I disagree. They may have backed ISIS originally, but when ISIS declared a caliphate, ISIS effectively declared war on every other Muslim government. They no doubt are happy to see ISIS killing Kurds and Shiites, but Erdogan isn't about to kowtow to them. So he has his own Jihadis he is backing to take over Syria.
Exactly right!
And this is a problem for .... EVERY OTHER MUSLIM COUNTRY ... so is the USA fighting their battles for them?
Let them fight ISIS on their own.
Sometimes I call out a country (Saudi Arabia / Al Qaeda) because they helped CREATE the monster, purposefully.
It is now incumbent on Saudi and Turkey to destroy the monsters they created.
While I understand that Turkey may not like ISIS quite so much as they did when they helped create them, I note that Turkey just last week opened up consular offices for ISIS, being the only country in the world that has semi-official recognition.
So Turkey has a LOT to live down. They need to get busy, or get kicked out of NATO.
ISIS is Turkey.
I love that statement, because it is so powerful in communicating the point. It is great rhetoric.
You can’t be absolutely accurate in describing something, when dealing with lots of people over a period of time - but that strikes to the heart of it. ISIS is a surrogate of Erdogan’s foreign policy.
They may have trouble controlling them sometimes, but I believe that if the leader were to buck Turkey too hard, they would have him killed and replaced. They want plausible deniability, so he has to appear to oppose them sometimes.
The Turkish President is for a no-fly zone, because either Syrian or US aircraft would be targeting ISIS - it is a real tell.
They are closing their border to Kurdish refugees, to contain them for genocidal slaughter, or eventual ethnic cleansing. The best case scenario is that they only want to impose tight control over them, purging their YPG/PUK leadership.
Only Iraqi Kurds might try to save them on the ground, and they would be cut off far from resupply if they tried. If Iraqi Kurds tried to send a relief force, they will probably know to expect unacknowledged air and artillery attack from Turkey, making it suicide.
The elegant thing about a caliphate, is that it has historically be a driving force of muslim-on-muslim massacre. Doctrinally, everyone can agree that there should be one Caliph - as long as they are the one.