please…the Russian state even orders the murder of people on the streets of England! They have given the US a chance with silly denial to go to war against ‘mercenaries’ but they are dealing with Obama’s replacement, so that is no problem for them. The Russians will get away with this! The Club Med stop over in Syria now has a further purpose for transit movements even further south.

Now you would expect that if say Bolton, were POTUS, he would crush this move right now but HE was on the wrong horse from where he would have had to back flip, and anyway despite Bolton’s errors, alas Trump is POTUS. Macron and Trump! How bad can this get? The world still has 6 months of this farce and then we get Joe Alzheimer!

Speaking of Joe, why NOT select Michelle Obama for VP, and let Mr Charming loose on the Corona restrained campaign trail? After all Bill and Hillary almost pulled it off and there is this big Black Lives Matter movement to exploit. Every 4 years like clockwork, out comes the Democrat race card and they have played it early this time. Now given how much I despise his 8 long years of ‘anti-war’ Syria policies – of turning away from mass murder- I can’t say I’m keen for another dose in the form of Bumbling Joe and Mrs O. I am however fully prepared for it.

2 years into his term Joe Biden might even hand over the baton! Reagan didn’t though and they got through that. I’m keen to see what’s going to unfold over in LA LA land. We will all just have to wait to see the morning come when all these gifts to humanity have been unwrapped. How exciting for the hysterical anti-Trumpers. I expect even more idiocy from the US in the face of aggressive Chinese and Russian fascism. I expect nothing sensible from Boris and the Euro in-breds for a few years yet.  In short, the government I expect to carry the burden is headed by Erdogan as has been the case for the last 4 years.

Anyway; so everyone currently knows what is going on in Libya and yet…silence.

The Egyptians are now standing up as a senior member of the messy HIRISE cow.

The US military in the region are furious but so what? The US military leadership are not happy they don’t want advanced Russian weapons systems targeting them from Libya! Trump’s military advisors may even think like Bolton and even be able to execute the back flip, but given Trump’s current anti-war stand they would be very slow to get any progress with him. I’m sure Trump could care less about a major point of conflict developing in Club Med land. He’ll easily resist getting drawn in and is to the extent that he would understand it, opposed to drain the swamp theory because he likes the old policies of backing strongmen. People that he thinks he can understand and do business with! His moves with Israel are the antithesis of a sensible retreat from the failed war for Greater Israel. Trump would rather go with the old policies that kept thugs like al Sisi in power, though even Sisi knows it’s against the US interests as famously spelt out by Condoleeza Rice in Cairo no less.

Something very dramatic would have to happen for Trump to win re-election from here. The only thing he has going for him is that he is up against Biden. But on the assumption that nothing that dramatic unfolds AND that Biden doesn’t just implode in some manner (and that can’t be ruled out) I’m calling Trump gone! Trump’s presidency will have ended before anything dramatic happens unless somebody spectacularly miscalculates and events run well ahead of all expectations.

Unfortunately as far as the next 2-3 year period is concerned this next 4 months is crucial for the MENA’s democratic revolution. Turkey is now carrying a huge load, and Egypt in throwing it’s ‘reserve’ strength on the scale is bound to bring on a cautious next step from Turkey. Actually, Erdogan has always danced this revolution backwards, while the HIRISE take the lead in direct opposition to the masses striving for the ‘Arab Spring’. He’s a conservative and has always behaved like one. No doubt with the rear view mirror he would have done things differently but so would ½ theorists! The real issue is how do we all stand now?

In this global supply chain era, the catastrophic disruption of this interestingly inconsistent pandemic has brought on an inevitable long term economic ‘unwinding’. That’s simply because capitalism in recession is musical chairs and the music has stopped; consequently who owns what is an international issue that is resolved right at the top of countries like Russia and China; just as is on display right now in Syria with their massive falling out at the top of the dung heap. It will take some time, and currently no one knows where this depression is headed off to; but as this all attempts to work through over the next few years the one clear issue that we can predict is that it just can’t be good news for the people’s in countries like Iran, Egypt, Syria etc. They are held in blatant open bondage while mass poverty now spreads in all directions. Once the sullen masses are on the streets again all bets will be off. But these ruling Cabals have focused their minds on how the Syrian tyranny has clung to power, as the alternative is a grim prospect for them. In the end these countries are ‘giants with feet of clay’.

The current gold medal of hanging onto power is the Syrian model. The anti-democrats around the world have learned by this example to resort to mass murder as rapidly and savagely as the Assad regime. Terror is now the first and only choice for Egypt and Iran and similar places. And they need a Godfather gangster supply chain like Russia has been!

A great example of the shrinking Russian play pond is the behavior of the thug leader of Belarus who has just arrested his political opponent prior to upcoming elections. They move on their opponents because they are worried! Police state Russia is rapidly heading in the same direction as Egypt and Iran.

Meanwhile al Sisi has simultaneously drawn a clear and blood red line that divides the ‘former’ country of Libya and denies the right of the current Libyan government to recover the rebellious east! Given the history of Obama and his Syrian red line – that turned out to be no line at all, there ought to be no mistake about what this statement is about. Turkey is standing firm but, without the US and a united NATO, is I think a little overstretched. If Egypt intervenes in a really big way, and I think that they have then Turkey will be stretched in just recovering Sirte. Uniting the entire country is beyond them at this stage. So without the US and Europe, Russia is now putting down it’s footprint!

Egypt and Russia (funded by the UAE) have in a business as usual manner for Putin effectively divided Libya with a small military force and the threat of a much larger one – all while talking about a political settlement. They are (on this front as they are in Yemen once again supported by the Saudi regime that is (or were) at one and the same time opposed to their Syrian HIRISE developments. Welcome to the MENA. HIRISE have established either a ‘state of war OR enclave’s; take your pick!’ This is the situation in another ‘civil war’ that they have been meddling in for 4 years. The Turks had turned up some months back and undone the situation and this is the response to that reversal.

From a revolutionary democrat POV (and in this region that means an Islamist POV) HIRISE elements can’t be permitted to get away with this if the revolution is to make any progress! But note this; the Islamists in the Libyan regime are so infiltrated with Al Qaeda sorts, that the Macron led French are stupidly collaborating with the Russians and the Egyptian thug regimes!  Macron in this practice does not accept the drain the swamp theory! This is particularly confusing to me as the French have been involved with fighting Islamofascists all around Libya for some years now, with the Mali intervention being only perhaps the most public.

The Italians are on side with the Turks so NATO is thus divided! Unfortunately the latest nutter attack in England is from a young man with Libyan background! That is going to color public attitudes to Islamist led governments. Erdogan has got a hard row to hoe and is currently (because they are still at war) intervening against the PKK in Iraq. There are however good signs that the Kurds in Turkey want this war ended and the democratic developments they were enjoying under Erdogan resumed. I for one hope the PKK leadership wake up to themselves and stop their collaboration with Assad and return to the productive ceasefire that existed prior to the Syrian war destroying that better situation. The Kurdish peoples’ of the region have much to gain from the democratic revolution and nothing to gain from Assad style tyranny continuing to exist.

An opportunity for a full discussion of the current state of the Middle East North Africa (MENA) swamp!
What do leftists now think is going on.

Tom Griffiths
February 7 at 8:31 PM ·

As some may gather I keep an eye on events in Turkey courtesy of the Turkish Bianet news service and my friendship with one of the initial organizers in the mid 90’s of Saturday Mothers, a weekly gathering of mothers, wives and friends of the ‘disappeared’. My friends husband was one of the ‘disappeared’ and she came very close to ‘disappearing’ herself. Their spirit of resistance and determination, then, now and in the years in between, is beyond admirable – they are inspiring, which is why the Turkish regime is subjecting them to new rounds of intimidation and harassment. I’d like to ask people to subscribe to Bianet and keep a supportive eye on the Saturday Mothers and all others resisting the dead weight of the regime.

Yoleri briefly detained

Susan Geraghty How can we help??

Tom Griffiths Good question Susan. Otherwise known as – how can we assist/support the Turkish people to give Erdogan the flick? From here not a lot. However messages of support/solidarity is something we can do – to Bianet (I’d assume they’d pass them on) and I can pass them on through my friend in Turkey. You’ve got me thinking…

Ruth Frances It’s very distressing to see what this man is doing to Turkey .

Patrick Muldowney I presume you are not objecting to the Turkish government providing shelter for the almost 8 million Syrians that it is now involved in doing. So I guess this is just a pro PKK post and not pro Assad and Putin. as if the war with the PKK has not been going for many decades and was under Erdogan making progress via the democratic solution to the Kurdish issues that brought on war in the first instance.

Patrick Muldowney I would say that Erdogan is currently the most important political leader by a long shot and so I think we ought to talk about this issue and see what we actually think. Syria is very confusing and even Arthur and Barry and Dave completely misunderstood what Putin was up to back in 2015. They don’t talk about it these days but believe me I still do and it is even more complicated than it was when I first started to investigate it back in 2011. As you know No investigation no right to speak and I have earned that right.

Patrick Muldowney
I have opened a thread at http://strangetimes.lastsuperpower.net/ called MENA if that would help people keep track of where any investigation takes us. I expect this to be quite a difficult investigation and do not assume that people have any current background understanding but just a good will attitude to investigating the issues.

No choice but to run for their lives.

Artillery is for destroying a military opponent or any ‘legitimate target of war’ and I’m always glad to hear of any people running away from artillery directed at military forces operating near them. Naturally directing such fire at civilians is a war crime and so is systematically bombing hospitals from the air. When that bombing is the reality, plausible denial is sought. Putin is a criminal perpetrator and is bombing hospitals as policy. This has been a continuation of Assad’s policies. Yet even reckless aerial bombing really is the same as directing artillery fire at civilians. The HIRISE coalition doesn’t have any credibility remaining over refugee-making issues like hospital bombing. Quite simply Putin is a war criminal assisting Assad who is another war criminal and Steve obviously knows this just as well as I do. So my question is; what is the plan to stop these criminals from committing their ongoing crimes? It can’t possibly be to declare that the criminally conducted war is over and that these criminals won! Any declaration that the war is over just permits a return to their smaller scale, day by day normal crimes. It’s no plan to stop the war criminals.

So what is or ought to be the ‘western’ plan to stop them committing crimes? After all, even people like Steve are not opposed to revolution or so he proudly says; and we are to understand by that, not opposed to a revolution for democracy, meaning very broadly, almost across the political and cultural swamp of the middle east. So we are to understand that Steve is all for the draining of that swamp, that is to say, the changing of the politics and culture from brute tyranny to liberal democracy at some stage 1 level. (whatever that exactly means for their region). The west had to start somewhere and so will they. It won’t look like the current west anymore than a trip back in time would take us to some good old days.

What such ‘support’ for revolution means (at a minimum) is acceptance of democratic elections under a constitution that protects the minority from the oppression of a majority in the manner of the Iraqi constitution, and then the ongoing struggle to make those words a living functioning reality. All pretty basic stuff for people who say ‘And this doesn’t mean I’m against communism or against revolution it just means I’m against stupid.’ sic We all remember that Jefferson owned slaves, and there are demonstrations, riots, and killing in Iraq right now!

Now I have often objected to actions from people who while nominally on my side do things that are ‘stupid’, one only has to go back a couple of days and see how deadly and obviously harmful such rotten actions can be. I called it out straight away but that didn’t stop Steve from making use of the same crime to attack the whole war. Democrats are opposed to all such crimes but we can’t forget those bigger crimes that set the stage for these other crimes. Those bigger crimes have driven ½ the population of Syria out of their homes and they haven’t stopped yet! Ultimately 500,000 deaths stem from the crime of a tyranny holding on to power when the peaceful revolution made its clear demands. And what have NATO leaders been doing to end the big HIRISE crimes? Other than killing ISIS not much!

Now having killed enough ISIS thugs Trump would like to take his troops and go home but his military advisors have told him that he actually has to go back in and so now the whole world hasn’t got a clue what will happen next. This is a very confusing period for anyone.

But the PKK ought to know that their old strategy is now in tatters, even if their western cheer squad has (as usual) no clue what is happening and wait to be told what to think. ISIS has worked out the same thing for its strategy, and Al Qaeda, who told them from the start that they would fail with their adventurous land grab strategy, can now shake their heads as they themselves go deeper underground to continue to hide among the good Muslims! That has always been their method for Syria and it is very sound. What the pseudo-left can’t deny is that there is such a thing as good Muslims and that they constitute the current majority in all the countries of the Middle East that is going to go through any democratic revolution. These good Muslims must come to power from any such democratic process. So consequently there will be deep Islamofascist sleepers within these political formations. That really can’t be stopped and must be constantly countered. That is just how the world works. People very often pretend one thing and work towards another just look at al Sisi saluting his political leader not long before he staged a coup and arrested him!

The enemy fights back and that is why such a democratic revolution is protracted despite any wish that it was not so. They have often won in the past and will always have a fightback of some sort.

Now, what of the Turkish, Erdogan-style Islamists? These people have waged a struggle for democracy against exactly the enemy coup type militarists etc., for decades. Just what are these Islamists up to?

They have to work to keep the good Muslims from further radicalizing, while fully understanding that they are committed to Islamic norms; and that includes some notion of Jihad because that is the culture that they are in.

Now this is when it gets complicated and westerners have to look to what Erdogan has done at home as an indication of what his intentions are next door. He ordered the Army in for this 4th occasion and so that is now both a very big footprint of territory and a large army. The Turks have on every occasion they deployed made a great show of the number of troops being sent in! The great size of these deployments is almost right out there on full display. A bit like Mao along the lines of if you need 10 send 20 or 30 and quite unlike the Rumsfeld method. Not quite as plain, but for a keen observer like me something like the demonstrations breaking out in Lebanon that are now on show. Don’t go asking for proof that they are the biggest army, because it is just an assertion that I make with no intention of proving.

Rather than Erdogan, it is Putin who is the well-known liar that once even ½ fooled the ½ theorists that used to post their thinking about Syria at this site. They gave up posting about Syria and I gave up annoying them about their foolishness. But now Steve is making the assertion that the very big military forces commanded by Erdogan are in a coalition with Islamofascists. He wants me to ‘…recognise that Turkey and IS were in an informal alliance.’ He is asserting that perhaps the vilest style of Islamofascist that we have seen since well…ever really, and that is up against some stiff competition – and Erdogan are mates! This accusation is commonly made by ‘the usual suspects and to be expected even from the MSM and I have an answer.

We, that is everyone that has ever been positively contributing to this site have opposed such vile creatures that we term Islamofascists since well before 9/11. We have ALSO always stood up in opposition to all those pseudo-leftist ‘stop the war coalitions’ and all their ‘hands off’ and never unite lines. The track record is now over a very long time. All of us have supported armed revolution to overthrow oppressors.

I have always had consistent ‘rotten’ Maoist politics that are founded on support for the underlying democratic revolution. We have often argued that one can’t be a communist without first being a revolutionary democrat and I have never stopped learning about and thinking about Syria even though I haven’t posted much recently. From my studies, it is apparent that HIRISE is the issue the western world has to overcome in order to stop the crimes that Steve ought to call first-line ‘stupid’, rather than focus on the second tier crimes that will eventuate even as we try our best to ensure they do not.

The second tier will nevertheless happen because there are weak link allies on the democrat side and also enemies concealed within. That is the nature of not just our war but all revolutionary war. What the Assad-HIRISE has been up to for all these years is not an accident and near-miss collateral damage but targeted terror bombing.  HIRISE is waging a terror war and driving off the Syrian people who wanted to live free of the current undemocratic tyranny. Refugees and Rubblestan were both obviously created as policy! The second-tier crimes that happen from the democrat’s side are not in the interests of the Islamist democrat types that Erdogan has shown himself to be over decades of struggle. That is the answer.

Back in 2011 Syrian soldiers who would not fire on their own people formed the FSA and ran for their lives for the protection of the Turkish border and the other borders as well. But Turkey is where they are principally based. Then they started to fight back and that is why the animation looks as it does. The first green territory was very often right on the border. It was the ‘green team’ because it was never just soldiers that ran for their lives who formed the FSA and then fought back. It was the masses that came out from Friday prayers who were subsequently shot down in their peaceful demonstrations who formed the majority of those that fought back. They didn’t just accept orders from any FSA, composed as it was of former regime soldiers anyway! They stood up separately and made their own revolution. They have negotiated from their own POV and relative strength and not just accepted orders. Civil war complications from the very start were the reality for Syria and understood to be so from the very start of the resistance by any experienced western observer.

By 2019 however; through a protracted and massive struggle, Turkey has helped build (shelter, equip and train) a force with sufficient discipline that now has the ‘mass’ to pull into its orbit many other smaller rebel groups as it goes forward under that Turkish protection with Turkish supplied arms, etc.  This force is now called the Syrian National Army and that name spells out what it is designed to do in the future rather than what it is doing now.

What the SNA is doing now is taking shelter from HIRISE bombing under the protection of a massive mechanized army that is very capable of defeating the HIRISE professionals it faces off against. In reality, HIRISE is most assuredly battle-hardened but still not comparable to the fully integrated Turkish armed forces it faces. Turkey is a better fighting force in all respects in my opinion and no one ought to doubt, up to whatever task might come its way and also is strategically placed to quickly throw the Assad backing Syrian Arab Army (SAA) out of Aleppo for just one example of what it could do if all this goes pear-shaped.

Arthur has long held the Russian deployment in contempt and I have always agreed with that view in the strategic sense. A paper tiger that Mao depicts. Tactically though it is still a real tiger. But I don’t doubt this puffed-up bunch of terror bombers will become that paper tiger and in the not too distant future.

The Syrian rebels that are going to defeat Putin were once mostly reluctant freedom fighters; they were mostly everyday Islamic believers who had no choice but to organize with the only people they could trust, and just as often could not trust – because Syria was a terror police state with spies and informants everywhere! As often as not trust could only be established when under fire when your real comrades are fighting for their lives with you. That is the reality of civil war generally. It is a universal truism that applies from Ireland to China and everywhere in between.

The conclusion is that people have to learn how to make a revolution on the job and with the raw materials that they have to hand and in Syria they have and are, learning the most with the Turkish government!

Erdogan knows he faces a fascist warmongering coalition led not by Assad who he holds in obvious utter contempt, but now by Putin who is a puffed-up fascist and not much more than a strategic incompetent destroying relations with all his neighbors in a vain attempt to turn back the clock to the old era of Russian superpower status. He is well overstretched and Turkey is just stepping up to its task and that task is to help the Syrian peoples make their revolution against the Putin-led HIRISE troops.

Over the last couple of weeks, this running away from artillery has been happening in an enclave in the Nth East of what used to be Syria. The media has presented this advance as an attack on the Kurds, but Erdogan has explained for years that this territory is run by the PKK, and the western world has long designated them as a terrorist organization – which the Turks have every right to protect themselves from and continue their war against.

The history of the PKK is not now at issue, nor the former practices of the Turkish terror regimes of the past.

Today the issues and solutions are not what they were when the PKK formed up to fight all those decades ago. The new reality must be correctly identified or the whole war will be misunderstood and progressive westerners will not know what is going to happen next.

For several years now this enclave has been colored yellow on maps and has been expanding. It is essentially controlled by the PKK, with only an SDF fig leaf for plausible denial. The Turkish government and Syrian National Army they back are not buying this cover story. This ‘Rojava’ had also contained 3 smaller Assad enclaves colored pink. The pink is now spreading and butting up against SNA green and there is shooting between them. So now, with the Turkish-led action the whole enclave is ‘in play’, and there are currently reports of at least one small Russian force coming under direct fire, from which they withdrew and then told the world it never happened, but it was caught on film!

So what is likely to happen? Will Assad get back control of all this Yellow territory (including the oil) or will the Syrian National Army under the protective wing of the Turkish military steadily take over at least most of it and then another period of regrouping drag on?

These are fundamental questions. How will the democratic revolution make progress in Syria if Assad makes the gains that the HIRISE forces are currently enabling?

Turkey is a democracy and so is led by a reasonably conservative Islamist party. Almost every county in this region would be if the democratic revolution is underway to that stage 1 level, and that, Steve, is what I am advocating as a supporter of democratic revolution.

Fascists are making war and I want to know how they are to be defeated by democrats.

Erdogan now the most important political leader in the world.

A long time ago I put that heading up and then shrugged my shoulders and didn’t write anything under it – but given all the current drama I had better spell out, just for the record, what I think is underway now.

4 years after the Russian intervention the world is now watching as a VERY large mechanized army is being inserted in part of what was Syria. They are on the opposite side to those Russians! Many people have failed to notice that this is the biggest picture in this complex development. Most yabbering in the MSM notice only that the Kurds have a big problem and forget that the whole picture of the region must be considered.

What I have termed HIRISE (Hezbollah, Iran, Russia, Iraq (Shia militias) Syria (undemocratic Assad), and Egypt (undemocratic militarists) is going to be the big loser when all this settles down and it will settle down with a FSA Islamist footprint.

The PKK/SDF do not have to join with Assad and his HIRISE suporters. They don’t have to go up against the Turks and the FSA. They have had choices for many years and they have not been willing to make those choices in the interests of genuine democracy. They have not shared power with the FSA but worked willingly with the root of all problems Assad. It is they who have been ethnically cleansing areas and not sharing power with the FSA so this fight was bound to come to them. People should remember that they are as often as not young ‘Turks’ and ‘Iraqi’ Kurds. They are very often non Syrian players just as they demonstrably were not when the Peshmerga turned up to fight ISIS in Kobani. They were correct to show up then and they would do well not to fight now. They are Kurds from the region being given the chance to join with the FSA and stand united against the undemocratic Assad supporting HIRISE. The region is at war.

The Turks for their part are going to continue to make a bigger footprint in Syria and that footprint will resemble current Turkey (a place that has genuine democracy and consequently naturally an Islamist government that is at war with a) islamofascists and b) Kurdish nationalists/separatists. The current Turkish government did not start either war and they have no real choice but to be at war with this Kurdish movement and no choice but to make war to end the HIRISE footprint. The genuine peace effort (despite the coup attempt and historical ill will across Turkey that can be wound back by more democractic practice) can be resumed. Kurdish oppression is still apparent in large parts of the population but change was underway and can be resumed with good will and an end to the armed struggle. I think that good will is on offer in Istanbul and other parts of Turkey and ought to be grabbed with both hands by the Kurd leadership but I think that it will not be and there will be yet another setback.

The refusal to remove themselves to the east of the Euphrates and allow the FSA to occupy that Arab territory was the indicator of what this would lead to. The young Kurds have been very badly led and sadly they will pay a terrible price for that poor leadership. It is very sad to see this slaughter of people I so admire and instinctively side with. But the Kurdish nation can not be liberated at the expense of the Arab peoples that constitute the vast bulk of the Syrian peoples. They must deal with the FSA not Assad.

There is even now a way forward for the Kurds and that is with a genuine democratic process and that process genuinely is being regionally led by Erdogan who is clearly opposite to HIRISE and the PKK in all its forms including as the SDF. The Kurds are not democratic yet but I hope that they will take that turn. The same turn that is required of the masses in Iran and in Egypt and so on. The region requires democratic revolution rather than nationalist border wars that the Kurds must back down from. The YPG etc and the SDF is just a PKK ruse. The SDF ought be made real.

The SDF has made war on the FSA just as the HIRISE troops have. They have collaborated with the HIRISE and are scrambling to do so now but it won’t work. The Turks are moving too fast for the HIRISE and are prepared to spread the war out from Idlib if they start being attacked by them so this is a push and shove moment.

We could say ‘I don’t blame the Kurds at the moment’ but the long term problem is that there can be zero democracy while millions of Syrian’s are displaced and not permitted to return to a safe country and that must be a democratic country. They can’t return if ‘Assad’ remains. HIRISE is no solution and is a fascist preserving enclave that has to be overthrown. It is a long term project.

Only Turkey and NATO who, apart from Trump (and who can tell with ga ga Trump) do not yet support the Turks, can do that liberation in anything like a realistic time frame. But with Russians involved that timeframe is not short.

The Turks have upped their involvement just as I said they would be eventually forced to do. They have taken this next move at about the right time and the people who will benefit from it are the returning Syrians who can only return to democracy. They have shown that they can take control of Islamist Syria and control the Islamofascists. They can’t however return people to paddocks and little towns so big cities must come on the agenda next.

The Kurds are not very happy but they have played their side and are still sitting in Manbij so they have given zero ground and now want to invite Assad and the Russians into Manbij. It ain’t going to happen.

The Kurds ought to have pulled out years ago and made some other substantial consessions to the Turks and re-established a genuine peace process that had been underway till the Syrian Civil war brought it back from deaths door.

This advance into Syria is the Free Syrian Army backed by democratic Islamists!

The Turkish military are under the control of the genuinely democratic and elected government of Turkey and they are the best in a rotten region.

The Islamist revolutionary fighters can best be controlled by this force.

What makes this a great problem for the HIRISE is that the US military is STILL very much around and in great demand now apparently. This lurking force is not going to let any significant territory fall to ‘Assad’.

HIRISE is the big loser from this.

This move forward is going to shake things up and despite the ABC/BBC commentary stability is not to be hoped for.

Drop any links that you think may be useful for getting to grips with ‘Syrian issues’ in this thread.

Here is a sample .

With hundred of thousands of barrels of its oil stuck in the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan, unable to be sold on the world market because of its continuing row with Baghdad, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) is discovering just how landlocked and boxed in it is in terms of utilizing the vast oil reserves under its control.

Summary
Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani has been conducting shuttle diplomacy between Baghdad and Ankara to facilitate an agreement.

From al-monitor

Author Semih Idiz
Posted February 18, 2014
Translator(s)Ezgi Akin

KRG Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani shuttled between Istanbul and Baghdad again in the last few days in a fresh attempt at overcoming the problem, but with little apparent success. Baghdad appears determined to stick to its guns and prevent the KRG from selling oil from northern Iraq unilaterally, saying this violates Iraq’s constitution.

Baghdad also has support from Washington, where administration officials fear the energy cooperation between Turkey and the KRG will increase the risk of splitting up Iraq — already in the throes of sectarian strife — and are consequently putting pressure on Ankara over its energy dealings with the Iraqi Kurds.

Iraq’s constitution says oil revenues, regardless of where the reserves are located in the country, have to go through Baghdad and allocates the autonomous Kurdish region 17% of total revenues.

Nouri al-Maliki’s government argues that the KRG can only export its oil after an agreement is reached between Erbil and Baghdad on how to proceed in this matter.

Baghdad has also threatened to cut the KRG out of its share of Iraq’s vast oil revenues, should it go ahead and sell its oil unilaterally.

Iraqi Oil Minister Abdul Kareem Luaibi told Reuters in January that the government would take legal action against Turkey and consider canceling all contracts with Turkish firms if Ankara enabled the exporting of KRG oil before an agreement between Erbil and Baghdad is reached.

Such an agreement, though, has been elusive because of Kurdish claims of sole ownership over oil reserves discovered in northern Iraq after the region gained political autonomy from Baghdad following the US invasion in 2003.

KRG officials are disappointed that a comprehensive package of agreements they signed with Turkey in November 2013 has not become fully operational yet.

The package includes an agreement on multibillion-dollar oil pipelines connecting northern Iraq with Turkey, which would enable the KRG to eventually export up to 2 million barrels of oil per day when fully implemented, making it an important regional energy player independent of the central government.

Currently the KRG is using the existing pipeline from Kirkuk — which technically remains under Baghdad’s control — to Ceyhan where Turkey has a storage capacity of 2.5 million barrels set aside for Kurdish oil. As of December, when the KRG’s connection to the Kirkuk pipeline was opened, the 425,000 barrels of Kurdish oil has been stored in Ceyhan waiting to be sold on world markets.

In the meantime, the KRG has been trucking small amounts of crude oil to Turkey for domestic consumption, but this is considered to be negligible compared with the potential that exists if the proposed system of pipelines is fully up and running.

There has been little love lost between the predominantly Sunni government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the predominantly Shiite Maliki government because of Turkey’s cooperation with the KRG in the energy field, as well as sectarian-based differences over Syria.

Ankara nevertheless appears reluctant to aggravate the situation with Iraq further given the increasing instability and turmoil in the region due to the Syria crisis, which has also left the two countries facing similar threats, especially from radical jihadist groups such as the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS).

There is also the estimated trade of about $12 billion annually between Turkey and Iraq that experts say has to be factored in by Ankara. Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu visited the Iraqi capital in November for talks designed to smooth the path for a rapprochement between the sides and to lay the groundwork for a visit by Erdogan to Baghdad and Maliki to Ankara.

Those visits have yet to occur, however, and this may be an indication that differences remain which still have to be ironed out. Meanwhile, Iraqi officials are said to be still suspicious of Turkey’s intentions.

“Turkey must now choose either to turn its back on Baghdad and go ahead with its deal with the Kurds, or suspend direct exports from the region until an agreement is reached between the central government and Erbil,” Reuters quoted an unnamed Iraqi official as saying in January.

“Unfortunately, facts on the ground show that Ankara eventually will go ahead with its deals with the Kurds at the expense of its relations with Baghdad,” the official added.

Iraqi suspicions increased after media reports in Turkey indicated that the first batch of KRG oil in Ceyhan, worth $90 million, had been sold through the Trans Petroleum Co. in Singapore without approval from Baghdad.

Ankara, however, has denied these reports. “Even if a barrel of oil had passed through Ceyhan, Baghdad would have been informed of this and a daily receipt would have been given to the central government noting how much of a sale was made,” Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yildiz told members of the Petroleum Platform Association in the city of Kayseri on Feb. 17.

“This is Iraq’s oil, not Turkey’s. Thus, Baghdad will be informed, because it is an issue related to Iraq’s income. So far, there has not been any oil that has gone through Ceyhan, but this does not mean it won’t be transferred in the future. We’ll share all information with Baghdad,” Yildiz added.

Barzani arrived in Istanbul on Feb. 14, where he held talks with Erdogan and Yildiz to see how the problem could be overcome. Two days later, he was in Baghdad for talks on the topic, which reportedly produced little, if any, results.

The KRG and the central government have failed to resolve their differences despite a US-sponsored “seven-point agreement” signed between Barzani and Maliki in April 2013.

Tellingly, though, the sides were not prepared to give the impression of a breakdown in talks after Barzani’s failed mission to Baghdad this week. “Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and KRG Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani emphasized the importance of reaching an agreement over the outstanding issues between the Kurdistan Region and Iraq,” a statement from Maliki’s office in Baghdad said later, indicating that the talks would go on.

Meanwhile, there are those who argue that the KRG and Baghdad are actually making progress. Reuters quoted Mehmet Sepil, the president of Anglo-Turkish firm Genel Energy, on Feb. 6 as saying, “We have never been this close to a deal.” Sepil added, “The issues that caused an impasse have been identified. There’s been quite a bit of progress made.”

While the KRG and Baghdad remain locked in tough negotiations, the Kurdish media are reporting that the KRG is ultimately relying on the presence in northern Iraq of giant international oil companies, including ExxonMobil of the United States, Total of France and Gazprom Neft of Russia, to alter the picture to the KRG’s advantage.

“These companies are so powerful that they can change national policies,” the English-language edition of the Kurdish daily Rudaw reported on Feb. 17, also indicating that “from the very beginning of the row (with Baghdad) it has been obvious that, one way or another, Kurdish oil will flow overseas.”

The Financial Times, in a report on Jan. 26 bound to have displeased the Kurdish leadership, indicated, however, that although Kurdish crude is now flowing to Ceyhan, where it is being stored, major oil companies are shying away from responding to the KRG’s call for bids for this oil.

“We will not be involved in KRG tenders until we have a much better understanding of the ramifications for our relationship with Iraq,” the paper quoted an unnamed senior executive from what it said was one of the world’s largest energy companies.

It’s “obvious that, one way or another, Kurdish oil will flow overseas,” as Rudaw put it, but it seems that this will not be exclusively on Kurdish terms if the emerging picture is anything to go by.

Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/02/turkey-baghdad-oil-kurdistan-region-iraq.html?utm_source=Al-Monitor+Newsletter+%5BEnglish%5D&utm_campaign=1f1e05ec4f-January_9_20141_8_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_28264b27a0-1f1e05ec4f-93145129#ixzz2tp8sMNg8

On Feb. 2, the Turkish daily Vatan published an interview with Cemil Bayik, one of the leading “commanders” of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). The interviewer, Rusen Cakir, is a prominent Turkish journalist known for his expertise on the Kurdish issue, political Islam and the current political battle between the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the Gulen movement. No wonder Bayik addressed this hot topic in Turkish politics. At the PKK headquarters in northern Iraq’s Kandil Mountains, the guerrilla leader shared various views about Turkish politics, but the bottom line was the Vatan headline: “Behind the [Gulen] community, there is America; they want to get rid of Erdogan.”

The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) may believe that the enemy of my friend is my enemy.

From

Author Mustafa Akyol Posted February 3, 2014

Translator Ezgi Akin

This was perfectly in line with the AKP government’s explanations of the recent corruption probe: a foreign-backed conspiracy — if not “coup attempt” — by the pro-Gulen “parallel state” within the Turkish state. Bayik’s statement was, in other words, music to AKP ears.

In fact, it was not just Bayik but also the very leader of the PKK, the jailed Abdullah Ocalan, who recently took a stance supportive of the AKP against Gulen followers. From his prison cell on Imrali Island, he spoke against “those who want to set our country ablaze once again with the fire of a coup.” This was interpreted in the Turkish media as support for Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. No wonder AKP deputy Mehmet Metiner, an Erdogan loyalist, publicly commended Ocalan for his stance.

But why is the PKK — a terrorist group, by Turkish and most international definitions — sympathetic to the AKP in Turkey’s new power struggle? And why does this matter?

The first question has a simple answer: The PKK sees the AKP government, especially Erdogan, as its partner for “peace.” The organization has fought the Turkish state relentlessly since 1984 with a guerilla war that has claimed more than 40,000 lives, but the “political solution” that liberals have been advocating became possible only under Erdogan. In late 2012, a “resolution process” began based on covert talks between the Turkish government and Ocalan, and the conflict has been silent ever since. Both sides complain that the other is too timid to take the promised steps, but both sides seem willing to keep the peace as well.

On the other hand, the Gulen movement is known to be skeptical of this peace process. In fact, the AKP has accused the Gulen movement’s “parallel state” within the police and judiciary of trying to “sabotage the peace process.” The “Turkish National Intelligence Organization crisis” of February 2012 is interpreted as one of the earliest signs of this intention. Since then, it has been whispered in Ankara, and lately exposed in the press, that the Gulen community is against peace with the PKK.

One wonders why. The movement is globally known for moderation and pacifism, and Fethullah Gulen publicly praised “peace” when the deal with the PKK first went public. However, journalists close to the movement have repeatedly raised concerns about how the AKP government is “fooled” by the PKK. (I wrote in May 2013 for Al-Monitor that “the Gulen movement is not against the peace process, but is skeptical of its success and critical of its methods.”) Since then, such criticisms of the peace process have only increased in the pro-Gulen media.

These days, the pro-Erdogan camp, in its usual conspiratorial tone, explains the uneasiness of the Gulen movement with the peace process as a sign of its “high treason.” Accordingly, the peace process disturbs “the powers that want to weaken Turkey,” and since the Gulen movement is a puppet for those evil powers, they treacherously sabotage what is good for Turkey. However, using Occam’s razor, one can find a simpler explanation: The Gulen movement considers the PKK a threat, specifically to the movement’s facilities in predominantly Kurdish southeastern Turkey, including a wide network of schools, dormitories and charities. The PKK has targeted these institutions over the years, saying they “steal Kurdish children” from being PKK militants and make them followers of the pro-Turkish teachings of Gulen.

Gulen himself noted this tension recently in a rare interview, given to the BBC. Gulen said Ocalan was “uneasy with what we were doing with the Kurdish people” in reference to the extension of Hizmet schools deep in Kurdish territory. “They didn’t want our activities to prevent young people joining the militants in the mountains. Their politics is to keep enmity between Kurdish and Turkish people.”

This should explain why there is a conflict between the Gulen movement and the PKK, and why the latter supports the AKP, its “peace partner,” against the movement. How this will influence Turkish politics is a separate matter.

The PKK is loathed by the majority of Turkish society, so its support will not be of much help there for the government. Only the left-wing liberals who ardently support the peace process see it as a reason to stand by the AKP. However, the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) has 26 seats in parliament and some 6% to 8% of the votes, according to various polls. This political bloc may be an ally for Erdogan in the coming months, even in the presidential elections of next summer, where Erdogan, if he runs, will need the majority of all votes.

In short, the PKK has taken a clear side in the AKP-Gulen conflict in favor of the AKP, and this has an understandable logic. Instead of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” logic, it’s the other way around: “The enemy of my friend is my enemy.”

Mustafa Akyol
Columnist

Mustafa Akyol is a columnist for Al-Monitor’s Turkey Pulse and a columnist for Turkish Hurriyet Daily News and Star. His articles have also appeared in Foreign Affairs, Newsweek, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and The Guardian. He is the author of Islam Without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty. On Twitter: @AkyolinEnglish

Original Al-Monitor Translations
Türkçe okuyun
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Gul proposes Turkey-Iran cooperation in Syria

In his official visit to Italy Jan. 28-31, President Abdullah Gul met twice with Turkish columnists covering his trip. His remarks provided opportunities to observe how deep his longtime political differences with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan have become.

Turkish President Abdullah Gul is distancing himself from the political culture and foreign policy of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.

Author Kadri Gursel Posted February 3, 2014

Translator(s)Timur Goksel

From

As a columnist who took part in both meetings and asked questions of the president, my observation is this: Gul, who set up the Justice and Development Party (AKP) with Erdogan and who, until he became president, was the party’s second in command. He has plainly distanced himself from Erdogan’s wordview. It is not an exaggeration to say that the distance between them is becoming increasingly ideological.

We all know that the president, in contrast with the AKP government, defends Turkey’s EU perspectives, reforms, state of law and freedom of press. In the days following the dramatic intensification of the strife between the AKP and the Fetullah Gulen movement after the corruption investigations that directly targeted Erdogan’s family and close political associates, the divergence between the narratives of Gul and Erdogan was also reflected by their actions.

We have to remember the initiatives of the government to make legislative moves that would totally eliminate the independence of the judiciary were blocked, thanks to the firm stand of Gul, before the European Union stepped in.

As with many of the political developments in Turkey, it is also impossible to predict how the ideological divergence between Gul and Erdogan will affect the AKP. To make a reasonable guess, one has to wait for the outcome of the March 30 local elections. Only then we will be able to say what kind of role Gul is planning to fill in national politics and in the future of the AKP.

For the time being, let’s lay out how Gul has deviated from his old comrade Erdogan, especially in foreign policy.

The first issue is Syria. We can observe that the president of Turkey is more realistic and has a more rational approach as compared to that of Erdogan and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, and that he doesn’t ignore politics the way they do.

In his Jan. 30 talk with journalists in Rome, Gul suggested working with Iran on the issue of Syria, saying,

“Iran’s launching of a dialogue with the international community and the Western world and better prospects for solving problems through politics will make the world a more comfortable place. The beginning of a new era with Tehran may also enable engaging Iran on the Syrian issue. We spoke with Iranian President [Hassan] Rouhani on how essential it is to work together on the Syrian issue and develop alternatives. We tasked our foreign ministers to work on this. There is another opportunity that could arise from joint efforts. If Turkey can be in close and sincere cooperation with Iran on Syria, we can come up with proposals to the international community, and the Western world can take our proposals seriously.”

The prerequisite for Gul’s proposal is the development of a Syrian policy along rational and secular lines instead of the ideological basis favored by Erdogan and Davutoglu.

Gul’s words were made even more interesting by their timing, coming a day after Erdogan told the journalists in his plane returning from Tehran that “there was no agreement with Iran on Syria.”

For Ankara to work together with Tehran, which today is in the opposite camp over Syria, it first has to take a reality check and accept that the Syrian regime is not going away in the foreseeable future.

Gul has done this reality check and demonstrates that, unlike Erdogan and Davutoglu, he can empathize with the actors in the opposite camp. He said, “In an interview I gave to Foreign Affairs two years ago, I had said that there are no other countries committed to the opposition as much as Iran and Russia are for Syria. I was talking about the West and about Turkey. For Iran, Syria is an existential issue; for us, it is a humanitarian issue. For Russia, it is an issue of warm seas, of having a single base. On the other side, some talk about how [the United States] will be the one to end the war with its known policies. Today, Damascus has the stronger hand. How did they get to Geneva?”

In terms of Turkey’s threat analysis, Gul’s opinions are distinctly more realistic and up to date than those of Erdogan and Davutolgu, the architects of Ankara’s crumbled Syrian policy. Asked about the Turkish army’s retaliation for a Jan. 30 mortar round fired by the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), the president said, “We don’t have any reason to be optimistic about when Syria will achieve salvation. If a strong transition government had emerged from Geneva, we would have had some hope, but it wasn’t to be. The second point is the threats and dangers for Turkey of the existing situation. In that environment of uncertainty, many groups emerged. It is not only a war between the regime and the opposition but also within the opposition. There are no targets. If these [battles] are taking place along our 900-kilometer [559-mile] border, you can’t know where they will spread to. Such situations create and provoke extremism, radicalism. You will not know where they will end.

“This is why there is a big difference between our threat perception of four or five years ago, and our threat perception of today. At that time, the biggest threat for us was the struggle against [Kurdistan Workers Party] terror. Today, we see diverse, numerous groups. We have to be much more careful now. I want to say that our southern border is more difficult. If the Turkish armed forces today refrain from getting involved, who knows, tomorrow you may have to deal with a much more formidable force.”

It is a known fact Erdogan is defining the corruption investigations as an international conspiracy to remove him from power. His government allies and supportive media back this discourse.

On the evening of Jan. 28, Gul was asked a question about the conspiracy theory. A journalist from the pro-government media asked, “Don’t you think that in recent days, the Western media is drawing a portrait of an unstable Turkey?” He gave this interesting reply: “You complain. You gripe and demand that they should treat our affairs positively. Because of its nature, the press is generally expected to be critical. … You have to look at this as an objective media analysis. … There may well be those abroad who intentionally want to paint a negative portrait of Turkey, but it is not correct to group them together with ‘They want to show us in negative light; they are campaigning against us.’ Let’s not forget that these are newspapers that used to print headlines about the ‘reformist government in Turkey.’ They used to lavishly praise our successes. That is why we have to be objective. At times, you come across articles that stand out as excessively negative and biased. Some, however, write critically when they observe the debates in Turkey. You should not put them all in same basket as enemies of Turkey. That would be a mistake. We will then see everyone as our enemy, which, of course, is not the case.”

There are four main points to Gul’s response:

Gul is not giving credit to the conspiracy allegations of Erdogan and his coterie.
He is accepting that the press has to be critical, and supporting the freedom of the press.
His suggestion that a press that only sees the positive sides of the government will cease to be “the press,” a strong admonishment of the pro-AKP media.
Gul reminds us that newspapers currently critical of Turkey once wrote favorably of it. This is an implicit criticism by Gul of the negative direction the AKP government has been taking in recent years.

The president referred to recent unfavorable changes in Turkey when responding to a question about preparations for an international campaign on the centennial of the Armenian genocide. He said, “2014 and 2015 will be crucial years. Turkey will confront many tough questions on international platforms. Three or four years ago, as a shining country with many friends, we were thinking that we could overcome these tough questions. To be honest, with the global situation, our problems that require attention and our domestic issues will make these international questions more difficult to handle. Our government is making some preparations. … We have to find ways to remind others of the importance of being friends with Turkey.”

These remarks by Gul contain criticism of how Turkey has become isolated and suffered soft-power losses globally and regionally because of the policies pursued by the Erdogan-Davutoglu team since 2010.

We have to emphasize that Gul’s observations and attitude have strong and favorable reflection in the AKP base and within the party structure, and that he is not alone.

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TEHRAN, Iran — In public, it was all about economies, treaties and bilateral relations. Behind closed doors, however, the visit to Iran by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was all about Syria, Syria and Syria.

Author Ali Hashem Posted January 30, 2014

Summary
Behind closed doors, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan talked with Iranian leaders about common ground on Syria and a more effective dialogue between the Syrian government and the opposition.

“There are still differences, that’s obvious, but they’re not as crucial as they were before,” a source in Tehran commented to Al-Monitor in discussing Erdogan’s visit. “Almost two years ago, Erdogan came to Iran and insisted on meeting [Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei to tell him that Iran’s bet on Assad would not yield any benefit. Back then, the leader told the Turkish guest, review your policies, your strategies, and come back. [Bashar al-] Assad won’t fall.”

Erdogan is back, and he is still in favor of toppling Assad, but according to the source, he is almost convinced that this is only a wish.

“There are alternatives that have been discussed during the past months, and in this visit, they were finalized. Turkey has its own people in the opposition, and they’ve been isolated by the current backed by Saudi Arabia,” the source explained. “The need for change in Syria can be met by bringing together both the regime and the opposition. [These] talks can be more efficient than the ones taking place in Montreux. Even if it took place at the same location, the idea is giving the talks a strong push, with both regional powers playing a positive role in convincing their allies to come to terms.”

Both Turkey and Iran have decided that they need to maintain good strategic relations, as both feel the heat of terrorism and regional differences vis-a-vis other powers. The Iranian supreme leader’s words were as clear as day. He was reported as saying that Iranian-Turkish relations are the best in centuries, and both countries have to seize the opportunity to solidify their relations. Erdogan, for his part, offered that when he visits Iran, it feels like a second home. He added that they have to work together to the extent that ministers of both governments feel as if they are working in the same government.

Khamenei is known to be extremely selective in his choice of words. He is, after all, the supreme leader, the head of the regime, the man who makes decisions on strategic matters. In speaking about Syria, he is saying what his allies in Damascus might be too intimidated to say to the Turks, although, according to Al-Monitor’s source, “it’s not the case” since they are aware of all the details and understand the need to have Turkey as an ally and a strategic partner.

The meetings are expected to continue between Ankara and Tehran to assess the situation on the ground. According to the source, coordination on the Syrian crisis is at the highest levels. “The countries are to unify their efforts. They see themselves in the same boat, and they have the same rivals. The region needs three main pillars to stand again. Turkey and Iran are two [of them]. An Arab partner is needed, and this is what they are working on. Iraq could play this role, but so can other countries in the region.”

Three weeks before Erdogan’s visit to Tehran, Al-Monitor learned that a high-ranking delegation from Iran had visited Ankara, carrying information about the situation in Syria. The delegation met high-ranking Turkish officials, including Erdogan, and there was agreement on exchanging information and coordinating closely on the situation in Syria. The meeting also included some non-Iranian and non-Turkish figures. The exchange apparently continues.

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Where is Turkey Going?

by Veli Sirin
January 3, 2014 at 5:00 am

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4116/turkey-government-crisis

The unraveling of relations between Erdoğan and Gülen has begun to overshadow the details of the corruption scandal that brought it about.

As the crisis of Turkey’s government and the country’s competing Islamists is deepening, the attitude of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, leader of the ruling Justice and Development Party, known as AKP, is hardening – as are the positions of his opponents.

With new developments emerging daily, Erdoğan was confronted on January 1, 2014 with a petition by the former army general staff chief, Gen. İlker Başbuğ, that Başbuğ be released from a life sentence handed down against him on August 5, 2013, in the “Ergenekon” conspiracy trials, in which the Islamist government accused members of the secular military of supposedly trying to bring the government down. As described in the leading national media platform, the Hürriyet Daily News, Başbuğ was one of 275 suspects charged in the “Ergenekon” affair; other high military officials, journalists and academics were subjected to “aggravated life sentences,” which replaced death sentences, in the “Ergenekon” proceedings.

As noted in the same Hürriyet article, Başbuğ based his demand for exoneration on Erdoğan’s claim that “gangs within the state” and “members of the parallel state” had penetrated the judiciary, police, and other official structures. Erdoğan’s chief advisor, Yalçin Akdoğan, implied that members of the judiciary had “framed” military officers in the “Ergenekon” case.

Senior AKP legislator Mustafa Elitaş, told Hürriyet Daily News that Turkey could change laws to allow a retrial of the military officers convicted of plotting to overthrow Erdoğan. According to that Hürriyet Daily News account, Elitaş said of the army defendants, “We will, if necessary, make new legal arrangements to stop people’s unjust treatment.”

At the same time, and as reflected in the same Hürriyet Daily News post of December 31, former army General Çetin Doğan, accused and convicted of a similar plot in the “Sledgehammer” trial of military leaders, which ended in 2012, is preparing a complaint against a 20-year prison term imposed on him.

Erdoğan’s chief advisor, Akdoğan, then reversed course. In a press statement quoted by Today’s Zaman, another major Turkish newspaper, Akdoğan declared, “It is wrong to the utmost degree to use my previous writings to say that I have called some trials ‘false,’ ‘baseless,’ ’empty’ and ‘fabricated.’ Just as prosecutors need evidence to issue criminal charges, the defense, believing the evidence presented is false, needs to provide its own evidence to support its argument.”

Ironies abound in the current Turkish turmoil. Erdoğan and AKP were widely reported to have mounted the “Sledgehammer” and “Ergenekon” proceedings in a long-term Islamist bid to cut down the influence of the secularist military. London Guardian correspondent Simon Tisdall, noted on September 25, 2012 that Turkish military commanders had carried out three coups, between 1960 and 1980 (including a full-fledged takeover in 1971), and had forced AKP out of power in 1997.

Tisdall continued, “Tensions between the AKP and the military, proud guardians of [Turkey]’s secularist legacy, were at times acute. It is not difficult to imagine the generals wanted rid of Erdoğan.”

The AKP seems caught between its desire to defend the two anti-military trials and to rein in a process that has escaped its control, with the judiciary turning on Erdoğan’s party leaders. A December 31, 2013 Reuters news agency wire ascribed to AKP deputy prime minister Ali Babacan a claim that subversion of the AKP administration was the motive for a “graft inquiry [that] became public on 17 December with a series of raids and detentions of senior businessmen close to Erdoğan, and of the sons of three ministers.”

The same Reuters account pointed out that “Erdoğan has, without naming it, accused a movement led by the Turkish cleric Fethullah Gülen of creating a ‘state within a state,’ using influence in the police and judiciary in a campaign to discredit the government. The [Gülen-led] Hizmet (Service) movement controls a global network of schools and businesses. Tensions have grown between the two former allies over elements of foreign and domestic policy and moves to close Gülen’s private schools in Turkey.”

Fethullah Gülen was born in Turkey in 1941 near the city of Erzurum but since 1999 has lived in rural Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania, according to a profile of him by Alexander Christie-Miller posted by The Christian Science Monitor Gülen came to the U.S., Christie-Miller wrote, “after fleeing Turkey over charges of seeking to topple the country’s secular government.” London Financial Times writer Daniel Dombey, however, stated that Gülen had moved to America for “medical treatment.”

Gülen was portrayed as “soft-spoken,” “modest,” and tolerant of Turkey’s non-Muslim religious minorities, including “Nestorian Christians, Protestants [and] Jews,” in an article about him by Brian Knowlton of The New York Times. The newspaper Today’s Zaman, quoted above, is owned by the Gülen movement.

Erdoğan, for his part, has become known for conspiratorial claims. When the corruption scandal struck the AKP government in December, the prime minister was cited by Emre Peker in The Wall Street Journal.

Erdoğan claimed, according to Peker, that the investigation of financial crimes in his administration was “the work of foreign powers uncomfortable with Turkey’s rising economic and political clout. ‘If we don’t respond to these operations in the harshest, most decisive manner today, rest assured that these conspiracies will continue to engineer our national will in the future,’ he said.”

Prime Minister Erdoğan further used an idiom flavored with aggression. Hürriyet Daily News reported that Erdoğan said in a speech in Ordu, a northern Turkish city, “Those who want to establish a parallel structure alongside the state, those who have infiltrated into the state institutions … we will come into your lairs and we will lay out these organizations within the state.”

Gülen, in reaction to the implication by Erdoğan and his supporters that Gülen, and his followers in the judiciary and police had turned against the AKP, burst out with rhetoric that belied his long-cultivated image of unruffled tranquility. Gülen issued a video sermon, rebroadcast widely on Turkish television channels, in which he denounced “Those who don’t see the thief but go after those who chase the thief … May Allah bring fire to their homes.”

Erdoğan replied in a subdued manner, on December 22, before leaving on a trip to Pakistan: “We pray for Muslims to reach the right way, not for their damnation. Cursing is such a trick among Muslims it will return to one who did this like a boomerang.”

The unraveling of relations between Erdoğan and Gülen has begun to overshadow the details of the corruption scandal that brought it about. On December 17, fifty individuals were arrested in Istanbul and Ankara. The focal point of the investigation was a deal between Turkey and Iran for Turkey to provide gold in payment for Iranian oil, circumventing international financial sanctions against Tehran.

Charges in the case included money laundering, bribery and fraud. The accused include the sons of three members of Erdoğan’s cabinet, who resigned on December 25: Interior Minister Muammer Güler, Economy Minister Zafer Çağlayan, and Environment Minister Erdoğan Bayraktar. Hürriyet Daily News reported that Bayraktar complained of pressure to quit, and gave up his AKP parliamentary seat as well as his ministry. Bayraktar concluded, “For the sake of the well-being of this nation and country, I believe the prime minister should resign.”

Others under arrest include Süleyman Aslan, chief executive officer of Halkbank, a state institution, and an Iranian-Azerbaijani businessman, Reza Zarrab, according to Isobel Finkel of Bloomberg News.

Hürriyet Daily News said police “reportedly have found $4.5 million in cash stored in shoe boxes in Aslan’s home.” The cash-laden shoeboxes were shown repeatedly on Turkish television.

The Bloomberg News article of December 23 asserted “the next target of investigation [could involve] construction contracts with an NGO [non-governmental organization] that allegedly has connections to Erdoğan’s son Bilal.” The Bloomberg reportage also noted that the “government purged at least 60 police chiefs,” aggravating the conflict with Gülen, whom the Bloomberg reporter stated “has a wide following in the police and judiciary.”

A December 26 Deutsche Welle report announced the latest turning point in the case, when “The attorney responsible for corruption investigations in Istanbul, Muammer Akkaş, was removed from the case after allegations of leaking information to the media.”

Erdoğan “appeared to threaten Akkaş,” according to Daniel Dombey of the Financial Times. Dombey wrote, “‘What kind of prosecutor is this?’ Mr Erdoğan asked his audience. ‘The chief prosecutor takes the file from him and this gentleman gets up and screams. Just wait – we have business to settle with you.’ “

Hürriyet Daily News described Erdoğan as continuing “vitriolic attacks” in a speech he delivered in Akhisar, a neighborhood in the western Turkish town of Manisa that day.

The anti-Erdoğan portion of the Turkish public has contributed in its own distinctive manner to the crisis of Islamist power. When Erdoğan appeared in Manisa on December 29, Nurhan Gül, a female pensioner, waved a shoe-box, symbolizing the corruption at Halkbank, from her balcony to express her discontent with Erdoğan during his speech. She was detained by the Prime Minister’s security guards, taken to a police station, and questioned for four hours, then released. But Erdoğan was apparently irritated to learn that Nurhan Gül had become a national hero immediately, and that Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, leader of the secular opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), had called her with congratulations.

Hürriyet Daily News columnist Serkan Demirtaş, noted the arrest of the shoebox-waving pensioner and concluded, “This is [the] time for President Abdullah Gül, who is only watching developments so far, as the head of the nation, to step in and assign the State Audit Board (DDK) to study whether claims of a parallel state or gangs within the state are accurate. The problem is about the functions of the state and it is Gül’s constitutional duty to deal with this growing crisis.”

Turkey seals border against al-Qaeda
from

The turmoil on the Turkish border is likely to intensify following major operations by the Syrian army in Aleppo and Idlib. The regime’s move pushed opposition forces northward against the border and prompted infighting between them. At the moment, the Turkish border, already the scene of crucial developments because of crossings of refugees, militants, arms and ammunition as well as traditional smugglers, had become even more volatile because of the clashes between the Islamic Front and the al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS).

Turkey has closed its gates after al-Qaeda captured three border crossings into northern Syria, with potential implications for armed groups operating in Syria.

Author Fehim Taştekin Posted January 23, 2014

Translator(s)Timur Goksel

The Syrian border crossings of Bab al-Salameh, Carablus and Tal Abyad, which face the Turkish crossings of Kilis-Oncupinar, Gaziantep-Karkamis and Sanliurfa-Akcakale, respectively, were captured by ISIS one after the other. When Turkey closed the crossings because of this development, the trucks waiting there to cross into Syria were diverted to the Cilvegozu border crossing at Reyhanli-Hatay. But after the Jan. 20 car-bomb attacks at Syria’s Bab al-Hawa facing Cilvegozu, Turkey closed this crossing as well. The queue of trucks waiting at Cilvegozu was 30 kilometers (19 miles) long on Jan. 22. Only Syrians wanting to go back to their country are allowed to cross.

FSA couldn’t hold out.

A senior official told Al-Monitor that although Bab al-Hawa is technically under the control of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), ISIS has a presence in the area and passages are therefore risky. He said, “There was stiff opposition to al-Qaeda at Tal Abyad, which is across from our Akcakale border crossing. But when al-Qaeda got the upper hand in the clashes, FSA people manning the crossing abandoned their weapons at the border and escaped to Turkey. Turkmen villages in the area were evacuated. At the moment, there is no force other than al-Qaeda at Tal Abyad. That is why we had to seal off the Akcakale border crossing.

Three hundred trucks a day used to pass through that crossing. Now the owners of the Akcakale-based truck fleets have formed a pressure group and they want us to reopen the crossing. They say they have commercial obligations and they have to deliver. According to them, al-Qaeda has transferred control of the crossing to civilians. Turkey is now assessing the situation but if you ask me, to allow trucks to cross from there would only benefit al-Qaeda because although ISIS may have withdrawn, it is al-Qaeda that actually controls the crossing.”

The official continued, “There was a long clash at Carablus about a week ago. In the end, the Tawhid Brigade gave up and ran away. About 1,500-2,000 civilians living in tents near the border also crossed into Turkey. These were people who had escaped from clashes at Hama and Homs. Most of them are Turkmen. Turkey was keeping them in camps on the Syrian side instead of letting them cross into Turkey. But when the border was closed, humanitarian assistance was disrupted and Turkey had to accept these refugees.”

He concluded, “There were bomb attacks in the town of Azez across from our Oncupinar. At Bab al-Hawa across from Cilvegozu, control is in the hands of the Islamic Front.”

One can sense a martial command in the region, especially to the east, where the Kurds are. The Nusaybin, Senyurt and Ceylanpinar crossings that provide access to Qamishli, Derbesiye and Serekaniye are controlled by the Kurds and already are closed. According to the official who spoke to Al-Monitor, vehicles going to Qamishli are processed at the Habur border crossing. At Senyurt, humanitarian assistance trucks are occasionally allowed through. That Turkey erected a wall at Nusaybin to prevent illegal crossings was interpreted as enmity toward Kurds and a challenge to Kurdish efforts to set up an autonomous region in Rojava.

The official said it is impossible to prevent illegal crossings on a border of 910 kilometers (565 miles), but the least Turkey could do would be to devise policies that would discourage the villagers on the Turkish side from joining the smuggling enterprises common there.

Alarm over terror

Another reason for Turkey’s increased vigilance on the border is the intelligence gathered on al-Qaeda’s intentions to stage attacks in Turkish cities. The latest report reaching the security units concerned ISIS plans to launch suicide attacks in Ankara, Istanbul and Hatay.

Intelligence reports said ISIS was specifically targeting the big hotels where the FSA and the Syrian National Coalition hold their meetings, hence the urgent warning sent to police and the gendarmerie. Turkey’s support of the Islamic Front, which is now fighting ISIS, and the recent detentions of al-Qaeda militants in some cities have increased fears that Turkey itself may be targeted.

Fehim Taştekin
Contributor, Turkey Pulse

Fehim Taştekin is a columnist and chief editor of foreign news at the Turkish newspaper Radikal, based in Istanbul. He is the host of a fortnightly program called “Dogu Divanı” on IMC TV. He is an analyst specializing in Turkish foreign policy and Caucasus, Middle East and EU affairs. He was founding editor of Agency Caucasus.

Original Al-Monitor Translations

Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/01/turkey-seals-border-al-qaeda.html?utm_source=Al-Monitor+Newsletter+%5BEnglish%5D&utm_campaign=7640220ef5-January_9_20141_8_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_28264b27a0-7640220ef5-93145129##ixzz2rMS5ihzo