*US, Turkey At Odds Over Syria Intervention*
*By Patrick Martin *
*
http://www.countercurrents.org/martin101014.htm
<
http://www.countercurrents.org/martin101014.htm>*
10 October, 2014
*WSWS.org* <
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/10/10/syri-o10.html>
A top-level US delegation arrived in Ankara Thursday for talks with Turkish
leaders amid a mounting crisis on the Syria-Turkey border, where Syrian
Kurds are besieged in the town of Kobani by thousands of fighters mobilized
by Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
The two US representatives are retired General John Allen, the
Obama-appointed coordinator of the US-led military coalition attacking ISIS
forces, and Brett McGurk, the State Department official handling the
diplomatic side of the imperialist intervention.
The Turkish newspaper Hurriyet reported that Allen met late Thursday with
Turkish Foreign Ministry Under Secretary Feridun Sinirlioglu.
The Obama administration is pressing the Turkish government either to send
ground troops across the border to break the siege of Kobani, or to allow
armed Turkish, Syrian and Iraqi Kurds to come to the defense of the town.
The government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has so far refused,
demanding a public US commitment to the overthrow of Syrian President
Bashar al-Assad and the establishment of a no-fly zone in Syria and a
US-protected buffer zone along the Syria-Turkish border.
Both Washington and Ankara agree on the ultimate goal of overthrowing
Assad, but they have sharp differences over the means to accomplish this,
particularly in their attitude to the Syrian Kurdish militia YPG, now
hemmed in by ISIS forces on three sides in Kobani.
The Erdogan regime regards the YPG, which is an offshoot of the Kurdish
separatist PKK in Turkey, as a major danger, since its control of a
relatively autonomous Syrian Kurdish region sets an example for the much
larger Kurdish population in southeastern Turkey. The Turkish government
classifies both the YPG and ISIS as “terrorists” and is quite willing to
have them fight each other to the death around Kobani.
If anything, Turkish policy has been to promote ISIS as part of the
anti-Assad campaign in Syria. As US vice president Biden admitted last
week, Turkey has allowed thousands of ISIS recruits to pass through its
territory to Syria to join the Islamist group.
This attitude has triggered a political upheaval in the Kurdish-populated
region in Turkey, with anti-government rioting in which at least 22 people
were killed Tuesday and Wednesday. By Thursday, the government had decreed
a state of emergency in six provinces in southeastern Turkey. Turkish
police openly sided with ISIS against the Kurds this week, reportedly
shouting pro-ISIS slogans during street battles with Kurdish protesters.
The Obama administration is under increasing pressure, from the
military-intelligence apparatus, from its Kurdish allies in northern Iraq,
and from warmongering critics in both the Republican and Democratic
parties, to intervene more aggressively in Syria.
US warplanes have stepped up their bombing of ISIS positions around the
beleaguered city Wednesday and Thursday, and the airstrikes seem to have at
least temporarily slowed the advance of ISIS forces, which control about
one-third of the enclave. There were reports that ISIS reinforcements were
sent from Raqqa, the group’s de facto capital, to support the attack on
Kobani, joining in street-to-street fighting in the city.
A steady stream of imperialist officials has passed through Ankara in an
effort to influence Turkish policy. NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg
and Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu held a joint news conference
Thursday after their talks. “It is not realistic to expect Turkey to
conduct a ground operation on its own. We are holding talks,” Cavusoglu
said. “Once there is a common decision, Turkey will not hold back from
playing its part.”
An unnamed senior Ankara official went further, rebuffing criticism of
Turkey’s inaction and blaming the Obama administration for having “dragged
their feet for a very long time before deciding to take action against the
catastrophic events happening in Syria.”
Cavusoglu emphasized that any intervention in Syria must aim to remove the
Assad government. “As long as Assad stays in power, bloodshed and massacres
will continue,” he said. “The Assad regime is the cause of instability and
therefore a political change is necessary.”
Stoltenberg said the Turkish proposal for a buffer zone or no-fly zone in
Syria was not “on the table” in any NATO discussions of the crisis,
although French President Francois Hollande has publicly backed it. There
were conflicting reports from Washington, with Pentagon spokesman Admiral
John Kirby saying a buffer zone was a topic “of continuing discussion”
while White House press secretary Josh Earnest said it wasn’t “under
consideration right now.”
The conflicting reports are not merely mixed messaging, but reflect the
actual incoherence of both US and Turkish policy on the Syrian crisis. Both
Washington and Ankara seek the removal of Assad, but the Turkish government
regards the Kurdish separatists as a more immediate target, while the Obama
administration seeks to use ISIS as its pretext for escalating military
operations in the region.
While the American media has give nonstop saturation coverage to atrocities
like the ISIS beheading of captured journalists and aid workers, the
portrayal of the group as a major threat to the population of the NATO
countries is ludicrous.
As a commentary posted on Politico.com noted, with an estimated 30,000
armed men, ISIS has “significantly fewer fighters than each of its opponent
forces: the Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, Iraqi and Syrian government forces
and even potential Sunni tribal rivals. Simply put, ISIL is surrounded by
enemies with greater fighting power.”
Turkey has an army of nearly 700,000, the sixth largest in the world and by
far the largest in the Middle East, heavily equipped with US and
European-made weaponry, including a large air force. Nonetheless, NATO
secretary-general Stoltenberg was at pains to suggest that a few thousand
ISIS fighters on the Turkish border constituted a threat that could justify
military intervention under Article Five of the NATO charter.
While Washington and NATO have been prodding Turkey to intervene, the
government of Iran issued a formal demarche over the Turkish parliament’s
action last week, giving Erdogan authority to send Turkish troops across
the border. Iran warned of “irreparable consequences” if Turkey violated
the sovereignty of Syria, which is Iran’s sole ally among the Arab states
of the Middle East.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Marziyeh Afkham said Tehran would send
troops to fight ISIS in Kobani if requested by the Assad government.
“Kobani is part of Syria's sovereignty and territorial integrity and if the
Syrian government makes a demand, we will be ready to provide any
assistance it wants,” she said Wednesday in Tehran.
Iran has already suggested it would send troops across the border into Iraq
to fight ISIS if the Sunni Islamist group approached too closely to Iranian
territory.
The conflicting maneuvers of all the powers involved in the Syrian crisis
only underscore the reckless and incendiary character of US policy in the
region. The US-instigated war has the potential to spread far beyond its
current focus in eastern Syria and western Iraq, and become a more general
conflagration in the Middle East and even beyond.
Received on Tue Oct 14 2014 - 04:40:54 EDT