Free Republic

As the Voice of America itself reported on January 23, Erdogan's plan was to resettle three million or more refugees from other parts of Syria in this "security zone" extending twenty miles deep into Syria. Twenty miles may not sound much, but – the VOA omitted to mention – almost all the Kurdish towns of northeastern Syria lie within that area. So Erdogan's intention to annihilate the Kurdish presence in that area and replace it with others has been manifest ever since the beginning of 2019. A whole series of Trump's Republican supporters in the Senate expressed outrage over his...

The Kurds should thank the short-sighted strategists of the DNC for Turkish aggression. Hong Kong residents are also paying for the short-sighted policies of the American Left, who, for the past three years, have been trying to expel the legally elected president from the White House. Their (untrue) signal that Trump is about to be overthrown has been heard both in Beijing and in Ankara. But Turkey made a serious mistake – they attacked civilians. Of course, television footage of these crimes and further bullying of civilians by Turkish troops in Northern Syria cannot be compared with what the Russian...

The terrorist group also started implementing and adopting an urban warfare strategy in 2015 to carve out enclaves within Turkish territory while using the local population as human shields, using the experience obtained by the YPG during the civil war in Syria. In this urban warfare strategy of the PKK, many children from the local population were recruited to control the streets and engage in clashes with security forces. In July, the PKK and YPG admitted to recruiting children between the ages of 11 and 16 for terrorist activities in a meeting with a U.N. representative. Virginia Gamba, the U.N....

Syrian government troops will deploy along the border with Turkey to help Kurdish fighters fend off Turkey’s invasion of northern Syria, the Kurds said Sunday, hours after President Donald Trump ordered all U.S. troops to withdraw from the area to avoid getting caught in the middle of the fast-escalating conflict. The announcement represents a major shift in alliances for Syria’s Kurds after they were abandoned by the U.S., with whom they were longtime partners in the fight against the Islamic State group. Adding to the turmoil, hundreds of Islamic State families and supporters escaped from a holding camp in northern...

Most members of America’s foreign-policy establishment see Turkey as an ungrateful ally, perhaps even a Trojan horse inside the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s walls. On Capitol Hill and in many Washington think tanks, a call for concessions to Tehran will get a more sympathetic hearing than a call to compromise with Ankara, a treaty ally for 67 years. Turkey’s determination to secure its southern border against the YPG is a wanton impulse, in the prevailing view. But the YPG has substantial ties to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, the PKK, as then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter testified before Congress in April 2016....

The near consensus view of President Donald Trump’s decision to remove US special forces from the Syrian border with Turkey is that Trump is enabling a Turkish invasion and double crossing the Syrian Kurds who have fought with the Americans for five years against ISIS. Trump’s move, the thinking goes, harms US credibility and undermines US power in the region and throughout the world. There are several problems with this narrative. The first is that it assumes that until this week, the US had power and influence in Syria when in fact, by design, the US went to great lengths...

As I have stated strongly before, and just to reiterate, if Turkey does anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits, I will totally destroy and obliterate the Economy of Turkey (I’ve done before!).... ROTFLMAO!!!

The Air Force Times' Sean Naylor scored an interview with Major General Mike Flynn, director of intelligence for General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan. There isn't a lot new here to longtime readers of The Long War Journal and Threat Matrix. Flynn gives an overview of the Taliban groups, notes that al Qaeda operatives serve as combat enablers for the Taliban, estimates Taliban forces in Afghanistan at between 19,000 to 27,000 fighters, and said Pakistan remains a major haven for the Taliban and al Qaeda. Of particular interest are Flynn's comments on Iran and the role...

AL-OMAR OIL FIELD, Syria — After a bloody and protracted five-year war, the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the US-led coalition are on the verge of declaring victory against the Islamic State after the fall of its last crumbs of territory in Baghuz. With Islamic State cells continuing to operate to deadly effect in Syria and neighboring Iraq, it's too early to say "mission accomplished," cautioned Mazlum Kobane, the commander in chief of the SDF, in an exclusive interview with Al-Monitor March 10 at a heavily guarded complex near al-Omar oil field in eastern Syria. The charismatic 50-year-old Syrian Kurd, whom coalition officials address...

A former commander of NATO said allies of the U.S. are asking whether President Trump was blackmailed by Turkey to pull U.S. military forces out of Syria. In a CNN segment Monday, Wesley Clark, a retired Army general and former Democratic presidential candidate, said there was no apparent strategic logic for the move that critics view as an abdication to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. "You have to ask why was the decision made?" Clarke said on Christmas Eve. "People around the world are asking this and some of our friends and allies in the Middle East are asking, did...

..."Saudi Arabia and the UAE have sent military forces to areas controlled by the Kurdish YPG group in north-east Syria, Turkey’s Yenisafak newspaper reported. The paper said the forces will be stationed with US-led coalition troops and will support its tasks with huge military enforcements as well as heavy and light weapons. Quoting the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the newspaper reported that a convoy of troops belonging to an Arab Gulf state recently arrived in the contact area between the Kurdish PKK/YPG and Daesh in the Deir Ez-Zor countryside. This comes at a time when Ankara is preparing to...

Turkish autocrat Recep Tayyip Erdogan is coming to Washington, DC, on May 16 loaded for bear.  He has an ambitious agenda and apparently feels he can achieve it all because he holds “trump” cards against the President of the United States. Erdogan and his proxies have publicly said they want to convince the United States to jettison its budding alliance with the Syrian Democratic Union (PYD) and its armed wing, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the Kurdish group that has become the tip of the spear in the fight against ISIS in Syria. On this point, they will encounter resistance...

Continuing to criminalize the Kurdish freedom movement in Turkey and strengthening Turkish authoritarianism serves no one but President Erdogan and his neo-Ottoman, Islamist-nationalist agenda. On November 6, the U.S. unexpectedly announced a total of $12 million in reward payments for information on three senior members of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) – Murad Karayilan, Cemil Bayik and Duran Kalkan. These three have led the PKK’s decades-long rebel war against Turkey. For Ankara and Washington, the PKK is a terrorist group.But it’s not that simple. The PKK is fighting for Kurdish rights and freedoms in Turkey, which Turkey has long violently...

Former ECHR Judge and CHP Izmir MP Riza Turmen stressed that Turkey is obliged to comply with the ECHR’s Demirtas ruling. Former ECHR Judge and CHP (Republican People's Party) Izmir MP Riza Turmen stressed that Turkey is obliged to comply with the ECHR’s Demirtas ruling. Riza Turmen called for compliance with the European Court of Human Rights ruling and stressed that Selahattin Demirtas should be released without delays. Turmen stated that noncompliance with the ruling, which references Article 18 of the European Convention on Human Rights and poses a precedent for other political prisoners, will be the confirmation that Demirtas’s...

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Tuesday said that Turkey is not bound by verdicts of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) following the court’s decision calling for the release of Kurdish leader Selahattin Demirtaş from a lengthy pre-trial detention. “ECtHR decisions do not bind us. Up until now, most of the decisions about the organization [Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)] have been negative. There is a lot to be done in reaction [to the verdict]. We will take steps in response and finish the case. Terrorism continues,” Erdoğan said in parliament after the ruling. The ECtHR on Tuesday urged Turkey...

Turkey does not differentiate between what it sees as terrorist organisations and any support for Syrian Kurdish forces means supporting the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), state-run Anadolu news agency quoted presidential spokesman İbrahim Kalın as saying on Wednesday in reference to U.S. backing for Kurdish fighters in Syria battling Islamic State. Turkey sees the People’s Protection Units (YPG) and its political wing, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), that control most of northeast Syria as part of the PKK that has been fighting for self-rule inside Turkey for more than 30 years. The YPG denies being part of the PKK, but...

This November will mark 40 years since the founding of an organization that has gained greater geopolitical prominence than most non-state actors ever will. Millions of Kurds— the world’s largest nation without a state, oppressed by the autocratic states that occupy their lands— support it and consider it their political representation on the world stage. In the struggle against occupation and denial of Kurdish identity, it has evolved an ideology based on direct democracy, ecology, pluralism, and women’s liberation that poses answers to questions asked by political movements around the world for generations. This is the PKK— Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan...

The incident occurs after a meeting between Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara on Tuesday. ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Turkish warplanes have conducted airstrikes in the Yezidi (Ezidi)-populated city of Shingal in northern Iraq; sources told Kurdistan 24 on Wednesday. According to the sources, there were some airstrikes to the west of Baraa village, located close to the border with Syria. Snip- In April 2017, Turkish airstrikes supposedly targeting the PKK-affiliated YBS killed five Peshmerga soldiers and wounded nine others, as well as causing extensive damage to the area, resulting in condemnation from...

The case to remove the PKK from the European Union terror list was heard on Monday in the Court of Justice of the European Union. The verdict is expected to be announced in 6 to 9 months. The case filed in the CJEU to remove the PKK from the European Union terror list was heard in Luxembourg on Monday. The verdict in the case is expected to be announced in 6 to 9 months. The panel of judges said, “Looking at the last decade, the PKK hasn’t carried out any visible ‘terrorist’ actions, but there is an insistence that it...

The lawsuit filed to the European Court of Justice, demanding the lifting of the PKK from the EU's list of terrorist organizations, opens on Monday 16 April, writes Yeni Özgür Politika. The PKK has been on the EU's list of terrorist organizations since 2002. Acting on behalf of PKK leaders Murat Karayılan and Duran Kalkan, the Prakken d'Oliveira Law Office in the Netherlands has presented a file every six months when the new list is written and then the file went to the European Court of Justice. Next Monday the trial will open aiming at lifting the PKK from the...