Turkey’s Erdogan Says He’s Ready to Risk Confrontation With US

[Rogue Valley]

Turkey’s Erdogan Says He’s Ready to Risk Confrontation With US

---

By Jamie Dettmer
January 27, 2018

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan addresses his ruling party members in Ankara, Turkey, Jan. 26, 2018.

A defiant Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned Friday that he’s prepared to risk confrontation with the United States over Turkey’s military incursion into northern Syria, vowing to next target a Kurdish-held town where U.S. Special Forces are stationed. Speaking to members of his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Ankara, a belligerent Erdogan shrugged off U.S. calls for Turkey to limit the incursion launched a week ago, saying the next town to be targeted after the Kurdish enclave of Afrin, where Turkish tanks have been grinding through winter mud, will be Manbij, raising the possibility of American troops being drawn inadvertently into the bruising fight between Turks and Syrian Kurds. The Reuters news agency reports that Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Saturday the United States needs to withdraw from northern Syria's Manbij region immediately, suggesting that an attack might be imminent.

But speaking to AKP members, Erdogan outlined a far more expansive operation than he’s committed to before, indicating his readiness to order Turkish forces, along with thousands of allied Syrian rebels, remnants of the Free Syrian Army that led the fight against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, to drive right across northern Syria all the way to Iraq. That would mean attacking east of the Euphrates River the Kurdish stronghold of Rojava, which Syrian Kurds hope one day will become their own independent state. It would mark a dramatic escalation of Turkey’s offensive - as well as adding a massive complication in the already complex Syrian conflict.

Rather than a limited incursion into the Syrian Kurdish canton of Afrin as originally claimed, Turkish dictator Erdogan now says the intent is to sweep across all of Rojava (the Syrian Kurdish homeland in northern Syria). Rojava is home to 300,000 Syrian Kurds, and Erdogan would like nothing better than to ethnically cleanse Rojava and remove all Syrian Kurds from the Turkish border areas. The Islamist Erdogan hates all Kurds (Turkish/Syrian/Iraqi). Perhaps if Turkey stopped persecuting the Kurdish peoples, Turks and Kurds could live peacefully in the ME region.

The accusations that the YPG/YPJ (Syrian Kurdish militia's) are aligned with Turkey's Kurdish PKK movement (designated a terrorist organization) is Turkish propaganda. YPG/YPJ battalions have fought with embedded US Special Forces soldiers against ISIS from the Siege of Kobane in late 2014 to liberating the ISIS capital city of Raqqa in October 2017. The YPG/YPJ have paid a high price in blood for thoroughly defeating ISIS forces in their region of central Syria. This is a valuable US ally. Quite frankly, the dictator Erdogan is embracing Putin's militarism and his scorched-earth tactics.

Related: NATO leaders need to have a frank talk with Turkey's president -- behind closed doors

 

[kaerin]

Check the other thread, the author of the article is not Turkish, a very respected Academic, he heavily criticizes Turkey on many aspects and as an expert he states that PKK and YPG are affiliated. Check my thread for that. No need to spam this section with 1320483 threads of yours.

I'm a secular Turk as already mentioned, don't come to me with Erdogan this Erdogan that card. Just study using science.

 

[cuban smokes]

I warned folks about this little piece of ****, Erdogan, a very long time ago.

The US has a great track record of connecting itself to thugs, murderers, dictators, terrorists, and generally worthless human trash.

 

[kaerin]

I warned folks about this little piece of ****, Erdogan, a very long time ago.

The US has a great track record of connecting itself to thugs, murderers, dictators, terrorists, and generally worthless human trash.

Check my other thread.

 

[Rogue Valley]

Check the other thread, the author of the article is not Turkish, a very respected Academic, he heavily criticizes Turkey on many aspects and as an expert he states that PKK and YPG are affiliated.

Sorry, I don't buy that. I am familiar with some of the US operators that worked with the YPG against ISIS.

There was no hint of PKK affiliation nor animosity towards Turkey ... except for Kobane, when the Turk military closed the border so the surrounded Kurds would be annihilated.

The only thing that saved the YPG/YPJ from slaughter was daily US air strikes against Daesh forces.

 

[Rogue Valley]

As of Today, the Turk press says that 447 YPG militia have been "neutralized" (killed).

This ****er Erdogan is killing US Kurdish allies faster than ISIS ever did.

 

[Rogue Valley]

In Syria, a NATO nation changes teams

As I see it, Turkey under Erdogan is a militaristic dictatorship and no longer a credible or trustworthy NATO nation.

 

[kaerin]

Sorry, I don't buy that.

How do you not buy it? What are your qualifications? The guy is god damn expert, an academic. What have you studied? What are you doing for a living?

Erdogan may be (is, btw) crazy dictator, but you can not claim YPG and PKK are not affiliated. It is obvious like a sunlight, war against ISIS is something else. I can support anybody for that matter.

PKK is a terrorist organization which killed many of my civilian countrymen, me myself may die tomorrow in Istanbul because of a bomb they plant in the city center.

I will not let you spread lies here about PKK here. What a clown, you think you can trick people with Erdogan hate? Erdogan, PKK and all of its affiliates are bloody piece of ****. What about it?

And don't ever cut off my post to reply me again.

 

[Rogue Valley]

How do you not buy it? What are your qualifications? The guy is god damn expert, an academic.

Erdogan may be (is, btw) crazy dictator, but you can not claim YPG and PKK are not affiliated. It is obvious like a sunlight, war against ISIS is something else. I can support anybody for that matter.

PKK is a terrorist organization which killed many of my civilian countrymen, me myself may die tomorrow in Istanbul because of a bomb they plant in the city center.

I will not let you spread lies here about PKK here. What a clown, you think you can trick people with Erdogan hate? Erdogan, PKK and all of its affiliates are bloody peace of ****. What about it?

And don't ever cut off my post to reply me again.

I have no problem with your war against the PKK.

But you're sadly mistaken if you believe Turkey can ethnically cleanse and murder the Kurds of Rojava in Syria and no one will say anything.

The YPG/US forces were killing Daesh while Erdogan was giving thousands upon thousands of foreigners free passage through Turkey to join ISIS.

I'll not be silent.

 

[kaerin]

I have no problem with your war against the PKK.

But you're sadly mistaken if you believe Turkey can ethnically cleanse and murder the Kurds of Rojava in Syria and no one will say anything.

The YPG/US forces were killing Daesh while Erdogan was giving thousands upon thousands of foreigners free passage through Turkey to join ISIS.

I'll not be silent.

There are no sane Turks here who are for ethnic cleasing of Kuds. Kurds were always a good friend of mine. I had close Kurdish friends during my university education.

The objective is, to block YPG arming PKK here, NOT an ordinary/civilian Kurds. Not civilians. If Erdogan is to say that they will kill all Kurds and that is the objective, do you think I will support that? How cant you differentiate that?

As claimed in the article in my thread, Afrin is a strategic point for YPG to arm PKK, which is still very powerful in south-eastern Turkey.

I nowhere claimed that war against ISIS is not important. if YPG fought good against ISIS, good on them, If Russian did, good on them, If USO did, good on them. ISIS card is pointless on this matter.

All you have to do is differentiate YPG as a military organization which at times fight against ISIS and also help arming PKK, AND Syrian Kurdish people, who are ordinary and civilian people, like both of us. Two different things.

Now I see you are interested in this subject, when you find, during this operation, any evidence that Turkey actually killing people sitting in gardens, children playing football, you show the evidence and I will curse at Turkish army all night long with you, but not YPG fighters, I repeat again.

And finally, I object to this operation because it will most probably fail because of the winter conditions, and tough area. Just a waste of lives and money. And cheap points for Erdogan to claim before the elections.

 

[Rogue Valley]

Turkey's Attack on the Kurds Is a Betrayal of the U.S.

---

The U.S. needs to start imagining NATO without Turkey. The latest reason is Turkey’s assault against the Syrian Kurds. The same Kurds who, with U.S. training and support, have borne the brunt of the fighting against Islamic State. Turkey is coordinating its attacks with Iran and Russia -- the very countries the North Atlantic Treaty Organization exists to oppose. U.S. interests appear nowhere in the equation. That’s a long-term strategic problem, which goes beyond the moral outrage every American should feel as our Kurdish allies are murdered from the air by F-16s we sold to Turkey. Now Erdogan is engaged in the historic betrayal of American allies who have done the dirty work that no one else in the world wanted to do. Let’s be very clear: Turkey did not send troops to fight Islamic State in Syria. Neither did neighboring Arab states. The U.S. sent military trainers, who could not have won the war on their own. Islamic State could not be defeated entirely from the air, as the experience of the Syrian civil war showed. There’s only one reason Islamic State has now been all but defeated on the ground in Syria: the YPG Kurdish militia.

In exchange, the Kurds wanted something very simple: somewhere to live where they wouldn’t be massacred by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s army or bombed by Assad’s Russian allies. Now Turkey is bombing them, and Erdogan has declared that Turkey will establish a 30 kilometer “safe zone” where the Kurds may not be -- on the Syrian side of the border, mind you, not the Turkish. No one knows how many Kurds have died so far in and around Afrin (Turkish press claims 447 to date), where the YPG is said to have between 8,000 and 10,000 fighters. No one knows how many Kurdish civilians will be killed, either. Turkey under Erdogan is now moving inexorably closer to Iran and Russia and Russian President Vladimir Putin couldn’t care less about the Kurds. All alliances have their natural end. Unless Erdogan stops spitting in Trump’s face, the U.S.-Turkey alliance is heading for its expiration date.

Well said. It is estimated that over 5,000 Syrian Kurdish YPG/YPJ male and female fighters were killed as they directly engaged ISIS 2014-2017.

 

[kaerin]

Wait. What a logic you have there. If we are killing YPG fighters not because they arm PKK but because they confront ISIS, then how come ISIS (they should see Turkey as friend right?) planted 4 bombs in Turkey only in 2016, killed my countrymen in Istanbul Ataturk Airport? Killed some Turks and some tourists in Istanbul nightclub? Why? Aren't we a friend in your logic?

The suspect was captured later on too, Kazakh origin ISIS fighter, admited everything, why did this guy take orders to kill Turks?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...-responsibility-for-istanbul-nightclub-attack

Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the Istanbul nightclub attack that killed 39 partygoers in the first hours of 2017 when a lone gunman fired 180 bullets in a seven-minute shooting spree.

Turkish police have arrested eight people in connection with the attack and released a blurred photograph of the suspect. The Turkish military retaliated against Isis with airstrikes and artillery fire against the group in Syria.

Authorities had obtained the fingerprints and a basic description of the gunman and were close to identifying him, said the Turkish deputy prime minister, Numan Kurtulmuş, after a cabinet meeting on Monday evening.

 

[Soopairik]

It's a pretty bad idea.

 

[Rogue Valley]

Showdown in Afrin: Turkey’s Attack on Syria’s Kurds Threatens That Country’s Most Democratic, Pluralist Force

---

Turkish jets bombing Kurdish towns and villages in Afrin canton Syria, part of the Syrian Kurdish homeland of Rojava

Last week Turkey opened a new front in the Syrian war by using its air force against the Syrian Kurdish canton of Afrin—which had done absolutely nothing to provoke this attack—even while the battle against ISIS continues in Deir Ezzor, where the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), led by the Kurdish YPG-YPJ, are fighting with US support. Turkey’s attack on the Syrian Kurds has opened up a new front in the war, jeopardized its already fragile relationship with the United States, and given a green light to jihadis to attack the Kurds. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who announced that his “Operation Olive Branch” would “destroy all terror nests” within days, launched a ground offensive on Sunday, January 21, that included tanks, special operations troops, and militias of the Free Syrian Army. Though the ground offensive was stalled, Turkey is still heavily bombing; so far at least 24 civilians have been killed and an estimated 5,000 have lost their homes. The displaced have nowhere to run, since Turkey has built a wall along the border. Meanwhile, at home Erdogan is arresting any journalist or politician who dares criticize the offensive on social media—91 and counting.

Like other parts of Rojava, Afrin is run democratically, with an emphasis on religious and ethnic pluralism, restorative justice, the liberation of women, ecology, and economic cooperatives. Turkey’s stated aim is to create a 30-kilometer buffer zone on its border with Rojava—a need that Turkey never seemed to feel when ISIS was in control of that region. The zone is supposed to prevent the YPG-YPJ from attacking Turkey, though they have repeatedly said they wouldn’t do that anyway. Of course, Erdogan is really worried that Rojava’s success as a self-governing entity might be a bad example for Turkey’s own Kurds, who, under the leadership of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), have been resisting the government for 40 years, first as a guerrilla movement seeking independence and then, since 2005, as a movement for autonomy and democratic rights. With the defeat of the Syrian civil opposition, the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria is the only location of anything that looks like democracy, let alone feminism, in the region; as such, they deserve—and need—all our support.

In mid January 2018 the Russians told Syrian Kurdish officials that Russia would offer Rojava protection, but only if Kurdish officials agreed to transfer the administration of Rojava to Bashar Assad. When the Kurdish officials declined to allow Assad govern their homeland, all Russian forces pulled out .... giving the invasion green light to the Turkish military. As of this morning, 484 YPG fighters have been killed along with 84 Kurdish civilians in the brutal Turkish invasion. At this time YPG forces are still killing ISIS militants near Deir el-Zor. Turkey is once again aiding ISIS/AQ by waging war on the US trained Kurdish forces that have decimated ISIS.

Related: Kurds Accuse Turks of Dropping Napalm

 

[Rogue Valley]

Inside Afrin, the true victims of Turkey's invasion of northern Syria are revealed - refugees, babies, women and children

---

Robert Fisk
Maabatli, northern Syria
28 January 2018

The family’s plastic shoes remain after four members of the al-Khater family died when a Turkish
shell hit their home in Maabatli, Kurdish Syria (Robert Fisk)

When Taha Mustafa al-Khatr, his wife Amina, his two daughters Zakia and Safa and son Sulieman went to bed in the tiny village of Maabatli, they placed their shoes outside the door. Most Middle Eastern families do the same. It’s a tradition and a sign of cleanliness in the home. The cheap plastic slippers were still there, of course, when the Turkish shell hit their house at one in the morning – and when I arrived a few hours later, I found the same shoes, a few blown down the stairs but most still neatly lined up next to each other. Did one of the daughters choose the slippers with the plastic bows? Even the rescue workers – such as they are in the Kurdish province of Afrin – didn’t touch the shoes. They left one of the blood-soaked bedspreads where it was in the rain under the collapsed roof of the cheap breeze-block house. The bodies, of course, had gone. “You come to our hospital here in Afrin to find out what happened,” Dr Jawan Palot, director of the Afrin Hospital, remarked to me with cynicism, well aware that The Independent was the first Western news organisation to visit Afrin since the Turkish attack. “You should see the dead when they come in – and the state of the wounded with the blood on them.” And there came forth the usual photographs of ferociously broken corpses. And there followed, too, in the Afrin Hospital, a maudlin tour of the wards where the survivors of Turkey’s assault on the “terrorists” of Afrin, which began on 20 January, lay in their beds.

It is, however, obscene to recall the official Turkish version of this little massacre – for that is what it was for 34 civilians whose bodies were taken to the Afrin Hospital alone – which states that more than 70 Turkish jets bombed YPG Kurdish militias in Syria on 21 January. Dipping into the hospital files – and taking names at random – I find that among the 49 civilian wounded brought here, were three-year-old Hamida Brahim al-Hussein, from Maryameen, who was wounded in the head in the chicken farm attack in which Kifah Moussa was injured. The list of the dead – 10 children, seven women, 17 men – is bleaker, for the hospital had not bothered to catalogue their wounds. They include infants. There will be no war memorials for them – as there are for Kurdish fighters in the military graveyard some miles from Afrin, most of them killed fighting Isis – and no record of their deaths, save, perhaps, for the cold lists in Dr Polat’s files -- each stamped, in Kurdish, “Avrin Hospital”.

Eight-grade schoolboy Mustafa Khaluf heard the Turkish plane that, moments later, bombed his home
and wounded him in the leg, also badly injuring his sister.

The Turks and their Islamist partners are slaughtering Syrian Kurds with artillery, tanks, and US bought F-16's. The Turkish Anadolu News Agency reports 597 US-allied YPG/YPJ fighters killed so far with no mention at all of civilian casualties.

No dissent is allowed in Turkey under the dictatorial Erdogan regime....

Related: Reuters - Turkey detains 300 people over criticism of Syrian offensive

Syrian Kurdish YPJ (female battalion) fighter Nujin Derik--see story below

We Fought for Our Democracy. Now Turkey Wants to Destroy It. - The New York Times

 

[Abbazorkzog]

WILL U.S. FIGHT TURKEY? AMERICAN SOLDIERS WILL NOT LEAVE CITY ABOUT TO BE ATTACKED, SAYS TOP GENERAL

BY TOM O'CONNOR ON 1/29/18 AT 12:45 PM

A convoy of U.S. armored vehicles drives near the village of Yalanli, on the western outskirts of the northern Syrian city of Manbij, on March 5, 2017. Since ousting ISIS from the mixed Kurdish and Arab city, Manbij has been a flashpoint for the intersecting and opposing interests of the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, Turkey-backed Free Syrian Army and Russia-backed Syrian military.


The U.S. has so far stood aside as the Pentagon-backed Syrian Democratic Forces attempted to defend the northwestern district of Afrin from Turkey, a member of U.S.-led NATO alliance, and the formerly CIA-backed Free Syrian Army that has regularly targeted U.S. forces in the area. In November, the Pentagon revealed it had deployed more than 1,700 U.S. personnel to support the Syrian Democratic Forces battling ISIS in Syria.

While the Pentagon has reiterated its support for Kurdish members of the Syrian Democratic Forces still battling ISIS in rapidly shrinking pockets of territory in the east, U.S. military leadership has warned that the U.S.-led coalition would not support Kurdish efforts to reallocate resources to battle Turkey in the northwest. The U.S. has also warned Turkey that its operation was "impeding the task to eliminate ISIS" and President Donald Trump reportedly urged his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to "exercise caution" in a phone call Wednesday.

Turkish officials, however, denied that Trump had made this request, and their forces pressed on with the bombardment of Kurd-controlled towns and villages. Turkey has likened the YPG to ISIS in the danger it posed because the Kurdish militia was thought to have direct connections to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), a Kurdish militant organization that has waged a bloody campaign of guerrilla warfare against Turkish security forces for more than three decades.

Related:

• The Remarkable Scale of Turkey's "Global Purge"
• We Fought for Our Democracy. Now Turkey Wants to Destroy It.

This is getting pretty ugly.

I think we might have a new Nazi Germany on our hands.

 

[Rogue Valley]

Kurds Say Turkey Plans to Reshape Demographics in Northern Syria

---

January 30, 2018
By Jamie Dettmer

The Turkish shelling of Kurdish towns and villages in Afrin continues. The toll of civilian dead & wounded is rapidly increasing.

Turkey’s latest military incursion into northern Syria which it says is aimed at reining in Kurdish separatists will speed up the return of Syrian refugees to their homes, Turkish officials say. But Kurds are fearful Ankara plans to use the returnees to displace them and engineer a population shift. Kurd officials say Ankara wants to re-shape the demographics of the borderlands in a bid to establish a “corridor of stability” populated by fewer Kurds and with Sunni Arab refugees currently in Turkey taking their place. Former U.S. officials have also expressed alarm. Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon adviser and currently an analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, says, “What Turkey seeks to do in Afrin is not eradicate terrorism, but rather to engage in ethnic cleansing.” Former U.S. envoy Alberto Fernandez picked up on remarks made last week by Erdogan in which he talked of settling Syrian refugees in the Kurdish enclave of Afrin, which is bearing the brunt of Turkey's operation. In a tweet, Fernandez warned, “If true, this would mean the ethnic cleansing of #Afrin right before our eyes is looming.”

Erdogan has prompted the rising alarm about a planned mass population displacement. On January 24 he told a meeting in the presidential complex in Turkey’s capital Ankara that one goal of Operation Olive Branch is to return Afrin to its “rightful owners.” “First, we will wipe out the terrorists and then make the place livable. For whom? For 3.5 million Syrians who are our guests. We cannot forever house them in tents,” he said. But traditionally Afrin has been seen as Kurdish territory, with a peppering of other minorities, including Turkmens, Alawite Kurds, Yazidi Kurds and with some Armenians and Circassians, say analysts. Population displacements have long been employed by the region’s rulers to shape demographics to suit their purposes. Syrian autocrat Hafez al-Assad shifted populations around for collective punishment as well as for strategic reasons, including moving Arabs into Kurdish territory in northeast Syria. Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein did the same during his 24-year rule. Historically the Ottomans, along with Russia’s Stalin, have been responsible for some of the biggest forcible ethnic displacements.

Kurdish families seeking shelter from Turkish bombs and tank shelling.

Turkey's dictator president Recep Tayyip Erdogan is no better than Syria's dictator president Bashar al-Assad, shelling and dropping bombs on civilians and engaging in the ethnic cleansing of Kurds in their Syrian Rojava homeland.

The Turkish [state friendly] press reports 649 YPG/YPJ fighters killed. Erdogan is directly helping ISIS by killing the very fighters who have decimated ISIS/AQ forces for the past three years.

Related: The Real Reason Behind Turkey’s Military Incursion Into Syria

Turkey's expanded operation in Afrin risks clashes with U.S. troops: expert

 

[Rogue Valley]

U.S.-backed Syria force denies Islamic State in area targeted by Turkey

There aren't any. Syrian Kurdish YPG/YPJ battalions and US/SOF killed all the ISIS forces in north-central Turkey. Now Turkey is killing these Syrian Kurdish fighters and civilians.

Will U.S. Fight Turkey? American Soldiers Will Not Leave City About to Be Attacked, Says Top General

Turkey's maniac-dictator Erdogan can take a flying ****

 

[Rogue Valley]

Syria war: Outcry over 'mutilated' female Kurdish fighter

---

BBC
February 3, 2018

YPJ fighter Barin Kobani (right) was killed in northern Afrin earlier this week by Turkish forces who then mutilated her corpse, reports say

Kurds in Syria have reacted furiously to videos showing Turkish-backed rebels abusing the body of a female Kurdish fighter killed in battle. Barin Kobani was part of all-female unit challenging a Turkish-led offensive in north-west Syria. Kurdish officials accused fighters allied with Turkey of "playing with her corpse" and mutilating it. Barin Kobani was killed during fighting earlier this week in the northern part of the region, reports say. She was in her mid-20s, and joined the Kurdish all-female unit known as the YPJ in 2015. The group is part of the YPG (People's Protection Units), seen by Turkey as a terrorist group and an extension of the banned Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). The YPG denies any direct organisational links to the PKK - an assertion backed by the US, which has provided the militia and allied Arab fighters with weapons and air support to help them battle the jihadist group Islamic State (IS) in Syria.

Two videos emerged earlier this week, and the woman was soon identified as Barin Kobani. The footage shows a group of rebels standing around the bloodied body of a woman lying on the ground. Parts of her torso appear to have been cut. "We hold the Turkish government responsible for this heinous act," Kurdish-led authorities said. One unconfirmed report claimed she had been captured alive before being killed. Thousands of people have been displaced by the Turkish-led offensive, launched by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in a bid to crush the YPG, which controls Afrin and more than 400km (250 miles) of Syria's northern border.

I viewed one of the videos but decided against posting the video here or leaving a link. It is barbaric and a war crime.

 

[ThirdTerm]

President Donald J. Trump spoke today with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey. President Trump relayed concerns that escalating violence in Afrin, Syria, risks undercutting our shared goals in Syria. He urged Turkey to deescalate, limit its military actions, and avoid civilian casualties and increases to displaced persons and refugees. He urged Turkey to exercise caution and to avoid any actions that might risk conflict between Turkish and American forces. He reiterated that both nations must focus all parties on the shared goal of achieving the lasting defeat of ISIS. And both Presidents welcomed the return of more than 100,000 Syrian refugees back to their country in the wake of the ongoing defeat of ISIS and pledged to continue to cooperate to help people return home.

President Trump invited closer bilateral cooperation to address Turkey’s legitimate security concerns. The leaders discussed the need to stabilize a unified Syria that poses no threats to its neighbors, including Turkey. President Trump also expressed concern about destructive and false rhetoric coming from Turkey, and about United States citizens and local employees detained under the prolonged State of Emergency in Turkey. The two leaders pledged to improve the strategic partnership between the United States and Turkey, particularly in fostering regional stability and combating terrorism in all its forms, including ISIS, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), al-Qa’ida, and Iranian-sponsored terrorism.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing...call-president-recep-tayyip-erdogan-turkey-4/

President Trump has had a phone conversation with Erdogan by which Trump urged Turkey to exercise caution and to avoid any actions that might risk conflict between Turkish and American forces. Trump also expressed concern about destructive and false rhetoric coming from Turkey. Erdogan sounded really confrontational when he talked to local lawmakers in Ankara but he would avoid risking a shooting war with US soldiers.

 

[Roadvirus]

Time for Turkey's status as a NATO member to be re-examined.

 

[cuban smokes]

Kurds Say Turkey Plans to Reshape Demographics in Northern Syria

---

Turkey's dictator president Recep Tayyip Erdogan is no better than Syria's dictator president Bashar al-Assad, shelling and dropping bombs on civilians and engaging in the ethnic cleansing of Kurds in their Syrian Rojava homeland.

The Turkish [state friendly] press reports 649 YPG/YPJ fighters killed. Erdogan is directly helping ISIS by killing the very fighters who have decimated ISIS/AQ forces for the past three years.

Related: The Real Reason Behind Turkey’s Military Incursion Into Syria

Turkey's expanded operation in Afrin risks clashes with U.S. troops: expert

So, when is that jackass Trump gonna send in the cruise missiles & blow up some Turkish airfields, like he did in Syria after the Syrians were gassed a year ago?

Oh, that's right; Trump is a two faced jackass ..........

 

[Rogue Valley]

Time for Turkey's status as a NATO member to be re-examined.

Yes. Turkey is a dictatorship under Erdogan and has no business being a member of NATO anymore. Thousands of political prisoners languish in prisons. Turkey has more journalists imprisoned than any other nation.

Torture is not uncommon. Ankara is now buying Russian arms systems. There us no place in NATO for such a barbaric, authoritarian, and militaristic regime.

 

[Rogue Valley]

President Trump has had a phone conversation with Erdogan by which Trump urged Turkey to exercise caution and to avoid any actions that might risk conflict between Turkish and American forces. Trump also expressed concern about destructive and false rhetoric coming from Turkey. Erdogan sounded really confrontational when he talked to local lawmakers in Ankara but he would avoid risking a shooting war with US soldiers.

Your link as posted today is already two weeks old.

 

[Rogue Valley]

Word from the Kurdish city of Afrin says that a Turkish artillery/rocket bombardment near the hospital yesterday has left one person dead and four wounded.

A Russian tactic in Syria is to attack/destroy the medical infrastructure in cities such as hospitals, clinics, and first-reponders. Perhaps Ankara is borrowing this inhumane tactic.

So far, 70 Kurdish civilians (including women and children) in Afrin have been killed by Turkish air/artillery/rocket attacks.