Aaaaand once again, the United States screws over the only ally in the region that has proven their worth time and time again.
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Look at the Houthis. How long until the Kurds have their own drones, ready to strike at vital Turkish assets?
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Supine? More like prostrate.
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Didn’t take long…
Props to @Keith_McClary several posts above
So basically ⊥rump is saying: “Turkey, I’m giving you permission to invade Syria, but if you do anything that I wouldn’t do, I’ll destroy your economy.”
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and this is why it will take massive lobbying of republican senators to move this beyond the house. no matter what happens in the house, it is entirely up to the republican party as to whether trump remains in office or is convicted. .
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My recommended wikipedia articles for the day:
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The Kurds were pretty (weirdly) pro-Trump until now. They believed they had his support, beyond that of previous presidents. All I could think was, “He’s going to screw you over eventually.”
He had an earlier comment about how “if reports are true” after the White House had released the statement that the press reports were referencing. He tries so, so hard to give the president the benefit of the doubt that he didn’t say what he publicly said.
Or, you know, you don’t let the president fuck over US allies (especially those in a precarious position), just to appease the interests of autocrats that he’s personally beholden to. That’s just bad all around.
The president is not well.
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That wasn’t my reading of the situation. The Syrian Kurds were left alone by the US, who formed allegiances with just about everyone else before the Kurds unexpectedly came out as the second largest faction. There are two factions of Kurds though, the KCK who are libertarian socialists following the ideas of Murray Bookchin and Abdullah Öcalan (who was a Marxist-Leninist until about 15 years ago), and the Iraqi Kurds who have the more traditional (to the US) social liberal and conservative parties. The Iraqi Kurds are more likely to be friendly to the US regardless of the party, while the KCK viewed the US as allies but strongly disagree with US politics.
Basically, it’s complicated.
I m wondering what will happen with the US troops now, some of them have shown signs of being sympathetic to the politics of North East Syria. I wouldn’t be surprised if some go AWOL and/or leak intel to them.
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Only thing about that is that Russia Iran and Syria actually did most of the heavy lifting fighting Isis. Turkey funnelled in Saudi cash and salafist fighters for years to them while attacking Kurds (not ISIS). US support for Turkey to the detriment of other allies is consistent for decades (remember turning off Greece’s air defences?
But the fuck would Graham know the difference between Sunni and Shia?
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Yeah, the Iraqi Kurds seem to be the ones that were pro-Trump, though I’m wondering how long that will last now…
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They may not be behaving much as such at the moment, but the Turks are actually treaty allies of the US (NATO), whereas the US has no such agreement with the Kurds, i.e. they are allies of circumstance, nothing more. That said, the US isn’t exactly a steadfast ally of the Turks either, what with the suspicious circumstances under which Fethullah Gülen was granted refuge in the US.
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The Houthis have nation-state support from Iran. Who do the Kurds have backing them up, other than Israel?
While Israeli-Turkish relations are glacial nowadays, I doubt the Israelis will actually start an all-out proxy war with the Turks for the sake of the Kurds, specially when the Turks are doing such a good job hobbling the Assad regime, Israel’s sworn enemy.
In any case, Erdögan’s real beef is with Netanyahu, not Israel as such, and the latter’s likely imprisonment should help thaw that relationship (the Turks remember Arabs betraying with the British, and as far as they are concerned the Arab loss of Palestine is just desserts for that treachery).
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The Turks and Kurds are both Sunni. Analyzing everything through the lens of Sunni-Shia rivalry is as simplistic as analyzing European history as Catholic vs. Protestant (e.g. until Lepanto the Catholic French were allied with the Muslim Turks against the Catholic Austrians and Venetians).
Thanks to Trump, we’re not anyone’s allies, at the moment.
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Well, there is always Russia…
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The problem being that whatever Trump’s relationship with Putin, Russia isn’t the US’s ally. (As much as Trump would like to believe his “l’état, c’est moi!” pronouncements.) And since Putin isn’t really even Trump’s ally…
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Trump. Turning out to be an equal opportunity under-the-bus thrower.
(I wonder if Erdogan agreed to not extradite Trump to the US if Trump fled to Turkey.)
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Erdogan agreed to turn over the Crowdstrike server.
One word: Kompromat
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