Erdogan pronounces peace with Kurds impossible

[Syt]

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-33689660

Kurdish peace 'impossible' - Turkey's Erdogan

The Turkish president has said his country cannot continue the peace process with the Kurds amid attacks by Kurdish militants on Turkish targets.

There has been a recent series of clashes between Turkish forces and Kurdish PKK militants.

Turkey has also been hit by attacks by by Islamic State-linked militants - including one that left 32 dead in the town of Suruc last week.

Turkey considers both the PKK and IS terrorist organisations.

Over the past week, analysts say, Turkey has turned its approach to the US-led coalition against IS on its head.

Previously a reluctant partner, it is now flying combat missions and making its airbases available to US jets.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told reporters in Ankara that it was "not possible to continue the peace process with those who threaten our national unity and brotherhood".

But the leader of Turkey's pro-Kurdish opposition party - the People's Democratic Party (HDP) - dismissed the claim.

HDP chairman Selahattin Demirtas insisted his party's only crime was winning 13% of the vote in June elections, reported Reuters news agency.

Turkish police have continued to arrest suspected members of IS, the PKK and leftist groups - more than 1,000 over the past week.

Although Turkey insists Syrian Kurds are "outside the scope of the current military effort", analysts say its new determination to tackle IS is linked to keeping a check on Kurdish militancy.

Speaking after Mr Erdogan, a spokesman for the ruling AK Party insisted that the peace process with Kurdish militants could continue if "terrorist elements" put down their weapons and left the country.

"We cannot say that the peace process is de facto over," Besir Atalay told a news conference in Ankara.

"There is currently a stagnation in the mechanism but it would restart where it left off if these intentions emerge."

Turkey's allies are nervous that it could link its actions against IS and the PKK in ways that they would rather avoid.

For the Americans, strikes against Kurdish armed groups in Iraq and Syria are highly unwelcome because these troops are among the few reliable partners they have on the ground in the struggle against IS.

To the Turks, the so-called Caliphate of IS and the PKK are two sides of the same coin - terrorist movements that endanger their security while exploiting the power vacuum in northern Syria and Iraq.

Mr Erdogan apparently calculates that hitting the PKK, against which Turkey fought a long and bitter insurgency, will not overly endanger his relations with the US or a two-year-old ceasefire with the Kurdish group; nor will they shatter the peace of south-east Turkey more generally.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

Erdogan is going full Putin. If he decides peace with the Kurds is impossible there's only three options:
- harsh repression against the Kurds
- eradicate the kurds
- accept that the kurdish part of Turkey will eventually be lost for Turkey.

In any case: there is no such thing as national unity and brotherhood in Turkey. And the sooner they learn to accept that fact the better for all.

[jimmy olsen]

Fuckers are playing a two faced game and they're going to end up getting burned.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/26/isis-syria-turkey-us?CMP=share_btn_tw

Turkey sends in jets as Syria's agony spills over every border

Turkish air strikes in Syria last week signalled a new phase in a conflict that has left its bloody mark on every country in the region. But will the Turks now agree to US demands to cease all clandestine dealings with Islamic State?


Martin Chulov

Sunday 26 July 2015 00.07 BST  Last modified on Sunday 26 July 2015 16.45 BST 

When US special forces raided the compound of an Islamic State leader in eastern Syria in May, they made sure not to tell the neighbours.

The target of that raid, the first of its kind since US jets returned to the skies over Iraq last August, was an Isis official responsible for oil smuggling, named Abu Sayyaf. He was almost unheard of outside the upper echelons of the terror group, but he was well known to Turkey. From mid-2013, the Tunisian fighter had been responsible for smuggling oil from Syria's eastern fields, which the group had by then commandeered. Black market oil quickly became the main driver of Isis revenues – and Turkish buyers were its main clients.

As a result, the oil trade between the jihadis and the Turks was held up as evidence of an alliance between the two. It led to protests from Washington and Europe – both already wary of Turkey's 900-mile border with Syria being used as a gateway by would-be jihadis from around the world.




The estimated $1m-$4m per day in oil revenues that was thought to have flowed into Isis coffers over at least six months from late 2013 helped to transform an ambitious force with limited means into a juggernaut that has been steadily drawing western forces back to the region and increasingly testing state borders.

Across the region, violence has been spreading across borders, scattering huge numbers of refugees and contributing to the turmoil in neighbouring regimes. Few countries – from Turkey to Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq and Israel – remain unscathed by the tide of chaos spreading out from Syria.

Despite one year of air strikes aimed at crippling the group's spread, Isis remains entrenched in northern and eastern Syria, in control of much of western Iraq and camped on Lebanon's eastern border. Its offshoots are gathering steam in north Africa and now, more than at any time since the latest incarnation of Isis emerged, its leaders claim to be positioning the group for strikes well outside the territory that it now controls.

In the wake of the raid that killed Abu Sayyaf, suspicions of an undeclared alliance have hardened. One senior western official familiar with the intelligence gathered at the slain leader's compound said that direct dealings between Turkish officials and ranking Isis members was now "undeniable".

"There are hundreds of flash drives and documents that were seized there," the official told the Observer. "They are being analysed at the moment, but the links are already so clear that they could end up having profound policy implications for the relationship between us and Ankara."


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On Thursday, nearly one year into the US-led air campaign against Isis, Turkey dropped its opposition to entering the fray, dispatching fighter jets to its border from where they fired rockets at Isis targets just inside Syria. The attacks were a response to a suicide bombing in the southern province of Suruc, which killed 32 people, and an earlier cross-border attack that killed a Turkish soldier.

The attacks were the first to be blamed on Isis and led to a strong backlash among some sections of Turkish society, where unease at Recep Tayyip Erdogan's stance towards the insurgency was already running high. Turkey also said it would allow its Incirlik air base to be used as a staging point for attacks against Isis – backing down from its earlier insistence that some form of safe haven first be established inside Syria, in which refugees and mainstream opposition fighters could safely move.

Throughout much of the chaos that has enveloped Syria, which started as an insurrection against the regime of Bashar al-Assad and has been partly subsumed by the Isis brand of global jihad, Erdogan has insisted that the Syrian leader's crackdown has been a rallying call for the jihadis and must be dealt with before Isis can be countered.

However, Turkey has openly supported other jihadi groups, such as Ahrar al-Sham, which espouses much of al-Qaida's ideology, and Jabhat al-Nusra, which is proscribed as a terror organisation by much of the US and Europe. "The distinctions they draw [with other opposition groups] are thin indeed," said the western official. "There is no doubt at all that they militarily cooperate with both."

European officials have regularly said they have gained no traction trying to raise either organisation with Ankara and have long been warned off trying. Isis, though, has gradually been recognised as a force that can no longer be contained or managed. "We can talk about them now," said a European official in Ankara. "As long as we describe them as 'those who abuse religion'.


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"This isn't an overhaul of their thinking. It's more a reaction to what they've been confronted with by the Americans and others. There is at least a recognition now that Isis isn't leverage against Assad. They have to be dealt with."

As Turkey wrestles with a new posture, Isis is entrenched along a swath of its southern border extending from its main border crossing with Syria at Killis to Hasakah in eastern Syria. Isis has reinforced its arc in the area in an attempt to safeguard the gateway to its self-declared caliphate, which remains its only viable supply line of people and merchandise.

The oil-smuggling operation run by Abu Sayyaf has been cut drastically, although tankers carrying crude drawn from makeshift refineries still make it to the border. One Isis member says the organisation remains a long way from establishing a self-sustaining economy across the area of Syria and Iraq it controls. "They need the Turks. I know of a lot of cooperation and it scares me," he said. "I don't see how Turkey can attack the organisation too hard. There are shared interests."

The Isis member said the US-led air campaign had done almost nothing to change the extent of the group's reach, which still includes most of eastern Syria and western Iraq, where Iraq's security forces, led by Shia militia groups, have been unable to claw back losses since the fall of Ramadi in May.

On the Syrian-Lebanese border, however, the farthest west that Isis operates, a protracted battle with Hezbollah and Syrian troops is gradually tipping in favour of the Shia militant group. Hezbollah has led the push against Isis and Jabhat al-Nusra, who have been entrenched in the town of Zabadani, west of Damascus – a fight well inside Syria, which it says is necessary to protect Lebanon's porous border.

"We are at a phase in this war where things that have been in the shadows for a long time are now being exposed to daylight," said the western official. "Hezbollah is dominant in the west of Syria, and the Turkish role, however you wish to define it, is also becoming clearer. This is an important time for them. Will they now see Isis as a threat to their own sovereignty? Assad played with Isis and lost. The Turks will, too. A lot of damage has been done from this."