ISIL War in Iraq and Syria II

[priam11]

If they actually want to do something useful they could arm Kurds and all the enemies of Turkey and SA.

Yes because that's never not worked out in the past...

[Papay]

https://twitter.com/AFP/status/1184521699003383815

According to AFP Donald Trump claimed that PKK is a bigger threat than ISIS. Wow. The old man really has lost it

[PointOfViewGun]

https://twitter.com/AFP/status/1184521699003383815
According to AFP Donald Trump claimed that PKK is a bigger threat than ISIS. Wow. The old man really has lost it

If it wasn't before, it certainly is now, given all the boost it got from foreigners. ISIL will come and go but PKK will likely linger on.

[PointOfViewGun]

Washington Examiner became party to ABC's video blunder. They tried to shift the blame on using the video on a former Turkish mayor saying that he posted it first. Despite being as disgusting as any person would be, that former mayor is not the source of the ABC video.

'Disinformation': Kentucky video ABC said was 'slaughter in Syria' was spread by Turkish politician

The video shared by ABC News purporting to show Turkish forces bombarding Syrian Kurds — actually footage of a night machine gun demonstration at Knob Creek Gun Range in Kentucky — was shared on Twitter by a Turkish politician days earlier.


İbrahim Melih Gökçek, a Turkish politician in President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s governing Justice and Development Party, shared the video on Oct. 9 in a viral tweet to his more than 4 million followers with a caption in Turkish that celebrated bombs being dropped on the Kurdish People's Protection Units, known as the YPG. “How much of the ammunition the U.S. had given to the YPG, would you say, was destroyed in one go?” the tweet said.


Turkey analyst Ilhan Tanir pointed out the tweet by Gökçek, who was mayor of the Turkish capital Ankara from 1994 to 2017, on Monday.

There are two very important mistakes in this reporting. First of all, the video former mayor shared on Twitter is not the as the one ABC showed. Former mayor's video starts mid-firing while ABC's video starts at the beginning of the firing. Clearly, ABC did not use the video from former mayor's tweet. What's worse is if an ABC staff did indeed saw the video first on former mayor's feed he or she searched for it, likely found out that it was from Kentucky, but used it anyways.

The second gem is that they based this on İlhan Tanir who is a known Gulenist, as in Fetullah Gülen who is on record telling his followers to keep low profile till the day they have the power to overtake the government, the guy who is involved with the latest coup attempt in Turkey, working with the Gulen-affiliated Ahval News.

[Kyriakos]

Well...


At least hopefully, if for no other reason, Trump will do something so as to not lose face.
A discussion between two senile old men, one of whom controls a superpower and the other ridiculously thinks his country is also one


Also, WTF is that centipede Trump has a signature???

[Tureuki]

Pence announced that an agreement has been reached, YPG will withdraw from the agreed safe zone and in exchange Turkey will halt the operation. But how are they gonna implement that? US is pretty much out of scene right now, YPG collaborates with Russia and Assad, why would they listen to US?

[Kyriakos]

Turkey collaborates with Isis and Al-Nusra, why would they listen to the US either

[ioannis76]

Well...


At least hopefully, if for no other reason, Trump will do something so as to not lose face.
A discussion between two senile old men, one of whom controls a superpower and the other ridiculously thinks his country is also one


Also, WTF is that centipede Trump has a signature???

Oh, the last phrase of the letter...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWNaR-rxAic

[alhoon]

Turkey's aspirations to join the EU are not within the topic of this thread. If you wish to discuss Turkey's EU aspirations and\or place in NATO in the face of the recent events please make a different thread.

[ioannis76]

https://www.timesofisrael.com/rights...imes-in-syria/

Amnesty International accuses Turkey of war crimes in Syria
Rights group alleges that Turkish military and allied rebels have carried out ‘summary killings and unlawful attacks’ in Kurdish areas

And the joke of the week:

A group of Dutch IS women and their children are suing the Dutch State. If the state doesn't pick them up from the prison camps in northern Syria, then they "will hold the government liable for their suffering"

https://syria.liveuamap.com/en/2019/...r-children-are


So, a group of women that joined a bunch of psychopathic murderers on their killing spree, wants "daddy" to pick them up, after their murder tour is over.
That's what you get for being soft, Europe. I bet the Dutch state will actually take them seriously.

[Nebaki]

I live in a fantasy world? I know exactly what terrorism. Tell me all of the terrorist attacks attributed to the YPG.

Please Define Terrorism - there are already enough reports and proofs that goes to the Account of YPG - Do you think that all thoses Operation inside Turkey and even some Bomb Attacks in Istanbul was possible without the contribution of that Cancer from Syria? They was the main Reason and they even made some Bomb Attacks in Turkey possible. It´s probably OK for you if some People die in Turkey with no Reason but it´s against your point of view when Turkey takes some actions against it?

If you think the Turls can brush the Russians or Syrians aside you're being delusional.

Well they brushed some Muricans which already leaving their Levant dreams and Syrians or Assad is nothing more then a representative/puppet of Russia, beside this i don´t think that Russia can afford another War in long-term after Georgia and Crimea and even USA knows that.

[Love Mountain]

Russia can afford all the wars it wants, costs aren't the constraining factor in their military adventures. On the other hand, American presence is a definitive barrier to any Russian intervention. A barrier that's now gone.

[Nebaki]

Russia can afford all the wars it wants, costs aren't the constraining factor in their military adventures.

How not? because they sit on some Ressources? In the meanwhile:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Love Mountain]

Because at a rate of less than 5$ million per day, it would take over 30 years of warfare to deplete Russian foreign reserves. So yeah, because Russia sits on resources, namely a gigantic pile of money.

[conon394]

Because at a rate of less than 5$ million per day, it would take over 30 years of warfare to deplete Russian foreign reserves. So yeah, because Russia sits on resources, namely a gigantic pile of money.

Well that's not entirely true. Its budget is back in surplus but that was based on a lot domestic cuts, and the retirement age extension were hardly greeted with flag waving. Putin is under pressure for some give backs at home. Now he two foreign adventures Ukraine, and Syria he in deep with. Syria is kinda broken, unless the gulf Arabs decide its game over and come to terms with Assad and bring cash., Putin will have to pony up money to keep his new strategic outpost stable.

[dogukan]

It seems the best of the bad scenario happened to Kurds: They are included in the constitunal process. They will largely not get ethnically cleansed by Turkey(though Serekaniye might be a perma-loss). However, the arab area between kurdish settlements will be bolstered by Islamists. Though it is not a big enough area.
Afrin's situation post-war is still unknown.
YPG is not declared a terror group. Assad and Russia will give them something, but much less than what they expected. They will leave the security tasks at the border, which is fine. What matters for them is how much of the political systems they will retain. Given that regime is severely weakened and in need of internal stability and support, Kurds can become a natural ally for assad in the near future.
The political and military networks the Kurds have created for a decade will not be vaporized in the face of turkish army and will move on to further to organize Kurds in one way or another within a weakened Syria. Rojava is gone for now.

Worst of the good scenario happened to Assad: There will not be a complete return to status-quo. The country is still heavily divided. The real task will start for him AFTER the war. He still has to create a political system and retain power even though his base isn't that majority. On the other hand, he basically purged sunni islam from Syria. The real ethnic cleansing happened there.
Lets just hope the baathists do not re-install their mafiatic regime and tyranny in full force and be more collaborative. In that sense, the presence of Americans to the east still gives ypg some kind of leverage for a better final deal. Hope this will open the doors for some reforms in Syria.

Worst of the worst happened to FSA:
It is clear that what Turkey was given (serekaniye and tel abyad area up to 30 KMs) was for the final push on İdlib. Assad will end FSA in İdlib. Expect extreme repression of any FSA remnants and supporters. They will not have any breathing space in the post-war era. Millions of Syrians are unlikely to return anywhere. They either have to completely shut their mouths to go back or stay away if they are up on the regime list.
Turkey will not be getting its colonial venture.
Turkey only gets 10km to patrol WITH RUSSIANS. No TFSA. And you can't really build anything on those 10kms, and the agreement does not allow that. The small desert area between Tel Abyad-Serekaniye is where some COULD technically settle. But can that region really carry a lot of pop? I do not know. And how will they survive there without the regime and not being annexed by Turkey? I expect Assad to return for them, unless he is willing to give up part of Syria.

How not? because they sit on some Ressources? In the meanwhile:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

you should have shared their faces 6 hours later as well.

[PointOfViewGun]

A nice visual aid on what was apparently agreed between Turkey and Russia:



Best outcome out of all of this debacle is that Turkey is getting closer to sitting on a table with the Syrian government.

[Love Mountain]

Well that's not entirely true. Its budget is back in surplus but that was based on a lot domestic cuts, and the retirement age extension were hardly greeted with flag waving. Putin is under pressure for some give backs at home. Now he two foreign adventures Ukraine, and Syria he in deep with. Syria is kinda broken, unless the gulf Arabs decide its game over and come to terms with Assad and bring cash., Putin will have to pony up money to keep his new strategic outpost stable.

Well let me put it this way, the question of money isn't really about whether Russian will bankrupt itself by waging wars, it won't. The question is whether Putin personally believes the cost to benefit ratio to be acceptable. Considering the way Russia has been buying up all the fossil fuel rights around the world, I'm pretty sure he thinks yes. Russia will probably never justify full scale conflict, but anything up to a moderate intervention, probably 8-10 thousand troops, he'll okay.

On the larger topic, I believe Turkish goals to be quite limited. They aren't looking to invade the entirety of Northern Syria, only a sliver. The Manjib move likely inconvenienced Turkey, but I doubt that they were completely blind to the possibility of it happening. While I approve military sanctions on Turkey, this is quite literally the international equivalent of "virtue signalling" and I expect normal relations to continue within 4-5 years. Tense, but profitable. In my opinion, what Turkey is doing is very similar to what Israel did with Lebanon and PLO camps a few decades ago.

[Tureuki]

Despite all that reaction and turmoil, this whole process was relatively smooth. Possible sanctions are likely averted due to agreement with US. Turkey reached it's primary goal of driving out YPG from it's borders and breaking YPG domination east of Euphrates. Till only a few weeks ago, they had a tight grip over entirety of east euphrates, they had been regularly receiving tonnes of equipment from US, everything went upside down for them. In addition to this, TFSA and refugees gained another haven.

They might still hope for some kind of an autonomy, but that wouldn't be anywhere close to what they dreamt of.

I hope US does not entirely leaves Syria, continious US-Russian interest struggle creates a more balanced scenario.

[Heathen Hammer]

Actually it's very possible, and indeed always has been so.

Apparently the footage they showed was already edited to hide certain details that would give away that it was within US, so it was definitely not an accident.
Actually Western propaganda "news" agencies, have quite an extensive history of using entirely irrelevant footage of something and claim it is footage of something else (it was either BBC or CNN that used footage of civilian bodies from American aggression against Iraq as proof of "Qaddafi's war crimes"), and then claim it was a "mistake" (if they get caught and called out that is). After all, agencies like ABC primary goal is to ... spread propaganda. In this case it is pro-war propaganda against Trump's decision to leave Syria.