Turkey’s torment: U.S. policy has not helped the NATO ally

[Holac]

The attack at Istanbul’s main airport last week, with a death toll of at least 45, makes it increasingly clear that U.S. floundering in the Mideast involving Turkey is a growing threat to the stability and well-being of that moderate, predominantly Muslim state, a cornerstone of the Western alliance for decades.

 

Turkey had been a model of evolving democracy and economic development in Eurasia for many years when successive American administrations decided that it could be employed as a key player in achieving its goals in various Middle Eastern countries, including Iraq and Syria, with which Turkey has borders. Turkey’s own orientation is somewhere between its majority’s Sunni Islam and the secularism introduced there subsequent to the fall of the Ottoman Empire and World War I, by its national hero, Kemal Ataturk.

 

Turkey’s president, Recip Tayyip Erdogan, has unfortunately become more autocratic as his regime becomes more defensive in response to increasingly sharp assaults from both resurgent Kurds and, now, from the Islamic State, which appears to be behind the Istanbul attack. Turkey is feeling menaced and shaken. That state is very much not to America’s advantage — but yet is due in no small part to U.S. policy.

 

Turkey’s government at one point had reached a point of some equilibrium with its estimated 25 percent Kurdish minority. Then the United States apparently concluded, based on battlefield experience, that virtually the only forces it can rely on to fight on its side in the conflicts in Iraq and Syria are Kurdish. American military aid bolstered considerably the Kurds’ capacity — not only to fight the Islamic State, but also to torment Turkey’s government and forces in Turkey.

 

In Iraq, the Kurdish north continues to build its ability to stand apart from the national government in Baghdad. In Syria, as other U.S.-backed forces including the New Syrian Army suffer defeat at the hands of IS troops, units of the also U.S.-backed Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces remain virtually the sole credible troops opposing IS in Syria. There are now underway efforts on the part of the some 6 million Kurds in Iran to gain ground there, led by rebel Kurdish Democratic Party forces active in Iran.

 

The Kurds maintain that their different forces in Iran, Iraq and Syria operate separately, but this is a claim that is hard to believe.

 

In the meantime, Turkey bleeds, from IS and Kurdish attacks. Its prospects of gaining admission to the European Union have suffered as well, based on the Istanbul and other attacks, as well as from disruption within the EU itself, signaled by the United Kingdom’s Brexit decision to separate itself, in part based on the possibility of Turkey joining the organization.

 

All in all, U.S. Mideast policy, including its support for the Kurds, needs a serious review, including consideration of its impact on ally Turkey.

 

http://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/editorials/2016/07/05/Turkey-s-torment-U-S-policy-has-not-helped-the-NATO-ally/stories/201607310011

[Holac]

Erdogan who realized Obama is unreliable, is mending ties with neighbors and Russia.