In 2012, Erdogan asked al Assad to put Muslim Brothers into his Cabinet. When al Assad refused, the former minister said, Erdogan made clear that he would back all efforts to remove the president and replace him with Islamists.
By @CharlesMGlass
stratforshare.page.link/ofhR
By @CharlesMGlass
stratforshare.page.link/ofhR
Turkey has much to gain if its Syria gamble succeeds — control of a large area it abandoned in 1918, removal of thousands of Syrian refugees from Turkey to parts of Syria they do not know, containment of the YPG & PKK to areas south of its safe zone & a voice in Syria's future.
It also has much to lose — the lives of its soldiers, perpetual warfare along its border and the undying animosity of Kurds in both Syria and Turkey.
"The Turks have always pursued an unhappy policy in regard to native populations," wrote Gen Erich Ludendorff of his WWI Ott allies. "They have gone on the principle of taking everything & giving nothing. Now they had to reckon w these people (Kurds, Armenians & Arabs) as enemies
Erdogan's decision to expand his military occupation of northwest Syria to the northeast & destroy the YPG is popular among all factions in Turkey. The new mayor of Istanbul, Imamoglu, who won office on promises to resist Erdogan in Istanbul, backs the military operation.
The pro-war fever infecting Turkey replicates the flag-waving that accompanied the country's entry into World War I. When the Ott fleet attacked Russia's forts along the Black Sea, Turkish political parties outdid each other to support an offensive that started well & ended badly
The obstacle to ending the Syrian civil war remains Turkey's sole control of the NW Syrian provinces of Idlib & Aleppo & the estimated 60,000 rebels, most of them jihadists, it controls & has used as mercenaries against the Kurds. The politician likely to decide the fate is Putin
Ending the endless wars is not unlike decolonization, which Europeans undertook following the bankruptcy of their economies during World War II. Most of the colonial withdrawals were as disastrous for the countries involved as the colonial conquests had been.
Think of the massacres that followed the partition of India in 1947, the war in Palestine when the British withdrew in 1948, the French
