...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
Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
, to full-blown military strikes against the group, opening up its bases to coalition attacks and, simultaneously, the first aerial bombing of PKK Kurdish separatists in northern Iraq in four years.
Why the sudden turnaround?
For months, Ankara resisted military involvement in the US-led coalition of the willing. It insisted that the attacks also target
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad
Horror of Homs...
's forces. Washington's reply was, in effect, that the immediate concern was IS and that the "Assad problem" needed to be put on the back burner.
But
...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire....
's second condition, that a no-fly zone be created in northern Syria, seems to have gained a little more traction.
Turkey's foreign minister now says a "safe area" along the Turkish border, free of IS bully boys, will be created, patrolled by coalition aircraft. That seems to have played a major role in jolting Turkey into action.