Thread by @TimInHonolulu

1. In 2014, when I witnessed the brave men and women of the #YPG #YPJ refuse to yield to ISIS though entirely surrounded at Kobane, no supplies, scrounging for ammo & weapons but refusing to quit, I begged the Obama administration to give them support & they did. With a US

2. commitment of air and artillery support plus needed supplies we helped defeat ISIS. The #SDF bore the burden of the battle. They buried their dead and cared for their wounded. And they brought democracy to North and East Syria. Turkey hates them because they represent the

3. 50 year failed Turkish policy of Kurdish Apartheid but more than that they represent the end of the age of patriarchy that has burdened the people of the Mideast and is the foundation of all its failed systems. Women are equal not just in theory but in reality in the NES.

4. Their free society applies customs of local conflict resolution that does not need a central governance that has historically becomes the road to oppression. The force that Turkey claims threatens it only threatens authoritarianism. Turkey is no longer free democratic state.

5. Courts have ceased to function, paranoiac coup chasing obsessed dictator Erdogan needs to satisfy the blood lust of his base, the genocidal Grey Wolves, who once shot the Pope. Erdogan has supplied and allowed ISIS to operate freely in Turkey. They shut the door on Kobane

6. and would not allow relief while Turkish soldiers openly consorted with ISIS. Now this force that allied with terrorists wants the land the Kurds, Turkmen, Syriac Christians and Arabs bled and died to liberate. The betrayal Erdogan demands of us would not just betray

7. our brave and loyal Syrian partners, it would betray all that our nation stands for. It's time we stand up to Erdogan and demand he backs down or unleash the #CAATSA sanctions that are already long overdue and prepare to defend free democratic and secular Syria and

8. do something in the Mideast that will live on for generations that saw a small dedicated force of brave Americans coming to a hopeless part of the Mideast and establishing peace democracy and justice. But to secure those blessings of liberty, for today and the

9. foreseeable future, a no fly zone is the the only safe zone anyone in North and East Syria needs. And that should be the end of the discussion with the dictator Erdogan.