“Thanking” The United States – ISIS PKK Turkey news

Der Spiegel: i curdi soli contro il terrore di ISIS

Der Spiegel: i curdi soli contro il terrore di ISIS

Redazione 27 ottobre 2014


La copertina di questa settimana di Der Spiegel è stata riservata alla lotta del PKK contro ISIS.Il settimanale di notizie tedesco ha pubblicato un articolo delineando l’importanza dello spostamento della posizione del PKK,sia regionalmente che globalmente,nella nuova300 (copia) dinamica che si sta costituendo in Medio Oriente.

Il titolo di copertina della rivista è :”Soli contro il terrore”implicando che il PKK è stato lasciato solo nella guerra contro il terrore sia nel Kurdistan iracheno che in quello siriano.Il sottotitolo è persino più chiaro:”l’avanzata di ISIS e la guerra solitaria dei curdi”.

Il PKK è sceso all’inizio dell’estate dalla catena montuosa di Kandil per difendere i curdi del Kurdistan del Sud,quando Isis ha attaccato le città di Mahkmur,Sinjar e Kirkuk.L’impeto di ISIS è stato fermato e persino resinto in luoghi come Mahkmur.dove il presidente del Governo Regionale Curdo
Massud Marzani ha visitato e ringraziato i guerriglieri del PKK per i loro sforzi.

Anche nel Kurdistan siriano i curdi stavano combattendo ISIS molto prima che fosse riconosciuto dall’Occidente (dai suoi governi e dai media).I curdi hanno difeso con successo il loro territorio da ISIS, e hanno anche ripulito alcune regioni dalla loro presenza.

ANF 27 10 2014

http://www.retekurdistan.it/2014/10/der-speigel-i-curdi-soli-contro-il-terrore-di-isis/#.VFIuxmf9aUk

“Thanking” The United States – A Piece By Veysi Sarısözen

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veysi sarisozen

 The following article – Stalin: Spasiba Mr. Roosewelt Müslim: Spas Mr.Barack Obama – was written by Veysi Sarısözen and appeared in Özgür Gündem.

Yes…it seems that way looking from Suruç as well. Like Erdoğan sung in his “famous song.”

“Everything reminds me of the Second World War.”

Even if it’s like a song there’s nothing to be done. Reality is this way. Let’s remember:

The German Nazi armies attacked the Soviet Union in 1941. Then Japan hit the United States at Pearl Harbor. The war became a world war. In 1942 there emerged an agreement among the “allied forces” that the United States and Great Britain would open up a second front in Northwest Europe.

However the United States and Great Britain did not immediately open up a second front.

They waited. The goal of this “waiting” was to wait until the Soviet Union was as damaged as possible.

And that’s how it went. The Soviet Union, which had lost 10 million people by ‘42, had lost another 10 million by ‘44. Then the second front was opened.

After it was opened not even the most extreme leftists accused the Soviets of “fighting with American support.”

The similarities regarding the United States ends here. That is to say the issue of waiting.

Certainly the US does not resemble the US of that day, nor Kobanê Soviet Russia. But there is this: If the United States had gone into action the day ISIS occupied Mosul there would have been no Battle of Kobanê. They waited and now Kobanê is in ruins. It has been depopulated and suffered an enormous loss of life.

But it resisted. And this resistance against ISIS made the world rise up. Actually “the Kurds of the World” made the world rise up. Nothing more could have been expected. Nor was it.

Was it a bad thing? No. It was as good as the second front.

The day the second front was opened Stalin, a pipe in his mouth, gave Roosevelt a half-sarcastic “spasiba.”

Now Salih Muslim has probably said  “spas.”

Look at the situation: The similarities between events are such that even the Russian and Kurdish words of “thank you” resemble each other as two twins.

And Turkey?

Turkey, which was singled out for blame by the US for opening its borders to ISIS, is now deciding to open its borders to military aid coming from South Kurdistan. That is to say it is “changing course” at the last minute. Just as its behavior began to change slowly following the Battle of Stalingrad. Just like its “declaration of war” against Nazi Germany following the opening of the second front and the entrance of Soviet armies into Germany in 1945…

Let’s take another good look at the world. Let no prosperous eyes be blinded! Right now in Mosul ISIS is sitting on a trillion dollars worth of oil and gas wealth.

He who relaxes, loses.

“We Will Not Wait Until Tomorrow”

As we celebrate every little momentary “victory” in this war, suddenly we heard another piece of good news from the free media headquarters:“the hostages from Kobanê had been set free…”

We ran together with our friends from the media headquarters to the Suruç municipal building where the “free hostages” were located. We met with them. The Co-President of the Kobanê Canton’s People’s Assembly Ayşe Efendi was also there sharing the joy of the HDP members with them.

When one of [HDP members] told them “tomorrow we will celebrate victory together in Kobanê” a half-angry youth turned and said smiling:

“We cannot wait until tomorrow…”

Yes! In Kobanê they were waiting for them the day before tomorrow.

And those present were recalling the call which Ayşe Efendi’s had made to the youth in exile just a short while earlier: “Don’t wait at school, in the tent, at the mosque or on the corner. Come to the front!”

“Perhaps I Will See Him”

I had known about war which people are made to watch. The last two Iraq wars were broadcast to the people on their TV’s.

But until I came to Suruç I had never heard of or seen a war which the people watched in person.

Right now the people of Kurdistan are “watching” the battle of Kobanê from the minarets of mosques and the roofs of houses in Suruç. Everywhere, on every hill, dozens of people with binoculars – as if they were captains or colonels – are observing Kobanê over hours and hours.

And there are those among them who you would think are watching the enemy on the front and sending off their coordinates to the army.

Even if it is not quite like that these “binocular” people are in possession of an extraordinary deterrent. Neither the army nor the police have been able to drive them from the “positions” they occupy.

And they tried but they couldn’t. Those keeping vigil on the border resisted. And right now this battle has been won by the Kurds with binoculars.

The tactics of the battle are more important that one might think. As I said, these binocular people have actually set up a border around the military zone along the border. The binocular people on the roofs and hills immediately notice any ISIS infiltration or permission for them to infiltrate.

And as soon as they see them they use their organization to inform the long-lensed cameras of our free media.

And as as soon as they are informed they catch the Erdoğan-Davutoğlu team in the act and make the ISIS fighters regret the day they were born.

And you watch the crimes being committed on your television broadcasts as if they were TV broadcasts.

I am speaking with one of those “standing guard” on the border with his binoculars. From the moment he hears the sound of mortar round leaving its tube to the moment it hits its target he begins to count “a thousand one, a thousand two, a thousand three…” and if the second explosion strikes at “a thousand six” it means ISIS fired that mortar from exactly six kilometers away.

To watch a war live with your own eyes is not as “entertaining” as one might imagine. Because the men and women who are watching with binoculars and trying to guess where the mortar rounds have fallen in Kobanê are actually trying to understanding where their relatives, children and siblings are serving on the front.

I asked a middle-aged man: Where are you looking so intently?

“At my son…” he said.

I was surprised…”Can you see your son?”

“No” he said, “but perhaps I will see him.”

Some MP’s On The Border

In the Battle of Kobanê I didn’t have the opportunity to cover the resistance “to defend against ISIS infiltration and government support along the border” for our paper.

But for a couple of days during my trip to Suruç I had the opportunity to listen to the details from those who took part in these events.

One of the dozens of these was the HDP MP Ibrahim Ayhan.

Ayhan has not left the area since the first days of the resistance. Sometimes he slept in the fields wrapped in a blanket, sometimes he woke up in car, and was together with the people day and night. He endured the attacks by police and soldiers together with the people.

Like Ibrahim Ayhan many HDP MP’s and many elected mayors and city council members organized an alternative to our Turkish parliamentarians in the course of the border resistance and the great serhildan (uprising). Many of them threw of their MP costumes and made themselves equal with the people then resisting.

Ibrahim Ayhan explain the parliamentary group’s mission in the Battle of Kobanê with its determination still in his mind: “We undertook all kinds of “war diplomacy” on this side of the border. We represented the common interests of both Turkey and Rojava and the entire Middle East and we did everything possible in order to stop the advance of ISIS as quickly as possible and to hold the AKP government responsible. One of these things was to stop the inhumane obstacles that were in place on the border: 12 severely injured people lost their lives because they were made to wait along the border. We showed great effort and finally after 10 days were able to bring an end to these ‘delay’ policies and since those days not a single person has died for want of blood [on the border].”

“Of course we tried to develop an environment and the circumstances in which the ISIS attack would be defeated and the Turkish state would be made to open a corridor. I think that what we did in the name of our party helped to create an environment in which a corridor will need to be opened.”

“Even if things are still very difficult and there are intention obstacles and pressure the situation is much better than it was.”

Without making a show in front of the media Ibrahim Ayhan continues to carry on official contact with the both the Turkish Republic and the Kobanê Canton, not in the lobby of some five-star hotel but in Suruç, right on the border which has been engulfed with clouds of gunpowder that burn our nostrils.

In this way did the “war diplomacy” and “revolutionary parliamentarians” take on their real substance in the days of life and death.

How In The End The Bombs Began To Fall And The Corridor Was Opened

With the confirmation of the news that the YPG has received weapons and the announcement from the Turkish government that it opened a corridor to allow Kurdish national aid to come from the South, a great and unbelievable joy has spread among the people in Suruç who have been keeping guard for over a month.

As everyone was adding their own commentary to the developments, a youth shouted out:

“It means that the whole world has understood that we will win in Kobanê” then adding “if we had fallen they would not have been our friends. We didn’t fall. And now the world is forced to win our friendship…” I ran after this youth. But for whatever reason I lost track of him. It was as if that youth had caught my eye from some other place. Where was it? Out on the plane? In the orchard? Or was it in the mountains? My old memory couldn’t place him. But his words at that moment struck a clear chord within my own conscious and the conscious of the crowd. The resistance of Kobanê brought out bombs. Rojava and the Ağırnaslı’s resisting shoulder to shoulder with it opened that corridor.

That is to say that corridor on which the bodies of YPG-YPJ fighters are now being carried out, that corridor which they opened so that aid could get in and no more bodies would be carried out of Kobanê…

https://rojavareport.wordpress.com/2014/10/22/thanking-the-united-states-a-piece-by-veysi-sarisozen/

The ISIS Economy And The Importance Of Rojava

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The following article “IŞİD ekonomisi”  was written by Metin Yeğin and appeared in Özgür Gündem. It has been translated into English below.

The extent of ISIS economic activities functioning around booty often goes unnoticed and it is evaluated as simply the distribution of spoils captured in war according to Islamic practices!

For example when ISIS sold the Yezidi people which they captured – the men as slaves and the women as concubines – because Yezidism was a ‘non-sanctioned’ religion and this came onto the world’s agenda, its human dimension shocked the world. When a simulated slave market was set up in the streets of London, complete with simulated veiled concubines, it was perhaps the first time since the bombing of the Nazi army in the Second World War that the British public was unified in its support for a bombing campaign.

However it is forgotten that behind this ‘human’ aspect lies an ‘ordinary’ economy that works to reproduced everyday life. That is to say that ISIS is not an organization only concerned, as the public might imagine, with the ‘other world’ or ‘paradise.’ In the first place the situation which emerged following the intervention in the Gulf and the occupation of Iraq created a sphere of “obligatory” economic activity for different groups. The large bureaucratic apparatus, the army and the security forces on which the Saddam government – like every authoritarian regime – depended on was left in a bind following the destruction of the regime. These groups were particularly excluded by the new, heavily Shia Iraqi regime and nothing remained in the hands of Sunni communities.

The lion’s share of the income from oil, the country’s most important resource, was taken by international oil companies, and what was left was divided up by those close to the occupiers, the Kurdish governments of Barzani and Talabani and Shia powers each in proportion to their influence. Nothing remained in the hands of the Sunnis. At the same time the agriculture which had sustained the lands of Iraq for thousands of years was destroyed in the course of the occupation. The agricultural economy which relied on the annual cycle collapsed. In particular the Sunni people of Iraq, who could no longer practice agriculture, lost their basic form of economic activity which had served as their livelihood for thousands of years, and even worse they could no longer produce enough food to fill their stomachs.

The only thing which remained to them, even if backwards, was the “war economy.” The income from this economy does not only derive from the sale of members of religious communities liked the Yezidis deemed to be forbidden by those above. It is an integral sphere of economic activity characterized by the ransom of kidnapped Christians, concubines, slaves, gold, money, the management of conquered property and the the rent derived therefrom, and the 20% tax paid on all of this income to the ‘Islamic State.’ This situation has once again proved the old adage, often used in these parts, that “the grass doesn’t grow where the soldier trods.” After the occupation nothing remained except the retrograde economy of pillage.

Moreover employment and unemployment – as is the case everywhere – are not only a questions of income but of social status. The Sunni community did not just lose their income but their social status. The former members of the bureaucracy, the soldiers, security services, and tribes have replaced their former positions and social status, now destroyed, with the terrible explosions of truck bombs, the esteem of territory captured for Islam, and of course the status of the martyr.

The concept of martyrdom – poorly understood in the West – is in fact nothing other than what comes from the dynamic derived from “the beautiful days to come” that occupies a place in every social structure’s utopic foundation. Once more martyrdom is not a status which only exists for the dead in the other world, but comes to define the social status of his or her family and tribe in this world. The real prize of the family or tribe of the martyr, outside of the small share which falls to it from the war economy, is its standing and even if perhaps impoverished it comes to posses a status and prestige which allows it to “walk around with its head high.”

It is not at all difficult for a social structure  – particularly one subjected to massacre at the level of Fallujah or the experience of torture such as occurred at Abu Ghraib  – to be terrorized by ISIS’s economy of plunder in the form of an Islamic ideology.

For that reason the economy of “communes, collectives and cooperatives” symbolized in Kobanê and Rojava is so important for the Middle East.

Either radical democracy or barbarism...

 

https://rojavareport.wordpress.com/2014/10/24/the-isis-economy-and-the-importance-of-rojava/

Is NATO membership shackling Turkey?

המחבר Metin Turcan פורסם אוקטובר 29, 2014

Turkey’s foreign policy and role in the international system have become the subject of growing debate both in local and foreign media over the past two years. The country’s NATO membership is inevitably a central topic in the debate. Some argue NATO membership has “shackled” Turkey’s independence and maneuvering ability and should be gotten rid of, while others see the alliance as a vital “anchor” that has held Turkey in the Western bloc for 62 years. Those arguments are worth a closer look, for they reflect how the international community’s perception of Turkey has changed and could be helpful in analyzing the domestic foreign policy debates.

בקצרה⎙ הדפיס Pro-government Turkish analysts argue that NATO membership has become a shackle on Turkey, hampering the country’s ambitions to become a global actor.
המחבר Metin Turcan פורסם אוקטובר 29, 2014

Clearly, making joint decisions with Western NATO allies and implementing those decisions has become a serious problem for Turkey in the past several years. In an Oct. 9 article headlined “Time to Kick Turkey out of NATO?” Jonathan Schanzer, vice president for research at the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies, argues the Syrian crisis has demonstrated that “Turkey under the AKP [Justice and Development Party] is a lost cause. It is simply not a partner for NATO. Nor is it a partner in the fight against the Islamic State [IS].”

Similarly, Turkish columnist Fatih Altayli — in an article headlined “Could Turkey Be Kicked out of NATO?” — argues that Turkey, drifting fast away from the West, has reached another critical turn with the Kobani crisis. Rather than a futile debate on whether the worsening Western perception of Turkey is justified or not, Turkey must think hard about why the perception has worsened, he says.

However, for intellectuals close to decision-makers in Ankara, the essential matter to contemplate is not why the Western perception of Turkey has changed or how it could be rectified, but rather how Turkey’s old foreign policy objectives should be revised in line with what they believe is Turkey’s rising international profile as an independent and powerful global actor.

In an article headlined “The 2023 doctrine and prospective contributions,” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s chief adviser Yigit Bulut lays out an ambitious reading of the international system. He foresees the emergence of three global power centers — the United States, China and Turkey — over the next decade, stressing that Russia’s policies should be closely followed in this context. In another column, headlined “Are they planning NATO intervention in Turkey?” Bulut claims that “dirty forces” in and outside Turkey, which used to provoke military coups in the past, have come to accept they cannot unseat the current government through elections and could be planning an intervention under NATO’s umbrella.

Tamer Korkmaz, a columnist for the pro-government Yeni Safak daily, writes, “One has to ask what NATO has given Turkey since 1952. … For Turkey, NATO has meant military coups, army ultimatums to the government, economic crises, social polarization, conflict, internal strife, provocations, instability, exploitation, oppression, torture, bloodshed, tears, death, extrajudicial killings and systematic terror.”

Sources close to the government also argue that NATO has acted irresponsibly in all recent crises in Turkey’s vicinity, abandoning Turkey to its fate (some believe this was done deliberately) and that NATO membership has forced Turkey to be part of policies and operations it actually opposed. Turkey’s political decision-makers believe NATO membership has hampered independent foreign policymaking, as illustrated in the 2011 Libya turmoil when Turkey had to reluctantly join NATO’s Operation Unified Protector, the crisis that followed Turkey’s selection of China as a prospective supplier of air defense systems. NATO’s fiats on Turkey in the Russia-Ukraine crisis and NATO’s failure to take any action after Syria shot down a Turkish fighter jet in June 2012 can be listed as the other examples

Turkish decision-makers believe that changing threat perceptions have resulted in NATO prioritizing the West’s security issues and ignoring those of Turkey, the alliance’s only Muslim member. Indeed, one can observe a widening gap between Turkey’s threat perceptions and favored solutions and those of the United States and the European Union, which form NATO’s core.

Academic Sedat Laciner, for instance, writes, “Turkey is left between a rock and a hard place in many aspects on the issue of IS and Syria and Iraq. Ankara does not approve of IS’ methods, yet it boggles at Baghdad’s and Damascus’ policies of discrimination and ethnic cleansing against Sunnis. … In Turkey’s view, both IS and the sectarian rift in the region are the product of Baghdad’s and Damascus’ unacceptable policies. Hence, Ankara expects NATO members to rein in those two governments and support moderate groups.”

Similarly, the Turkish public — unlike other NATO nations — has become increasingly estranged to NATO, especially after the Afghanistan war. Disaffection with NATO is stronger in Turkey than in any other member country. Hence, the traditional narrative that Turkey has been a loyal NATO ally for six decades and NATO is indispensable for Euro-Atlantic security is losing its appeal for the Turkish public. Not surprisingly, in early 2011, NATO’s then-public diplomacy officer Knut Kirste said the decline in Turkish public support was worrisome and called for a new communication strategy to promote NATO in Turkey.

Turkish academic Ebru Canan Sokullu questions how the Turkish perception of the alliance soured, pointing out that 92% of the Turks backed NATO’s Kosovo war in 1999. According to one explanation, the AKP, seeking to consolidate Turkey’s rightist conservative majority under its banner, has adopted a conservative nationalist rhetoric of statist and reactional nature, with its impact growing in the past two years.

The 2014 Transatlantic Trends survey of the Washington-based German Marshall Fund of the United States, released Sept. 10, found that 44% and 46% of the Turks favor an independent approach in relations with China and the Middle East, respectively. The figures indicate that the AKP decision-makers’ “independent foreign policy” narrative is largely supported by the Turkish people. This is a worrisome trend, for it shows that Turks are becoming opposed to the pursuit of international alliances and cooperation with the West.

In comments on NATO’s decreasing popularity, retired Ambassador Murat Bilhan argues that Turks largely identify NATO with the United States and thus their view of NATO is being swayed by the zigzagging in Turkish-US relations.

For half a century, NATO has been seen as key security peg anchoring Turkey to the West. Boosted by the support it offered in the Korean War, Turkey won NATO membership in 1952, in the first enlargement wave that followed NATO’s creation in 1949 as a 12-member security alliance. During the Cold War, Turkey became a key NATO flank against Soviet Russia.

NATO membership not only made Turkey part of the Western bloc but had a profound impact on its domestic politics. Some argue NATO membership served to boost the Turkish military’s self-confidence and led it to redefine its relationship with the West, which, in turn, emboldened the generals to come out of the barracks and become an influential player in politics.

The Turkish army’s senior officers continue to receive training at elite military colleges in NATO countries and serve two- or three-year stints at permanent missions in various NATO commands. Nearly 300 Turkish military personnel currently serve in such posts. The Turkish military is one of the four NATO armies that continue to provide military support in Afghanistan. The Istanbul-based Third Army Corps, which Turkey has allotted to NATO and which has both national and NATO headquarters with about 8,000 personnel subordinate directly to the Turkish General Staff, continues to serve as a NATO high-readiness force. The Allied Land Command is based in the western Turkish city of Izmir, while the Turkish military runs two major NATO training centers — one on counterterrorism in Ankara and another on maritime security in Izmir. The Turkish army participates in at least 10 NATO exercises each year and takes active part in NATO operations.

In short, 62 years with NATO have had a profound impact on the Turkish military’s institutional culture, decision-making processes and combat efficiency.

A retired three-star general in Ankara, however, argues that NATO’s significance goes well beyond that, representing a major warranty that Turkey stays on the path of democracy.

“Turkish villagers would tell you the story of the quarrelsome man who gets along with no one in the village. Then, one night someone would throw stones at his house and break windows, another night they would torch his barn. That is, the villagers will find a way to harm him. So, a villager needs to get along, maintain dialogue and build lasting friendships with certain families in the village, if not all of them. And that’s what NATO offers to Turkey in our global village today. We have to stop quarrelling with everybody in the village,” the retired general said on the condition of anonymity.

“Through NATO membership, institutionalized for 62 years now, the Turkish nation has chosen also peace, stability and freedom. To me, forfeiting NATO and quitting the Western axis for the sake of adventures such as leadership of the Turkic or Islamic world is equivalent to forfeiting democracy as well,” he said.

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