"Let's sell the Kurds , otherwise our beloved secularists might get naughty and convert to Islam ! "

Submitted by Ianus (Poland), Jun 8, 2007 at 14:19

Hi , James Vesce !

Thank a lot for your alarming comment . Frankly speaking , I don't expect anything else except another genocide for which this perfidious , bloodthirsty , terrorist state will as always blame the victims . I'd call this operation "Attila III" as Attila I and Attila II have been used to denote the invasion , conquest and ethnic cleansing of half Cyprus by the same Kemalist barbarians . So far the Neo-Ottomans have been successful with all their crimes and now like a pathological murderer they are just following the old instinct .

> Ianus, you put it well when you characterized the choices we face: the nasty Islamist Erdogan Turkish government, or the "secularist" and frighteningly effective Turkish Military, which is 98%, Muslim - So, Now, Choose! I know they are essentially all Muslim, essentially all Sunni if I'm not mistaken.

Actually , no one knows exactly how many shi'a Moslems live in Turkey as in 1960-ies the Turkish authorities simply stopped mentioning in the population censuses and other official documents what particular sects and heresies Turkish Moslems belong to . Thus they created the false but desirable impression that Islam is as uniform as the "Turkishness". But it is quite misleading to believe it is . Some estimates say up to 20-30% of Turkish Moslems are non-sunni (Twelver shi'a , sevener shi'a , Alawite , Yazidi etc )

> Speculating for a moment, I'd have to think that the current Islamist influence in Turkey would probably draw from roots in the Muslim Brotherhood in the first decades of the post-caliphate period. I think the only question we have about our own American situation relative to Secularist Turkey versus Islamist Turkey is "Who might be in power that will result in the most advantage to our interests, and in what way?" I think the domestic balance of political power within Turkey may very well hinge on whether or not the Turkish military goes into Kurdistan. If they go, they prevail over the Islamists led by Erdogan and Gul.

To my mind , a different question should be asked .

"Why are the Turks so interested in making the world around believe good "secularists"(='militarists') are threatened by bad 'Islamists" when in fact there can be NO difference whatsoever between them on the Kurdish problem ?"

(Something Dr. Pipes preferred aptly to be silent about in his article . The unity of opinion on this and other cardinal issues (e.g. Cyprus) shows how unconvincing the "Islamism vs. Secularism" theory which is repeated duly after the official Turkish sources , is ) . Both the militarists (="secularists") and Islamists do want to wipe out the Kurds in Iraq. If the militarists go in and carry out another genocide , they will only fulfil the will of the "Islmists" , thus strengthening the understanding and solidarity between these two (evil) forces.

The US will lose at any event. It will lose in prestige immensely . The Kurds who are the only true allies of teh US in the region , will be abandoned to the Turkish horrors . They will never forget that . The US by showing weakness and treachery will earn more contempt of the whole Arab and free world and as a result more terror from the former and opposition from the latter . Whether the new sultan in Ancara will be called Buyukanit or Erdogan , is not important . Both are essentially anti-American and after this "triumph" will not change their mind or show gratitude . On the contrary they will grow even more insolent and will proceed to implement a few more "national schemes" - let's say in Cyprus or the Aegean or in Western Thrace.

> From what I've heard, mostly from some military vets who had a chance to observe and interact with Turkish military personnel at close range during unspecified past operations, Turkey has the military we should most fear in the Middle East/Central Asian region because they are extremely capable, and they are "willing", as John Plaster puts it.

Indubitably , the US is to blame for arming , training and modernizing this "precious" NATO "partner". If the Turks turn now their American weapons against their American masters in North Iraq , it will be a quite logical development . One has to pay a price for the folly of allying themselves with one's foes.

> They have a warrior tradition that goes back centuries, and they have never lost their capacity to field fully operational massed armies that function in a coordinated, effective fashion. Unlike many other Muslim countries, they don't have stage prop militaries with a few impressive war toys that nobody knows how to operate or maintain, and the Turkish soldiers are not a gaggle of wretched beggars yanked off the street and forced into ill-fitting uniforms who can be counted on to cut and run at the first sight of pressure from a hostile force. The Turks still raise boys from the time of childhood to be professional soldiers – they just don't get the boys from Christian villages in Serbia anymore, like they did before the 1826 disbanding of the janissaries.

The last chance these neo-Ottomans could be easily beaten was during the 1974 Cyprus crisis . But at that time the US blackmailed Greece to stay neutral while the weak Cypriot National Guard was being bombed with US-made napalm and smashed with US-made tanks and planes. Just in case the Greeks might have tried to smuggle some equipments or volunteers by sea , an US fleet was roaming aroung Cyprus "to help US civilians out of Cyprus". Henry Kissinger betrayed the Greeks to please the war-lords in Ancara. Now C. Rice will probably betray the only real allies the US has in the region to accomodate the sabre-rattling 'secular' janissaries . Well , there is a strange continuity of folly in the State Department ways. But the price of folly is continuously ruinous .

> You both comment about the conditions under which a Turkish military incursion could occur that resulted in Turkey claiming Kurdish lands and oil. One speculates that they simply wouldn't do it, the other positing that the US would have to endorse it before they would venture in that direction. I believe a third course is actually unfolding before our eyes, albeit quite slowly: the US steps aside without making a big fuss and allows Iraq to fragment, and during that fragmentation process Turkey moves into Kurdistan.

It's sounds realistic. The US will never admit its defeat - just as the USSR never did in Afghanistan. They just withdrew ...and celebrated it as a "grand victory".

> During the fragmentation process, done under a rhetorical veil of "respecting local and regional autonomy", US troops withdraw from Iraqi cities into more easily defended rural outposts, and Iraq gets carved up into shares that are claimed by the surrounding countries. One might speculate that US interests would be most favored by pitting Turkey against Iran in a competition for Kurdish lands, and by massaging the situation so that no single country surrounding Iraq winds up with an overly large share that would give it a clear economic or strategic advantage. In that way they all balance each other out, and the conflicts within Islam dominate the international stage for a few more decades while radical Islam gradually burns itself out, at least, for a while. As long as the Iraqi government is primarily Shiite and/or Sunni, that government is not going to be considerate of the Kurds or advocate for Kurdish interests.

In other words , we betray the Kurds , allow them to be slaughtered by our NATO "friends" , and at the same time invite Iran (and Syria?) to do the same or better outdo the Turks and thus provoke a war between those three states . Offering e.g. Alexandrette to Syria might make Turkey ask for the US mediation which might be in turn used to make it ally itself with Syria to invade Iran and so destroy with a Turko-Syrian assault the Iranian nuclear facilities. The scheme might work unless the Kurds protest too much and fight too desperately .

But my scheme would be a different one - a wide anti-Turkish coalition (Armenia, Kurdistan, Georgia , Syria , Greece and Bulgaria , (Russia ?) ) with some bombing of Turkish military targets and some effective anti-Turkish propaganda world-wide. The neo-Ottomans should be taught a lesson . No one is EVER allowed to insolently provoke the US and its allies with impunity . If he does as teh Turks do, then they will have to pay a very high price for it ! A great Kurdistan should ve created at the cost of Turkey as well as Armenia should get back at least her holy mountain Ararat and the ruins of her ancient capital Ani.

> A few days ago the mainstream media reported that Turkey was shelling Kurdish territory in Iraq in retaliation for PKK raids into Turkey.

I don't know but I have the impression that the "PKK raids" were planned and organized by the Turkish Kurdish-speaking units in Kurdish uniforms . What interest would the Kurds have to provoke major incidents now that they know better than we do of mass concentration of Turkish troops along the border and the plans of Ancara to end militarily the Kurdish independence once and for all cost what it may ? The Turkish story as usually doesn't make sense .

> Although there has been Turkish military activity against the PKK in Kurdistan, I was under the impression that it was either covert when it involved sending Turkish personnel into Kurdish Iraq, in the case of assassinations or other covert operations (which I hear they are exquisitely skilled at),

The case of Ocalan in 1998 proves they are , especially if assisted by some willing American "friends" and informers.

> or it involved retaliation against PKK assets that were located in Turkey, or it was quiet shelling that didn't make it into the mainstream press.

Turkey is not interested in making such things known to a wider public. They have a hard time making the brutal reality of the Armenian holocaust in spite of thousands and thousands of authentic documents and witnesses an anti-Turkish malicious myth . It's even harder to deny fresh Turkish bombs raining in Northern Iraq .

> Isn't this just about the first time in recent memory that an overt artillery barrage across the Iraq-Turkey border has been in the mainstream news?

The Turks apparently forgot to pay the BBC and other "objective" media for not seeing and showing it.

> This is wide open fighting by the uniformed Turkish military against Kurdish targets in Iraq, for all the world to see. As long as the USA is working on a surge strategy in Baghdad, and withdrawing from Baghdad, Turkey's aggression is ignored.

Or rather there is a secret accord between the two parties to the same effect ? Do you think the Turks would risk an open conflict with the US in case - say - some US soldiers are killed accidentally as a result of the Turkish aggression ?

> Now, today (6-6-07), either "hundreds" or "thousands" (depending on which report one reads) of Turkish troops have crossed the border into Iraqi Kurdistan to attack PKK in retaliation for raids into Turkey. Nouri al-Miliki's office says they have no knowledge of it. Turkey says they have no knowledge of it.

Turkey has only knowledge of things which are favorable to Turkey. Things unfavorable to Turkey simply don't exist to the Turks. They are just figments of malicious anti-Turkish minds.

> The US apparently also says they have no knowledge of it.

Most probably the US State Department derives its knowledge from Turkey , hence the similarity as far as their mutual ignorance is concerned.

> In other words, we are stepping aside.

In other words , we have sold the Kurds .

> The Shiite and Sunni elements in Iraq's fledgling government are likely to maintain they are unaware, and thereby step aside. The last time there was a major Turkish troop insertion into Iraq was 1997, before the influence of a US military presence in Iraq.

Now with the protracted and tired US presence in Iraq , the Turks feel perhaps even more secure. They know the US has no knowledge of what is going on , so why bother about those pro-Turkish unknowledgeable Americans ?

> Is it happening right now, the Turkish military incursion into Kurdish territories in Iraq, or isn't it? How many thousand troops do we have to see before we call it a major military presence? How many shells and tanks have to go in before the Turkish military is acknowledged to be there, at least in this discussion among us?

All depends on how tough the Kurdish resistance is going to be. The number of Turkish troops and shells will be proportionate to the situation . If the Turks can exterminate the Kurds with fewer troops they will do . Anyway, they never care about the public opinion. They know it is corrupt and will duly repeat all the Turkish lies carefully concoted for external consumption. They will categorically deny any involvement of Turkey in the Kurdish horrors , nay - their very existence.

> Americans are tired of war in Iraq. I suspect that we are likely to allow the Turks to pound away at it for a while, expecting Turkey to draw Iran's attention and ire, while we recover a little from the stress.

This is the calculation of the Americans . What about the caclucation of the Turks ? Perhaps it is like that "The Americans first established free Kurdistan although they knew we hated that . They provoked us and offended our nationla feelings ! Then they betrayed the Kurds as we used blackmail , conceit and force . Now they want to involve us in a war with Iran . Why should we follow ? Because it is useful for them? But it isn't useful for us ! Let's use Iran against the US and while doing this let's pretend to be America's friends. It is the best way to harm America under the cloak of friendship ! "

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