Turkey masses troops for attack on Kurds in Syria?

Guardian:
Turkey is massing troops near a town in northern Syria held by a Kurdish-led force backed by the US, a war monitor and Turkish media have said.

The buildup comes despite Ankara saying it would delay a promised offensive in eastern Syria in the wake of Donald Trump’s surprise announcement on Wednesday to withdraw US troops from the country, which it welcomed.

Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has vowed to dislodge the Kurdish militia, which Ankara sees as an extension of the insurgency within its borders. The US has worked with the militia to drive Islamic State out of Syria since 2014, and the alliance had soured relations between Ankara and Washington.

A deal reached in June according to which US and Turkish troops would patrol the area around the Syrian town of Manbij allayed some of Turkey’s fears, but Ankara says the US and the Kurdish militia failed to live up to their end of the deal and that it will launch an offensive against it. Turkey already has troops in north-western Syria and has backed Syrian fighters there clearing towns and villages of Isis militants and Kurdish fighters.

The Turkish IHA news agency reported on Sunday that a Turkish commando unit had been sent into Syria overnight.
...
Erdogan can't be trusted to honor even a short-term agreement.  His war against the Kurds could spark a wider war with Syria and Russia and possible Arab states.  NATO should tell him that it will not defend Turkey in such an event.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t...
Read more

Is the F-35 obsolete?

Headline USA: Pentagon Fires Back after Musk Calls Its Most Expensive Project ‘Obsolete’ 'Yeah, as I'm sure you can appreciate, Mr. Musk is, currently, a private citizen, I'm not going to make any comments about what a private citizen may have to say about the F-35....'   ... ... Drones appear to be replacing jets for many operations.  The Russia-Ukraine war is an example of that.  Drones are often hard to detect and can be used for intelligence operations as well as for attacking enemy targets.  It would not surprise me to see drones engaging other drones in combat.  They also cost much less than manned fighters.  
Read more