Anyone who really thinks that rapidly-desecularizing Turkey has finally decided to stop beating up on the Kurds and start getting tough on the Wahabist jihadists known as ISIS needs to think again:
Turkish jets launched their heaviest assault on Kurdish militants in northern Iraq overnight since air strikes began last week, hours after President Tayyip Erdogan said a peace process had become impossible.
The strikes hit Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) targets including shelters, depots and caves in six areas, a statement from Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu's office said. A senior official told Reuters it was the biggest assault since the campaign started.
[...]
Turkey has also opened its air bases to the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State, joining the front-line in the battle against the jihadists after years of reluctance. NATO gave Turkey full political support on Tuesday.
But Turkey's assaults on the PKK have so far been much heavier than its strikes against Islamic State, fuelling suspicions that its real agenda is keeping Kurdish political and territorial ambitions in check, something the government denies.
But nobody cares, because,
as Gary Brecher says, the Kurds are Socialists who actually fight.
More after the jump.
From the War Nerd's latest epistle:
The Turkish raids were almost insulting in their bait-and-switch: One little strike on Islamic State, or a nice vacant lot that might once have been visited by IS . . . and then 300 sorties, with the best US air-to-ground ordnance you can buy, killing God knows how many hundreds or thousands of Kurdish socialist fighters.
Oh, and by the way, don’t expect most Western leftists to shed any tears over those dead Socialist fighters. You’d think Western lefties would be happy that a radical-feminist, non-sectarian, aggressively pro-LGBT, egalitarian/socialist militia is taking back ground from the most reactionary, sectarian killers on earth. Nah. The most you can hope for is guarded silence. Kurds make them nervous for reasons I’d rather not think about.
Nobody much likes the Kurds, especially Erdogan’s AK party. In fact, the AKP hates the Kurds so much that this shared hobby of Kurd-killing has been the beginning of a beautiful friendship between the Turkish military and IS. IS fighters have always been able to move easily over the Turkish border, and there are persistent reports that Erdogan’s daughter herself is playing their Florence Nightingale, patching up those rapists’ boo-boos in one of the quasi-secret hospitals along the border.
Wonder why you've not heard much about ISIS lately? Because the Kurds, thanls to US air support and international aid, have been beating the snot out of them, even coming close to cutting off ISIS' major remaining supply routes - which just happen to run through Turkey.
But of course, ISIS' buddies like Erdogan can't have that:
If YPG/J had been allowed to advance across the Euphrates, breaking up the “emirate” around Jarabulus, and liberating Dabiq, IS wouldn’t just be defeated, it’d be laughed at. And if there’s one thing slave-selling jihadis don’t enjoy, it’s people laughing at them. Or with them. Or anywhere near them.
So the Turkish Air Force is sending the best planes and munitions the US can send them to wipe out these pesky kids in YPG/J, while making noises about giving their IS clients a good spanking. At the moment, the Turkish generals are claiming they’re only hitting PKK/YPG in northern Iraq, but there are already reports of Turkish strikes on Kurdish targets in Syria.
It’s inevitable that the Turkish military will focus on those targets once it’s done its job of distracting the gullible media with this pantomime strike on IS.
YPJ/G is the most heroic group I’ve seen since I started writing about war. So it makes perfect sense that everybody wants to wipe them out.
You can help change this. Write your congresscritters. Pass the news to your friends - including your conservative friends. (Frame it this way: "Why are we spending billions propping up the ISIS-loving Erdogan? Wouldn't those tax dollars be better spent on something else?") Shine a big spotlight on it.
But please, don't just sit by while one of the last surviving secularist, egalitarian Middle Eastern movements is being pounded by not-so-secret allies of ISIS.
Prove Gary Brecher wrong. No one would be happier than him (or several thousand Kurds) if you did.