[kenberg]

Regarding Turkey and the Kurds, is it useful to put forth my ignorance? Maybe.


I have some vague understanding that there are regions in Turkey where Kurds are a sizable portion of the population, they would like autonomy or independence, the Turkish government is oppsed (no surprise) and the Kurds in norther Syria cause trouble over this and probably other matters. Even this much I am unsure of.


So what is my point?


If I were to even try to comment usefully, I would have to learn a lot more before doing so. I looked up a Wikipedia article:


https://en.wikipedia...2%80%93present)

Ok, I said I looked it up. I did not say that I have read it or understood the small parts I tried to read. And surely some of this would need checking, it looks complicated and presumably there are disagreements as to the facts.

Whatever one might think of me for this ignorance, I am sure it is shared by many. I am also not very clear on just what is happening in Venezuela. Or Albania. You get the idea. I am not saying these places are unimportant, only that if someone needs advice as to what we should do there, I suggest they ask someone other than me.

What I would like to see for the US is some sort of coherence. I not only acknowledge but I insist that I do not understand the issues here. But I can recognize incoherence when I hear it, and this happens just about every time our president speaks. Of course I appreciate Turkey as a NATO partner and, anyway, I have known a fair number of Turkish people and I wish them well. I don't think I know any Kurds but surely they are human like the rest of us. As I understand the matter, they have been working with us and we have made some promises to them about protection. I would like our commitments to be trusted. Sure, sometimes things don't go as planned but sometimes that can be understood. Right now what we say on Monday has nothing to do with what we say on Wednesday. That cannot be right.

If I were to put in substantial study, my guess, obviously just a guess, is that I would conclude two things: A) pulling our troops out was a mistake and B) solving the Turkey-Kurd problem in any long term way will take someone smarter than I am.
Also I am sure this has nothing to do with whether the Kurd were or were not on the beaches of Normandy in June of 1944.

Feel free to tell me I don't know what I am talking about, I have already said that. Please understand that I am not unique. I believe declaring ignorance can be at least somewhat useful.

[hrothgar]

Zelandakh, on 2019-October-12, 20:30, said:

Hi Richard, from reading other sites my understanding is that the Turkish defence ministry reported that there was a successful operation to neutralise 459 Kurdish militia. Reports about Hevrin Khalaf then came later from Kurdish sources including a video of her corpse (I assume it is genuine but honestly no idea) and another of a civilian being shot while lying on the ground has also emerged. Brett McGurk appears to have put the different sources together to create a misleading quote that Turkish state media was calling it a successful operation to kill a political rival. I think that such sensationalism is not needed here to stir up public opinion against the situation.

thanks for clarifying

[Winstonm]

The WaPo is reporting about her death this way:

Quote

A Turkish newspaper, Yeni Safak, trumpeted her killing as a “successful operation” against a politician affiliated with the “terrorist” People’s Democratic Union, the Kurdish political party that runs northeast Syria.

The newspaper said she had been “neutralized” in the operation, and described her death as a big setback for the group.

Edit: Meanwhile...

Quote

AKCAKALE, Turkey (AP) — Hundreds of Islamic State supporters escaped from a holding camp in northern Syria on Sunday amid heavy clashes between invading Turkish-led forces and Kurdish fighters, and President Donald Trump ordered all U.S. troops to withdraw from the north to avoid getting caught in the fighting.

[Cyberyeti]

I heard an interview yesterday with somebody who'd been in the Kurdish part of Syria, he said that ISIS seemed to have an awful lot of Turkish military kit when the Kurds captured it.

[barmar]

kenberg, on 2019-October-12, 20:35, said:

[If I were to put in substantial study, my guess, obviously just a guess, is that I would conclude two things: A) pulling our troops out was a mistake and B) solving the Turkey-Kurd problem in any long term way will take someone smarter than I am.

Sounds like a good job for Jared, right after he solves the Israel-Palestine conflict.

[MrAce]

Winstonm, on 2019-October-12, 07:33, said:

I don't dispute that the PKK terrorize Turkey but are you claiming that if all PKK are Kurds then all Kurds are PKK? I would have to have a lot more proof of that claim.
u
I'm not trying to belittle your views and the points you made, but personally, I've always had a problem with labeling oppressed "terrorists" - what then do you label the oppressors?

The real terrorists (to my thinking) are those who try by force to impose their belief system on others.

Hi m8. Long time


I never said all Kurds are PKK. Neither did Turkish government at any time present or past. Our 25 % population is Kurds and we have no problem with them. Turkey does not recognize them as minority which if they did would have to give them minority rights. Turkey conveniently sees them as Turks. But these people are not our enemies. Although right wing sees them as one just like right wing and their media sees some American citizens as enemy in USA too. Nothing different. They don't kill more Kurds than black lives being taken here just because they are black! So lets dont sit on our high righteous chair and point fingers or we wont have enough bandwith to support this debate.

You are a US citizen. You are 2nd from last (me being last) to point fingers to any country or their leader. Why? Because you are from a nation that is VERY capable of voting for a man named Donald Trump as president! Oh NO! You and Hroth being completly against him does not change a damn thing. I am in much worse shape than both of you because I have dual citizenship and not only I am a citizen of a country that can vote for Trump but also from a country that has been voting for Erdogan for almost 2 decades! Being completely against them does not make me feel any better.

[Winstonm]

MrAce, on 2019-October-13, 16:14, said:

Hi m8. Long time


I never said all Kurds are PKK. Neither did Turkish government at any time present or past. Our 25 % population is Kurds and we have no problem with them. Turkey does not recognize them as minority which if they did would have to give them minority rights. Turkey conveniently sees them as Turks. But these people are not our enemies. Although right wing sees them as one just like right wing and their media sees some American citizens as enemy in USA too. Nothing different. They don't kill more Kurds than black lives being taken here just because they are black! So lets dont sit on our high righteous chair and point fingers or we wont have enough bandwith to support this debate.

You are a US citizen. You are 2nd from last (me being last) to point fingers to any country or their leader. Why? Because you are from a nation that is VERY capable of voting for a man named Donald Trump as president! Oh NO! You and Hroth being completly against him does not change a damn thing. I am in much worse shape than both of you because I have dual citizenship and not only I am a citizen of a country that can vote for Trump but also from a country that has been voting for Erdogan for almost 2 decades! Being completely against them does not make me feel any better.

It's really good to hear from you. I have been wondering why you haven't posted. I'm glad to hear that the Kurds are not uniformly seen as terrorists, although it seems that the Turkish military may disagree with your assessment.

I blame us - the voters - for letting this happen. Trump, Erdogan, and all the rest. I know I have a lot of blame because I took politics for granted for years and did not actively participate. Maybe too late, but those days are gone.

Best wishes. And again, good to hear from you.

[MrAce]

Winstonm, on 2019-October-13, 08:56, said:

The WaPo is reporting about her death this way:

Don't forget there is no media opposing to government in Turkey except Halk TV.

[MrAce]

Winstonm, on 2019-October-13, 16:18, said:

although it seems that the Turkish military may disagree with your assessment.

Commander in Chief is Erdogan. Huge majority of Kurds live in Turkey. If they were seen as terrorists Turkish military would not need to cross
Syrian border to kill Kurds. We have about 20 million Kurds living in Turkey and given citizenship.

[y66]

Former Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch's statement which she gave before testifying to the House Select Committee on Intelligence and the Committee on Foreign Affairs on Friday is the most damning statement by a credible U.S. government official that I've read since this saga started. Hard to believe even Mike Pompeo, a West Point grad, isn't wondering wtf have I done?

[Winstonm]

Snopes shoots down Rand Paul's bothsidesism crap from today's Meet the Press:

Quote

Several reasons exist why the above tweet and associated sentiment are incorrect and misleading. At the top of that list is the fact that the letter in question did not concern a request to “investigate Trump,” nor did it request the opening of any investigation.

[MrAce]

hrothgar, on 2019-October-12, 15:41, said:

Timu, I appreciate (probably better than most Americans) that this is a complicated subject.

From my perspective, the single most important issue here is that Erdoğan is choosing to launch a war of convenience.
What actions necessitate a Turkish attack on Syria? (especially at this point in time)

To gain back the political influence he seems to start losing in Turkey. Too many families lost lives to PKK terror.

hrothgar, on 2019-October-12, 15:41, said:

I have heard claims that the Turkish government wants to create a "safe zone" in Syria and then force refugees out of Turkey and into Northern Syria...
Given Turkey's past history of forcible population exchanges / ethnic cleansing / and out right genocide this seems like a remarkably poor decision.

What you heard ıs as wrong as what you think my name is. These 4 million Kurds mostly fled from this zone to Turkey. Now YPG (a name that was adviced by Americans to PKK so that they can be given arms, you can find the proof for this in video I provided on my face book, the last one) who were hired by USA to fight ISIS are occupying the villages and towns and homes of these Syrians. They should have left this zone after they did the job against ISIS. USA does not have any right to give this zone to PKK. You come from million miles away to Syria to fight your enemy ISIS. What makes you think Turkey does not have the same right next to our border to fight vs our enemies?

My personal opinion is both Turkey and USA and Russians have no business in someone elses country unless invited by their government.

hrothgar, on 2019-October-12, 15:41, said:

Last, but not least: I very much appreciate that Turkey has been a valuable ally of the United States dating back to the early days of the Cold War. However, I think that it is important to note that said alliance was predominately based onli

1. A containment strategy directed against the Soviet Union
2. Turkey's position as a secular muslim country

As Erdoğan sidles up to to a revanchist Russia and as Turkey continues to embrace Islamist parties leading its government the foundations of that alliance are looking increasingly unstable.

We were never allies. Turkey is an unofficial state of USA. Every leader and government and coup was planned in USA (except the last fake one)

[hrothgar]

MrAce, on 2019-October-14, 04:29, said:

We were never allies. Turkey is an unofficial state of USA. Every leader and government and coup was planned in USA (except the last fake one)

Turkey launch a war of choice.
Said invasion is engaging in ethnic cleansing.
There isn't much more to talk about.

I will however note that it is laughable when the country of Mustafa Kemal Pasha starts claiming that the US is responsible for all of its military coups...

[y66]

From Jonathan Bernstein at Bloomberg:

Quote

Three weeks into the Ukraine scandal, there’s been basically no movement in President Donald Trump’s approval rating. He’s at 42.2%, according to the FiveThirtyEight polling tracker, down just a bit from where he was on Sept. 24. The big change, which I looked at last week, is that the group of voters who oppose Trump and also oppose impeachment has emptied out. Now turn to the question of why his approval rating has stayed stable so far.

One possibility concerns an argument aired by the political scientist Matthew Dickinson on Friday: “Fascinating to watch dueling Ukraine narratives by elites on both sides. It's as if one side is completely unaware that there's an alternative frame being peddled out there.”

It’s certainly true that two sides are involved. One thinks Trump pressed Ukraine to find (or manufacture) dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden; that doing so is at least unethical and troubling, and at worst a violation of his oath of office and criminal to boot; that Congress has a right and a duty to investigate; and that impeachment is at least a plausibly legitimate outcome. The other side thinks Trump and his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani are heroically exposing various nefarious plots and examples of corruption around the world.

The problem with this argument is that the two “sides” involved aren’t at all equivalent. The first contains virtually all Democrats, but also the bulk of legal and national-security experts of both parties. It comprises a fair number of Republican politicians and other party leaders — including the three current governors who support an impeachment inquiry — along with the much larger group of Republicans who concede that what Trump did was wrong but don’t think it warrants impeachment. It may also include a lot of the Republicans who are mostly hiding from the media these days. The other side consists of a much smaller group of Republicans, with almost no support among Democrats or subject-matter experts.

To the extent that the media has framed all this as “one side says X, the other side says Y,” they’re getting a big part of the story wrong — and it may be partly responsible for Trump’s stable approval numbers.

A second possibility involves something I speculated about months ago. There’s a “priming” effect in public opinion in which the answer to a question can change depending on the context in which it’s asked. A classic example was during George H.W. Bush’s presidency. To oversimplify a bit, most people thought Bush was good at foreign policy and bad at domestic policy. So when foreign policy was in the news, people interpreted the question “Do you approve of how Bush is handling the presidency?” as a question about foreign policy, and said yes; when domestic stories were in the news, the opposite happened. People weren’t changing their minds about Bush. They were just evaluating him on different criteria.

A similar thing could be happening here. Once impeachment is the story, Republicans may think of the approval question as equivalent to whether they support removing Trump from office, and therefore say they approve of him; if the story centered more on the scandal, they might be more likely to disapprove of Trump’s overall performance. If that’s what’s happening, it’s possible that the Syria story, taking place outside of the impeachment context, might damage Trump where the Ukraine scandal hasn’t.

There’s also the possibility that Trump’s numbers are simply locked in no matter what. I remain very skeptical of that one. Trump’s approval rating is around 42% now, but it dipped down to about 39% during the government shutdown earlier this year, and as low as about 37% in 2017. Trump may or may not have a high floor, but there’s at least some room for change.

Hard to believe anyone takes the Rudy Guiliani heroically exposing nefarious plots line seriously. Trump supporters have their reasons but they were not born yesterday. Locked in feels right to me but not no matter what, especially if more people like Yovanovitch come forward or the economy starts tanking or the kurdish gambit backfires which appears likely or William Barr has a Lee Atwater moment which appears unlikely.

[Winstonm]

y66, on 2019-October-13, 16:46, said:

Former Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch's statement which she gave before testifying to the House Select Committee on Intelligence and the Committee on Foreign Affairs on Friday is the most damning statement by a credible U.S. government official that I've read since this saga started. Hard to believe even Mike Pompeo, a West Point grad, isn't wondering wtf have I done?

I have been trying to understand this administration using a criminal enterprise model but could not find enough of a pool of money to share to explain the participation of everyone involved. I now understand this as a movement, a mixture of a smaller band of money-mongers running a criminal enterprise while the preponderance of the movement is engaged in an ideological war to create within the U.S. a theocratic oligarchy. Folks like Pence, and Pompeo, and Barr fit into the latter while Flynn, Trump, and and a few others comprise the former. Toss in a few southerners who still refuse to accept the outcome of the Civil War and you have the new/old Republican party.

And it is an insidious movement that claims support from those in none of the three main groups - well-to-do who profit from the pillage of the treasury, and those who for generations have been taught that there will be a second coming of an all-powerful King who will judge and punish the wicked but save the righteous, and for them a temporary strongman who is on their side will do for now.

Hopefully, some aspect of his true nature that turns some of this coalition against him will be exposed in time to stop his reelection. But that is certainly no given as what we are dealing with is emotion, not rationality.

The psychology of accomodation: Peter Wehner:

Quote

“Now it’s not just a defense of Trump. It’s a defense of their defense of Trump,” Wehner said. “To indict him is to indict themselves, and to indict their own judgment, and that’s hard for any human being.”

The result: “They will defend him regardless of what happens, come hell or high water.

[barmar]

y66, on 2019-October-14, 06:12, said:

Hard to believe anyone takes the Rudy Guiliani heroically exposing nefarious plots line seriously. Trump supporters have their reasons but they were not born yesterday.

Often it seems like they were.

They believe the Mueller report completely exonerated Trump, because Barr said so in his summary, and Trump repeated this. Most of them still believe this even after the report was released to the public and Mueller testified to Congress.

They happily chanted "Lock her up!" about Hillary and "Send them back!" about the Squad during his rallies.

I think they've drunk the Kool-Aid, they really think there's a left-wing conspiracy trying to oust Trump.

[y66]

Winstonm, on 2019-October-14, 07:55, said:

I have been trying to understand this administration using a criminal enterprise model but could not find enough of a pool of money to share to explain the participation of everyone involved. I now understand this as a movement, a mixture of a smaller band of money-mongers running a criminal enterprise while the preponderance of the movement is engaged in an ideological war to create within the U.S. a theocratic oligarchy. Folks like Pence, and Pompeo, and Barr fit into the latter while Flynn, Trump, and and a few others comprise the former. Toss in a few southerners who still refuse to accept the outcome of the Civil War and you have the new/old Republican party.

And it is an insidious movement that claims support from those in none of the three main groups - well-to-do who profit from the pillage of the treasury, and those who for generations have been taught that there will be a second coming of an all-powerful King who will judge and punish the wicked but save the righteous, and for them a temporary strongman who is on their side will do for now.

Hopefully, some aspect of his true nature that turns some of this coalition against him will be exposed in time to stop his reelection. But that is certainly no given as what we are dealing with is emotion, not rationality.

You sound like Jack Reacher in Never Go Back. My term for the movement you're referring to is corporatism.

[Winstonm]

y66, on 2019-October-14, 09:31, said:

You sound like Jack Reacher in Never Go Back. My term for the movement you're referring to is corporatism.

Corporatism=fascism? To me, a theocratic oligarchy makes more sense as the goals of corporatism merge with the idea of a small group of mostly white wealthy Christian-supporters making the rules.

In support of my argument:

Quote

For the first time in at least 100 years, the US Cabinet has a bible study group. What do they learn? What does Donald Trump make of it? And why aren't women allowed to teach?

Every Wednesday, some of the world's most powerful people meet in a conference room in Washington DC to learn about God.

The location can't be revealed - the Secret Service won't allow it - but the members can.

Vice-President Mike Pence. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. Energy Secretary Rick Perry. Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The list goes on.

In total, 10 cabinet members are "sponsors" of the group. Not everyone attends every meeting - they are busy people - but they go if they can.

Meetings last between 60 and 90 minutes, and members are free to contact the teacher after-hours. So who is the man leading the United States' most-influential bible study?

Yikes! This is the guy leading the charge:

Quote

Drollinger believes the Bible teaches the separation of church and state....

...."I believe in institutional separation, but not influential separation," he says

"No matter what the institution is - the family, commerce, education - it needs the bulwark precepts of the word of God in order to function correctly…

Or as Richard Pryor might have said, We're not really separating, separating. We're only kind of separating.

[y66]

Winstonm, on 2019-October-14, 10:02, said:

Corporatism=fascism?

Yup. Fascism is the political arm.

[kenberg]

https://www.washingt...30e3_story.html

So Trump made his choice, after which Turkey is doing what everyone understood Turkey would do. Of course Trump has explained how he will deal with this, he will totally obliterate the Turkish economy. All this is good for whom, exactly? I do understand that Trump is a stable genius with an unmatched mind, but this three dimensional chess is hard to follow for us lesser mortals.

Not to worry, this is Monday. The policy will change by Thursday or Friday. It's all fake news anyway.