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from the backstabbing-on-the-syrian-front dept.
US to stop arming anti-IS Syrian Kurdish YPG militia - Turkey
The US is to stop supplying arms to the Syrian Kurdish militia the YPG, Turkey has said. Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said President Donald Trump had made the promise in a phone call to his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The White House said it was making "adjustments" to its support for partners inside Syria but did not explicitly name the YPG.
Turkey has long complained about US support for the group. Washington has viewed the YPG as a key player in the fight against so-called Islamic State (IS), but Ankara brands the group's fighters as terrorists. Turkey says the YPG is as an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a group it has been fighting for decades in south-eastern Turkey. The US, however, has seen the YPG as distinct from the PKK. In May it announced it would supply arms to the Kurdish elements of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which were poised to drive IS from its stronghold of Raqqa. It had previously armed only Arab elements of the SDF.
Goodbye, Kurdistan?
Also at Reuters, NPR, Daily Sabah, and RT.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Sunday November 26 2017, @11:31AM (2 children)
This isn't really that odd to begin with. Giving arms to the kurds pisses off at least three nations - Turkey, Iran and Iraq - since part of their nations form the basis of the new, imaginary, Kurdish nation and they don't want that. Since Iraq is currently an American puppet regime, Turkey is a NATO-member and Iran isn't yet on the to-nuke-list one doesn't have to piss them off to much by helping to arm a really large and organized insurgent group. Arming them to beat back IS could have been a great move, after all they die for next to nothing instead of engaging in another middle eastern war with actual american boots on the ground -- even tho they are there already but just not on a massive scale.
Historically it doesn't seem like the USA (or anyone for that matter) has the best track-record for arming insurgent groups since they almost always turn on their benefactors in the end in one way or another. Certainly so when the good times, cash- and weapon shipments stops arriving and they feel screwed over by Uncle Sam. They seem to believe it will go on to the end while the benefactors stop for one reason or another, usually some scandal of epic proportions or they feel like the job is done. IS is now "defeated" so it's mission accomplished, they are not going to keep feeding them so that they can topple the Syrian regime -- that would would anger Russia and other nations in the region. So instead you'll now have a bunch of heavily armed kurds sitting in norther Iraq getting that old feeling of being betrayed. Good times ahead ...
(Score: 5, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Sunday November 26 2017, @11:51AM (1 child)
Regarding that "imaginary" Kurdish nation - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_S%C3%A8vres [wikipedia.org]
The Treaty of Sèvres (French: Traité de Sèvres) was one of a series of treaties[3] that the Central Powers signed after their defeat in World War I. Hostilities had already ended with the Armistice of Mudros. The treaty was signed on 10 August 1920, in an exhibition room at the Manufacture nationale de Sèvres porcelain factory[4] in Sèvres, France.[5]
The Sèvres treaty marked the beginning of the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire, and its ultimate annihilation. The terms it stipulated included the renunciation of all non-Turkish territory and its cession to the Allied administration.[6] Notably, the ceding of Eastern Mediterranean lands allowed the creation of new forms of government, including Mandatory Palestine and the French Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon.[7]
The terms of the treaty stirred hostility and nationalist feeling amongst Turks. The signatories of the treaty were stripped of their citizenship by the Grand National Assembly led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk,[8] and the treaty ultimately led to the Turkish War of Independence in which Atatürk led the Turkish nationalists to defeating the combined armies of the signatories of the Treaty of Sèvres including the remnants of the Ottoman Empire. This led to a new treaty, the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, in which Turkish sovereignty was preserved through the establishment of the modern-day Republic of Turkey.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by PartTimeZombie on Sunday November 26 2017, @09:47PM
The Sykes–Picot Agreement [wikipedia.org] was the stab in the back for the Arabs and Kurds (and all the other people of the Middle East who should have been given independence) by France and Britain.
It was kept secret because Britain was lying to it's allies the Arabs about what they were going to get post-war.