Six on the Turkish Invasion of Syria: How Turkey’s Invasion of Syria Backfired on Erdogan; Turkey ‘neutralizes 595 terrorists’ in Syria op; Matt Bors: Kurds Between a Rock and a Hard Place; Kurdish Massacres: One of Britain’s Many Original Sins; Trum
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Thanks John and Gary
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“Tal Abyad and Ras al-Ain are under our control. Works regarding the region’s control are ongoing. Our fight here is not just against the YPG; it is against all terrorist organizations, especially Daesh,” Akar told reporters on Oct. 14, using the Arabic acronym of ISIL.
“Apart from this, we have no relation with any ethnic or religious group here. In this sense, their security is important to us as well. We are doing everything in our power for the safety, security, and peace of our Kurdish brothers and sisters in Turkey and northern Syria,” he said.
Regarding the recent news about emptied prisons holding ISIL members and their families, Akar said Turkey is “determined to show every effort.”
He added that there was only one prison in the region, and it was emptied out by YPG members.
“We detected these with photographs and footages. We are discussing it with relevant persons and will continue to do so,” Akar had said.
As the operation is ongoing, Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu is expected to brief parliament on Oct. 16 regarding the latest developments.
'Operation cleared 1000 sq km are from terrorists so far'
In the meantime, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Oct. 15 said that the Turkish operation cleared some 1,000 square km in northern Syria of separatist terrorists.
“As of this morning [on Oct. 15], we have liberated around 1,000 square kilometer area from the occupation of the separatist terror group,” Erdoğan said during a speech at the 7th Summit of the Turkic Council in Azerbaijan's capital Baku.
He said Turkey aims to clear the area of terrorists from Manbij, Syria to the Iraqi-Turkish border and to provide voluntary resettlement of around 3 million Syrians to their home. [home country, not pre-war home ].
Erdoğan briefs Macron on Syria op
In a phone call, Erdoğan briefed his French counterpart about the aims of the country’s ongoing anti-terror operation in northern Syria, according to Turkey’s Communications Directorate.
Erdoğan told Emmanuel Macron about the threat that the YPG and ISIL in northern Syria pose to both Turkey’s security and Syria’s territorial integrity.
He also stressed the future contributions of “Operation Peace Spring” [sic] to both regional and global peace and stability.
Before the phone call, Macron had criticized the operation, claiming, in particular, it could help a revival of the terrorist group ISIL."
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"The brutal Turkish onslaught on the Kurdish population of northern Syria can be trailed to the May 1916 connivance of the secret Anglo-French meeting to divvy up the spoils of World War I.
In a manner of speaking, the carnage unfolding in Northern Syria is one of Britain’s early 20th century Near Eastern original sins (one of many similar sins across the globe) that bears the Anglo Mark of Cain emblazoned in gory detail in today’s bloodstained Palestinian, Syrian, Kashmiri, Somali, Iraqi, Yemeni, Afghani, and Burmese soils, to name but a few.
Prior to 1917 the exhausted Ottoman Empire’s rule over Syria, Palestine, Jordan, Iraq, and small swaths of the Arabian Peninsula was losing its grip. The empire was gasping its last breath as a result of The Sick Man of Europe’s involvement in WWI and the hubris that befalls spent empires. Smelling victory at smashing the Triple Entente, Mark Sykes and François George-Picot, British and French diplomats, convened a secret 1916 kleptomaniac meeting to carve up the Ottoman Empire and Arab World into their spheres of influence.
In 1901 huge oil reserves were being discovered in Iraq, Iran, and the Arabian Peninsula, reserves that enticed the ever-ruthless and greedy Brits and French, much like Cain, to covet large expanses of desert which were heretofore merely uninhabitable backwashes.
Churchill’s racist and bigoted sentiments include the following: as a onetime Hitler admirer, he bragged that “the Aryan stock is bound to triumph.” One solution he advocated to subdue Iraqi insurgents exposes his deep-seated racist nature: “I am strongly in favour [sic.] of using poison gas against uncivilized tribes.” His xenophobic statement about Indians: “I hate Indians.” He referred to Arabs as “dirty desert niggers”, and to Palestinians as “barbaric hordes who ate little but camel dung”; and he “cheered Britain’s plan for more territorial conquests.” To suppress Iraqi uprisings against brutal British occupation, in the 1920’s and 1930s Churchill ordered the British air force to drop tons of mustard gas on Iraqi civilians, killing them by the thousands.
There’s no doubt that Churchill was inculcated with everything that is pathologically Anglo imperial arrogance, a kind of Trumpian view of non-European nations.
Like their Palestinian counterparts, the Kurdish population of Kurdistan saw their homeland carved up into Sykes-Pico parcels apportioned to Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. And much like the refugees of Palestine who’ve experienced ostracism, exploitation, marginalization, and genocide by the Israelis and some of their so-called Arab brothers, the Kurds of Iraq, Iran, Turkey, and Syria have been marginalized, abused, dispossessed, and brutally murdered by their fellow Muslim brothers.
For gassing the Kurds and Iranians with U.S. made chemicals (a business transaction orchestrated by Reagan’s et Dick Cheney), Saddam Hussein was rightly condemned; and eventually he was hanged in a primordial display of revenge. For gassing Iraqi civilians, Winston Churchill was decorated and lauded for his service to the British Crown."
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"Turkey views the YPG as a terrorist organisation linked to Kurdish separatist insurgents at home. It also wants to create a "safe zone" 30 km into Syrian territory where it aims to re-settle millions of Syrian refugees displaced by the war.
But the YPG, which was crucial in helping Washington defeat Islamic State (IS), describes Trump's move as a callous act of betrayal.
In a fight to survive, it struck a deal with Russian-backed Syrian forces, and they have taken swathes of land close to where the Turks are fighting.
Caught in the middle are people like Akram. Beyond their immediate survival, they must navigate fast-changing frontlines and alliances that resulted from Trump's sudden move.
"Syria is being destroyed all over again," she said at the camp where she and hundreds of others are being settled by authorities in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI).
"All because Trump sold us out. And the world watched."
EXHAUSTED AND SCARED
About 1,000 refugees had crossed into Iraq's Kurdish north since the Turkish operation began, according to the UN Refugee Agency and International Organization for Migration, and more are expected.
Tens of thousands have abandoned their homes across northern Syria, a new humanitarian crisis in a part of the country where a semblance of stability had been established.
Akram paid a smuggler the going rate of $500 to get to Iraq, crossing at an informal border point because Syrian Kurdish forces would not let them leave through their checkpoint.
She and about 300 others have been taken to Bardarash, around three hours' drive by dusty road from the frontier.
Kurdish authorities have scrambled to erect tents and fix latrines in time for the first refugees arriving on Wednesday.
The camp was originally set up in 2013 to house Iraqis fleeing Islamic State, but was decommissioned in late 2017 after the extremist Islamist movement was defeated in the battlefield.
People arriving at the camp looked exhausted and scared. Some children with tear-stained cheeks wailed as they sat in the coaches transporting them.
One boy, smiling with relief, gave a thumbs up as a convoy of about a dozen coaches swept through the camp gates.
"The bombs are still falling and a lot of people still want to come," said 25-year-old Masoud Fatah, who arrived in Iraq on Tuesday from his home in Darbasiye.
YPG "WORRIED KURDS WILL LEAVE"
Akram said that YPG fighters tried to stop people leaving the Kurdish-controlled northeast, fearful of what it would do for morale.
The YPG also worry that if large numbers of mostly Sunni Arab Syrians are re-settled from Turkey, ethnic Kurds will soon be outnumbered and lose the freedoms they have fought to secure.
"They (the YPG) threatened us, told us they'd shoot at us, even though they're our people," she said in the back of the minibus that had brought her to the camp. "They're worried that if we all leave, there won't be any Kurds left."
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