Turk not going after IS, just the Kurds. Going after ISIS is just smokescreen for the Western audience
That would have to be my preliminary thought too.
Then again, is this reporting accurate?
Wasn’t Turkey pro ISIS at one point?
Spot on.
this is part and parcel of sorting it all out.
the message is that if the PKK moves to the former Syrian and Iraqi Kurdistan, departing Turkey, it will all work out.
The kurds of turkey can find salvation across the border in the new, the de facto Kurdistan, that includes no territory in Turkey
That might well be true.
They have a longstanding feud with the Kurds.
However, this is just more factional warfare.
There are hundreds if not thousands of ‘tribes’ in the region that were NEVER formal countries until the place was sliced up after WWI (the Ottomans held domain before that). Many of the tribes fighting against the Ottoman-German alliance were doing so to gain independence from the caliphate. They never wanted to be subsumed into ‘States’ set up by the British-France (primarily) alliance.
So either way, not our fight(s).
These many small tribes have never settled their differences and have only rarely allied themselves to fight of bigger opponents. They are really too small for each to have independence, but that is their problem.
All of it NONE OF OUR BUSINESS.
Yes:
In the wake of the raid that killed Abu Sayyaf, suspicions of an undeclared alliance have hardened. One senior western official familiar with the intelligence gathered at the slain leader’s compound said that direct dealings between Turkish officials and ranking Isis members was now “undeniable”.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/26/isis-syria-turkey-us?CMP=share_btn_tw