Posted on 10/13/2019 5:50:45 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
According to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a deal has been reached through which Syrian government forces will protect the Kurdish-held towns of Kobani and Manbij.
US troops had been deployed in both towns since they were cleared of "Islamic State" (IS) militants in 2015. However, last week US President Donald Trump made the surprise announcement that he was pulling the US military out of Kurdish Syria, leaving a key US ally in the fight against IS vulnerable to the Turkish army.
Turkey, which has been fighting an off-and-on insurgency from armed Kurdish groups in its own country, says the offensive into Syria is to protect itself from "terrorists," a word it uses to describe the Kurdish People's Protection Units, which makes up most of what is left of the SDF.
The SOHR on Sunday reported that at least nine people, including five civilians, were killed in Turkish airstrikes on Sunday. The strikes hit a convoy carrying anti-Turkish protesters, fleeing residents and journalists. The convoy was hit as it approached the town of Ras al-Ayn, a Syrian border town that is now under Turkish control.
Turkish forces also advanced into the center of another border town, Tal Abyad, and had gained "near full control of it" by Sunday evening, SOHR said.
Divided UN fails to agree on Turkey's Syria offensive
(Excerpt) Read more at dw.com ...
Syria is still a country?
Nah. It’s a pretense.
Iran's President Hassan Rouhani, Russia's Vladimir Putin and Turkey's Tayyip Erdogan meet in Sochi, Russia November 22, 2017. (photo credit: SPUTNIK/MIKHAIL METZEL/KREMLIN VIA REUTERS) The Three Amigos
Destroy each other, they should.
Alright, Turkey, now we’re back to Turkey (NATO) vs Syria (Russia). Hope you got whatever you needed to get done done already, as the war games either comes to a stop, or we all get to find out how serious NATO is about defending a Muslim nation.
Off Topic: Amazon Prime has a new WW1 mini-series on Gallipoli - it’s pretty good
“Hope you got whatever you needed to get done done already, as the war games either comes to a stop, or we all get to find out how serious NATO is about defending a Muslim nation.”
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NATO will owe Turkey ABSOLUTELY NOTHING as it suffers whatever consequences that derive from their UNPROVOKED invasion of a neighboring country. And I hope those consequences are GRAVE.
Kick Turkey out of NATO/ When I was serving I remember that country doing joint exercises and back then they were crap , and could not careless about NATO
And we can watch from here.
Nah.
Prior to Erdogan, Turkey was a vital, willing member of NATO, because the USSR was (as the Russian Empire was before that) an arch-enemy of Turkey. Erdogan decided the flip the script, or more accurately, decided he *could* flip the script, by dumping Israel as a regional ally, and making nice with Russia and Iran. His attempt to build a multinational open market like the EEC, with Turkey's neighbors, turned out to just be seen as a sign of weakness by Syria (territory formerly part of the Ottoman Empire) and Iran (longtime rival).
NATO has no obligation to defend a member country that has attacked and occupied another country, and that country is defending itself.
That’s how it works. We get out and the local players fill the vacuum. Say what you will about Basher Assad, but he is not going to let erdogan run around on his land.
A lot in your post.
I’ll add that Russia’s antipathy to Turkey arose from “the harvest of the steppes”. Which people can learn of on their own.
Turkey is leaving it’s Europe-centered position (and thus NATO). All that remains to be determined is whether it will be neutral or ‘China-oriented’.
It’s a bridge berween the two. Lots of money to be made by a bridge.
Yes, despite the machinations of Obama, McCain, the UK and France, Syria is still a country.
It is under its secular President Assad who protects Christians
It took Iran, Hizbollah, Russia, the Kurds, and the US, and to bail out the hereditary dictator Assad after he took on Syria itself by jailing kids and shooting at crowds -- and he couldn't handle that. Say what you will about Assad, he's a cipher.
Turkey was also useful as the cork in the bottle between the mostly Islamic Middle East and Europe. The Soviets incited and trained the early generations of terrorists, oh, and armed them. Now Russia's mired in Syria and has no exit plan, other than to retaliate against any local gentry stupid enough to take them on.
Assad is no saint, for certain, but he’s better than the Jihadist rebels that Obama and McCain wanted to replace him with. The rebels were killing Christians the whole time those two were claiming they were the good guys. Do Christians turn the other cheek while fellow Christians are being slaughtered?
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