Turkey is about to invade northern Syria in order to take on the Kurds, our allies, there. (I started this before the in fact did do just that) They have a green light in this from President Trump.
Most people who have looked at this have been horrified. The Kurds have put up an admirable successful fight against long odds, aided in party by their long martial history obtained while trying to secure a state of their own.
A few pundits, however hold the opposite view and feel that Trump is correct. Very few, and most of them put their opinions in much different terms than Trump has. But, giving them their due, what could be the basis for pulling out and handing over an ally to their enemies. Well, no less of journal than the Wall Street journal has declare has declared that the Turks have a point in being upset with the Untied States.
But do any of them justify stepping aside and allowing Turkey to invade northern Syria in order to put down the Kurds. Only one, and only if you agree with the logic of taking sides.
The Journal notes that the Turks cooperated with the U.S. effort in Syria in spite of having misgivings, but that the U.S. didn't rally to its defense when it shot down a Russian combat aircraft. That action, which occurred during the Obama Administration, is very shoddy treatment of an ally, but it doesn't justify an invasion of Kurdish Syria. The Journal also notes that the United States has been harboring an odd religious figure who is in opposition to the Turkish government and whom some believe is associated with a recent coup attempt. That also is plenty reason for the Turkish administration to distrust the US but it's also no reason to invade Kurdish Syria.
The real reason to take that position, and the only one that makes sense as an argument, it that the US, in order to combat ISIL in Syria, armed one of the Kurdish militias which we've formerly branded as a terrorist organization and which has caused lots of deaths in Turkey in the past. That would be a shocking proposition for Turkey and hard for it to accept. And defeating that militia, which is aligned against it, is something that the Turks would wish for.
But here's the rub.
There's no justifying terrorism in any sense. But there's also no good justification for occupying the lands of another people. The Turks are occupying part of Kurdistan and some Kurds are reacting with violence, and have been for a long time. Neither position is acceptable.
But quite often we excuse one or the other. People will glorify Michael Collins, the Irish terrorist leader, and refuse to accept he was a terrorist who was seeking Irish Independence by illegitimate, if successful, means. Irish desires for independence were legitimate and the British occupation became illegitimate. But one doesn't excuse the other in either direction. Likewise some have glorified any other number of terrorist organizations along similar lines or those opposing them.
So Turkey has a legitimate beef about the U.S. again under President Obama, arming the Kurds. But then the Kurds have a legitimate beef with Turkey for occupying their territory when they are not wanted there, particularly in light of the fact that its a historical accident that Kurdistan is not a state while Syria is, even though both were Ottoman territories until 1918. If Turkey has been our ally since more or less 1945 (it really wasn't in any sense before that), it still doesn't excuse this oddity any more than the United Kingdom being our ally meant that we should have opposed Irish independence.
And on the status of Turkey being an ally of the United States, it is, in a formal sense. It's a member of NATO. But it's an ally because it was an opponent of the Soviet Union, the dangerous Communist state that was once on its border. Being a democratic state was not a requirement for being a member of NATO. Turkey often was, but it sometimes wasn't, a status it ironically shared with Greece, which fought a war with Turkey, while both were members of NATO, over Cyprus. It was a minor war, but a war none the less.
NATO membership is still important, to be sure, but the dynamics that lead Turkey into the western alliance have changed. The United States was allied to more than one less than democratic nation during the Cold War. Since the end of the Cold War the necessity for such alliances had diminished, and with it the necessity that an allied power meet certain standards should have risen.
The problems begin when those standards start to be applied here. Turkey is our long time ally, as noted above, and is using some American armor in its invasion. The Kurds are largely left wing socialist in orientation. But the Kurds are fighting for what we said we were for in 1917-18 and claim to have been for every since, the right to national self determination. Turkey is a state that retains remnants of its Ottoman past principally in the form of having a large Kurdish territory within its borders.
In the end, the Turkish fight with the Kurds is over that. They'd like out, the Turks would like to keep them in, whether they like it or not. They're not a small group that can be ignored like some other ethnicities that are too small to form a viable state. And a Kurdish state right now would likely be among the most western and most secular in the region. The fact that there isn't such a state is itself a remnant of 1918, when the European powers carved up the region based upon their own ideas, and apparently none of those ideas reflected an independent Kurdistan.
Anyway its looked at, if we'd stayed in, the Turks likely would have stayed out. If that would have weakened our relationship to the current Turkish government, that frankly likely wouldn't have mattered much. It likely also would not have lead to a Kurdish state. But it might have kept the bloodshed we see now from occurring.
.tif)
