MENA, MENA, Tekel, Parsin (Middle East, North Africa & other Geopolitical Hotspots) 2018

Yemeni prisoner exchange seems like good news, even if it only helps out the prisoners and leads no further.

Re: the Friday call between Trump and Ergodan that lead to 1) Trump's decision to evacuate US troops from Syria in 60-100 days, 2) US go-ahead for Turkish military to move into areas held by US Kurdish allies (YPG, etc), 3) a $3.5 B order for Patriot missiles, and 4) consideration to extradite opposition cleric Gulen from US to Turkey, Ragıp Soylu's twitter is a pretty interesting source.

But money can't buy love or happiness. But, it can buy US foreign policy.

this is obviously not good for the kurd proxies, but I'm not entirely sure what the end game was going to be here after the "defeat of isis" in terms of US support for irregular forces who are enemies of a NATO ally (no matter how poor a NATO ally Turkey is)

there will be countries providing aid (covert + overt) to the kurds; they have a real opportunity imo tho the risks are also enormous. i can't help but think about 1948. obv the world is much more different today but building a state is a treacherous enterprise.

can't someone just assassinate Erdogan already

talking to my Turkish friends about the country's political situation is depressing

psyched for the coming genocide.

As Syria’s government consolidates control after years of civil war, President Bashar al-Assad’s army is doubling down on executions of political prisoners, with military judges accelerating the pace they issue death sentences, according to survivors of the country’s most notorious prison.

In interviews, more than two dozen Syrians recently released from the Sednaya military prison in Damascus described a government campaign to clear the decks of political detainees. The former inmates said prisoners are being transferred from jails across Syria to join death-row detainees in Sednaya’s basement and then be executed in pre-dawn hangings.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/world/syria-bodies/

https://i.imgur.com/HMQuKOW.png

Erdogan called the Kurds "terrorists" too.

So should we do a 2019 thread?

psyched, I tell you.

There was a time decades ago when Kurdish nationalists followed a path that included sporadic acts of political violence against Turkish civilians. They have long since abandoned that strategy as unproductive, but the Turkish authorities will never abandon their insistence on calling them terrorists for as long as they can gain any political advantage by doing so. Don't expect that to change.

Hey, at least once Assad and Erdogan have finished going door to door wiping out their 'enemies' I can point to these posts and say that i knew it was coming. sigh.

There has been some co-operation between SAA and YPG wrt Turkey as of late

SAA going into Manbij after YPG asked them to.

There was a time decades ago when Kurdish nationalists followed a path that included sporadic acts of political violence against Turkish civilians. They have long since abandoned that strategy as unproductive, but the Turkish authorities will never abandon their insistence on calling them terrorists for as long as they can gain any political advantage by doing so. Don't expect that to change.

― A is for (Aimless), Saturday, January 12, 2019 6:18 PM(two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

There's been civilian deaths in pkk attacks in Turkey in the 2010s

Isis not decimated yet

Not extinguished, yet, by any means. But decimated literally means 'reduced by 10%' and that seems well within plausibility.

that's the historic definition which has evolved into "remove a large percentage or part of."

Not sure removing ISIS from Syria would really amount to eliminating them.

What I find really amazing is their distributed network of propagandists and recruiters throughout Europe persists. Surely the intelligence agencies have identified major nodes in this network, but we've yet to see major co-ordinated arrests, and Dabiq/Rumiyah is still being published. I've wondered whether intel agencies are working at cross-purposes to foreign policy agencies in this, as useful fools may have future uses.

New thread time:

What Do You MENA (Middle East, North Africa and other nearby Political Hotspots) 2019