Friday, January 4, 2013

Turkey vows to smash Kurdish resistance in Syria

See the last paragraph in this article from Hurriyet.

That's not the kind of talk you would have heard from Ankara back when Assad still had a firm grip on the levers of power.

The Kurdish resistance in Syria is determined to carve out Kurdish enclaves in the face of the al-Qaeda led civil war in Syria. In the convoluted arithmetic of the "enemy of my enemy is my friend" doctrine this seems to be making the Kurds friends of Assad.

Which is just one more indigestible nugget on Erdogan's plate. He has stuck his neck out way too far on behalf of his fairweather NATO compatriots in facilitating the Syrian "uprising." At the same time he continues to fight a rearguard action against the "secularist" forces that permeate the "deep state" in Turkey.

Erdogan is slowly but determinedly painting himself into a corner. He is too Islamist for the secularists, too secular for the Islamists, and none of his allies trust him.

What better time to pick a fight with the Kurds in Syria!

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