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The Grand Turk
Erdogan Says Turkey Won't Join U.S. Raqa Op if Kurds Involved
2016-09-26
How will President Obama, the smartest man in the room, square this particular circle, dear Reader?
[AnNahar] President Recep Tayyip Erdogan
... Turkey's version of Mohammed Morsi but they voted him back in so they deserve him...
 has said The Sick Man of Europe Turkey
...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire....
 could join a U.S.-led operation in Syria to retake the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems....
 group's stronghold of Raqa only if Kurdish fighters are not involved, a newspaper reported Sunday.

U.S. support for Kurdish forces in Syria is a sore point for Ankara, which considers such fighters to be "terrorists" linked to the Kurdish rebels waging a bloody insurgency across the border in southeast Turkey.

Washington, however, sees the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its People's Protection Units (YPG) militia as the best forces fighting IS jihadists on the ground in Syria.

Erdogan said that if the U.S. conducted its Raqa operation with Syrian Kurdish forces, Turkey would "not have any place" in the offensive.

"If they do not insert the PYD and YPG into this business, then certainly, we can get (involved) with the U.S. in this fight," he told news hounds on the plane back from this week's U.N. General Assembly in New York, quoted in the Hurriyet daily.

Adding that it would be a "shame" if the U.S. and Turkey could not counter the 10,000 IS jihadists on the ground in Syria, he called for a "national army" of Syrian rebels to take the region's security into their own hands, saying there were 65,000 such fighters.
...all fighting at least as much between themselves as against their most dangerous enemy. If that answer had served, outside intervention would not now be needed, O great and beloved Sultan Recep I. And if your remaining loyal troops, with their shiny new promotions, were able to conquer on their own, outside intervention would also not be needed. 'Tis a quandary.
Posted by:trailing wife

#1  "Kurds are icky. Are you a Gullenist?"
Posted by: Frank G   2016-09-26 09:06  

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