Monthly Archives: January 2018

February 1, 2018 SnyderTalk: Turkey’s Erdogan wages a dangerous war on many fronts

“I am Yahweh; that is My Name!  I will not give My glory to anyone else, nor share My praise with carved idols.” (Isaiah 42: 8)

_____________

#####

Ishaan Tharoor—Turkey’s Erdogan wages a dangerous war on many fronts:

Without a trace of irony, Turkey has dubbed the military offensive it is waging across its southern border with Syria “Operation Olive Branch.” It’s hardly an apt name, given both the bloody nature of the offensive and the wide-reaching geopolitical havoc it has caused.

Since Jan. 20, Turkish forces and Turkish-backed militias have been engaged in battles with Syrian Kurds holding an enclave called Afrin, northwest of the Syrian city of Aleppo. Turkish authorities say they are fighting units that are an extension of the PKK, a violent Kurdish separatist group in Turkey that’s seen by both Ankara and Washington as a terrorist organization.

Reports suggest Turkish air and artillery strikes have damaged villages and killed civilians there, in addition to killing dozens of Syrian Kurdish fighters. Images are circulating online of the destruction wrought by a Turkish airstrike on an ancient temple complex dating back to the first millennium B.C.

“Step by step, we will clean our entire border,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared over the weekend. But the operation has created an international mess.

The Turkish campaign followed an announcement by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson that the United States would commit to an open-ended troop presence in Syria and endorse the creation of a permanent Kurdish-dominated border force in northeastern Syria. (Turkish officials described such a force as a “terrorist” entity.) Both the Obama and Trump administrations have leaned heavily on Syrian Kurdish factions in waging the ground war against the Islamic State, despite Turkish objections.

While Washington says it does not back the Kurdish factions in Afrin, it is much more involved further to the east, where it has helped arm and train Syrian Kurdish units that are part of a coalition known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF — and sometimes fought along with them. U.S. Special Forces have been conducting patrols in the most bitterly contested areas in a bid to keep the SDF and Turkish-backed forces from clashing, but that may soon become a much harder task.

With Erdogan “intensifying his threats to extend the Turkish offensive to the areas farther east, where the U.S. military maintains troops, a larger conflict looms,” my colleagues wrote, “A Turkish attack on Manbij [a strategic border town] would present the United States with a major dilemma,” forced to pick a side between their allies on the ground and a historic NATO partner.

The U.S.-Turkey relationship has been in free fall over the course of the Syrian war. Erdogan grew furious with the Obama administration for not doing enough to challenge the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad while also emboldening Kurdish factions on Turkey’s doorstep. President Trump’s arrival offered hope for a reset, but that, too, quickly faded.

[…]

To continue reading, click here.

SnyderTalk Comment:

Erdogan is a thoroughly dangerous man.  He has his eyes on the entire Middle East.  We need to keep our eyes on Israel.

See “Erdogan says Turkey will ‘clean’ entire Syrian border” and “Erdogan’s plans for Afrin might not sit well with Syria”.

#####

_____________

#####

#####

_____________

#####

“The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me. Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.” (John 17: 22-24)

See “His Name is Yahweh”.