Posted on 08/04/2021 9:09:19 AM PDT by elpadre
Since Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced last month that his nation’s troops would continue to secure Kabul international airport in Afghanistan, the leader has been both pressured and praised.
The Taliban, which has recently accelerated its military campaign across the war-torn country, on July 13 described any further Turkish military presence as “reprehensible” and warned of dire “consequences.”
Yet Ankara’s agreement to secure the vital air link was also key to US President Joe Biden’s “positive and productive” description of his meeting with Erdogan at June’s NATO summit.
Indeed, Turkey’s continued presence at the airport helps the US and its allies both cover their military withdrawal and maintain links to their embassies and missions in the Afghan capital.
It also helps Turkey mend some of its battered fences with the US, after years of argument and division.
“Ankara wants to bring these relations to a better ground,” former Turkish ambassador to NATO Mehmet Fatih Ceylan, told Asia Times. “Afghanistan is one area where Turkey can do this.”
Yet the Turkish garrison at Kabul airport may be about more than just Ankara improving relations with its NATO allies.
Turkey has long-standing links to Afghanistan after years of close involvement in the country and centuries of cultural and historical ties to the region.
“There’s a school of thought here that we can’t leave Afghanistan in the lurch,” adds Ceylan. “We have unique relations with them, with Pakistan, and with the Turkic republics surrounding them. The thought was, we can’t just sit back and watch events unfold.”
However, what happens now remains highly uncertain as Afghanistan falls deeper into conflict, while the country also becomes a battleground for a range of competing international interests.
(continues at link)
(Excerpt) Read more at asiatimes.com ...
Looks like Turkey is following an emBASEeee policy.
I have been advocating for several years a policy I call ‘embaseees’. Embassy + AirBase —> EmBASEeees. We go into a terrorist country, clear out their taliban equivalent, then withdraw to very large Embassies, perhaps 3 of them. Have them big enough to encompass a military airbase where we can use it for decades on end to conduct anti-terrorism operations. As long as the ‘host’ country aint killing Americans then we let them have self-sovereignty. Kind of like how we operated in the Phillipines for decades. We could even have an intermediate zone that we patrol but it would be autonomous. Let them have their taste of freedom. A referendum every 10 years to see how large the boundaries of the intermediate autonomous zone should be.
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I think all the Turks in “Turkey” ought to move back to their ancestral roots - the “stans”. /sarc
Turkey and it leader are NOT our friend.
That’s funny. Now Turkey is going to try to tame that cesspool. Good luck, dude.
Maybe they can all kill each other there. Will make for a better world.
How does the Turkish “occupation” jive with the coming Chinese invasion?
Countries never learn to keep out of Afghanistan.
If turkey attacks Afghanistan from the rear, would Greece help?
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