Why Didn’t ISIL Shock the Kurds?

August 1, 2015 By administrator

By: Kaziwa Salih
Despite having been founded in 1999 and having performed dozens of terrorist activities in the Middle East, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) didn’t capture the attention of the world. However, since it started massacring dozens of groups in 2014, carrying out beheadings, crucifixions, rapes, public executions, enslaving women and other brutal acts, it has not only captured the world’s attention but has become the focus of the world’s shock. This includes President Barack Obama of the United States, who reputedly confessed, “We don’t have a strategy yet,” for over two weeks regarding his plans for defeating ISIL.
The global community did not screen its strategy for defeating the world’s most dedicated and fanatical radical organization until it recognized how rapidly ISIL was flourishing and understood that it had set its sights beyond Iraq and Syria. However, Kurds were neither shocked by ISIL’s brutal actions nor unprepared for them.
Westerners were shocked by ISIL, and Kurds were shocked by the West’s shock. The Western revelation of the Kurds’ immediate organized plan of defend, the capacity of Kurdish female fighters is surprising for the Kurds. Their astonishment presents the consequence of Western ignorance of Kurdish struggles and their capacity for controlling violence in Middle East. What is currently considered new and dreadful for the global community, the Kurds have been suffering from for almost a century. ISIL is just another name, like the Turkish regime, Saddam Hussein, Bashar al-Assad and the Iranian regimes. For decades the Kurds have claimed that Turkey is a terrorist state performing terrorist acts against Kurds, as they did against Armenians, Greeks, Azeris, and Eastern Europeans, and supporting all the Islamic extremist groups in the Middle East. In the interest of a few trade collaborations with Turkey, Western superpowers twisted the equation, turning Kurds into terrorists, the Armenian genocide into a worthless local event and Turkey into a heroic rescuer, while the photos of its atrocities were too graphic for the Western media to publish them.

Turkish soldiers beheaded Kurdish men and proudly had their taken picture with them.

For example, photos of Turkish soldiers with the heads of beheaded Kurds might misinform viewers and make them think they are images of ISIL. However, this photo isof a Turkish militant and was taken during the 1990s. Turkish soldiers regularly beheaded Kurds, and taking a picture with the head of the victims was a sign of the self-righteous and heroic acts of the Turkish state. This proof of Turkey’s atrocities confirms that ISIL has learned its methods of brutality and showing off of its barbarian acts from Turkey, which also provides substantive support to ISIL.
Currently, the Western media has ultimately confessed that Turkey is providing direct financial aid and training, intelligence and logistical support to the ISIS terrorist organization. Yet the most honest statement was uttered by Gordon Duff, a senior editor of Veterans Today from Ohio, when in his interview with press TV he mentioned that ISIL terrorists “Are using Turkey as almost a superhighway.” He also added they were “moving freely in and out of Turkey.”In reality, Turkey is one of ISIL’s founders. From very beginning, in an official leaked letter from the Qatar embassy in Morocco that was written by, Naïf Abdullah Al Emadi, to the Qatar Minster of Foreign and Arab Affairs on June 2014, asserted that he was able to equip about 1,800volunteers from Morocco and other North African countries. He suggests that his government send these militants in three batches via the Libyan ports to Turkey. He also calls for urgent coordination with the Turkish side to receive the fighters at the appropriate port.

Turkey not only supports ISIL with militants and cooperation with other ISIL supporters, it also devotes a special hospital for ISIL and many bazaars (shops) that sell and advertise ISIL products in Istanbul.

Just because the above mentioned evidence might have not been published in English does not mean that America has no knowledge of it. Yet the ambiguity and lenience of the U.S toward Turkey’s great relations with ISIL seems to suggest that commercial interests with the West can lighten the effects of terrorist acts. In particular, “Turks are major business partners of the ISIL terrorists, as they are in cahoots with the militants in their oil and gas theft from Syria,” as Duff argues. He means the process of looting large quantities of Iraqi and Syrian oil with the help of NATO and the government in Ankara.
What the world community should at least understand is that the Ottoman Empire’s genocide, defunct in Europe, was never ended in the Middle East. In fact, the genocide of the Kurds in Turkey is one of the longest in history. In reaction to these atrocities and the silence of the world community, Kurds were compelled to arm themselves in self-defence for over 40 years. This initiative of the Kurds turned into a nightmare for Turkey, mainly in preventing their aim and political dream of reinstating the Ottoman Empire. Accordingly, Turkey expected that its nightmare could only be rooted out by ISIL, and its support of this terrorist organization will be overlooked, as is its help for other fundamentalist groups. Thus the Kurds weren’t shocked, nor caught off-guard. Correspondingly, the strategy to combat ISIL needs the political certification of the Kurds.
The world community, particularly the United States of America, in order to fight the terrorists, should constantly re-examine its previous political friends in the Middle East and rethink its conservative estimates regarding Turkey’s past and present to new, critical political decisions addressing current concerns in the world.

Press TV/ http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/11/06/385025/isil-using-turkey-as-superhighway/

The coward Barzani asking PKK Kurd “withdraw’ from northern Iraq

August 1, 2015 By administrator

BAGHDAD – The Associated Press

Iraq’s Kurdish regional government called on the outlawed Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) to “withdraw” from Iraq’s Kurdish territory Aug. 1 to prevent civilian deaths amid a campaign of Turkish airstrikes targeting the group.
A statement from the office of Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) President Massoud Barzani said the PKK “should withdraw its fighters from the Kurdish region so to ensure the civilians of Kurdistan don’t become victim of that fighting and conflict.”

Turkey’s Atrocity on Kurd continue 260 Kurdish PKK rebels killed in a week of raids

August 1, 2015 By administrator

Around 260 members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) have been killed and hundreds more wounded in Ankara’s week-long campaign of air strikes against targets of the outlawed group inside Turkey and in northern Iraq, the semi-official Anadolu Agency said on Aug. 1.

Without citing its sources, Anadolu said that among those wounded was Nurettin Demirtaş, the brother of the co-leader of Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), Selahattin Demirtas.
Ankara has launched a two-pronged anti-terror offensive against Islamic State of Iraq and the LEvant (ISIL) jihadists in Syria and the outlawed PKK militants in northern Iraq and inside Turkey after a wave of attacks in the country.

In the latest air strikes on July 31, 28 Turkish F-16s destroyed 65 targets of the PKK including shelters and arms depots, the report said. The heaviest air strikes were on July 30, when 80 Turkish aircraft hit 100 targets of the PKK, according to Anadolu.

“Up until now 260 terrorists have been rendered ineffective (killed) and 380-400 terrorists have been identified as injured, including the brother of Selahattin Demirtaş, Nurettin Demirtaş,” Anadolu Agency said in its report, adding that the air strikes were expected to continue.

The Turkish government has so far refused to officially disclose casualty figures, with one official telling AFP that “this is not a football game.”

Selahattin Demirtaş openly acknowledges that his elder brother Nurettin went to the Kandil Mountain in northern Iraq where the PKK’s military headquarters are based.

Demirtaş was asked about the report on Aug. 1.
“I cannot confirm the Anadolu Agency report, because my brother is not in Kandil,” the HDP co-leader said.
“My brother is not conducting a paid military service against [Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant] ISIL, he is resisting ISIL for the sake of his people,” he added.

Meanwhile, Turkish strikes against the PKK in northern Iraq killed at least six people on Aug. 1, AFP reported, citing local officials.

At around 4:00 a.m. Turkish warplanes struck the village of Zarkel, in the Rawanduz area east of Arbil, Nehro Abdullah, a local official told AFP, adding that two women were among six people killed in the raid, which he said completely destroyed several buildings.

He did not say whether the other victims were members of the outlawed PKK.

“We have received six bodies and eight wounded following the Turkish raids,” Maqsud Ismail Omar, a doctor and the head of the health directorate in the nearby town of Soran, told AFP.

Turkey PKK, attacked Police Headquarters: 2 killed

July 30, 2015 By administrator

PKK, attacked with rifles Pozantı District Police Department building. The police also clashed on the response. Short-term clash killed two police officers at the scene, while two PKK members were killed trying to enter the garden from different points of safety building. The two PKK members who carried out the attack fled taking advantage of the darkness of the night. Large-scale operation was launched in the district to arrest the terrorists. Adana reinforcement of the teams from the Police Department was dispatched. 1 with two Kalashnikov guns and three grenade over the terrorists out. However, on one diagnosed after bomb disposal experts were asked to bomb. Bombs on the terrorists killed in the Police Department Crime Scene Investigation teams with the entrance staircase was defused after a long struggle.

Provincial Police Director Cengiz Zeybek also get information about the conflict going to Pozantı District Police Department, investigation was made. Chief Cengiz Zeybek, said that the two police officers killed in the conflict.

Source: cumhuriyet.com.tr

Turkish military campaign aims to prevent Kurdish unity in Syria: HDP co-chair

July 30, 2015 By administrator

ANKARA – Reuters

The main aim of Turkey’s recent military operations in northern Syria and Iraq is to prevent Kurdish territorial unity and not to combat Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), the leader of Turkey’s pro-Kurdish opposition HDP said on July 30.

In an interview with Reuters, Selahattin Demirtaş accused President Tayyip Erdoğan and the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) of dragging Turkey into conflict in revenge for the AKP losing its majority in a June 7 general election.

That election saw the HDP win enough votes to enter parliament as a party for the first time, ending more than a decade of single-party rule in the NATO member country.

“The AK Party is dragging the country into a period of conflict, seeking revenge for the loss of its majority in the June election,” Demirtaş told Reuters in the capital Ankara.

“HDP passing the threshold and the AK Party losing its parliamentary majority are being used as a pretext for war.”

Turkey launched near-simultaneous air strikes on the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) camps in northern Iraq and ISIL fighters in Syria last Friday, in what Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu has called a “synchronised fight against terror”.

But its assaults on the PKK have so far been much heavier than its strikes against ISIL, fuelling Kurdish suspicions that its real agenda is keeping Kurdish political and territorial ambitions in check, something the government denies.

“Turkey carried out a couple of air strikes against the Islamic State just for show, without causing serious damage to it, nor is Islamic State feeling serious pressure from Turkey,” Demirtaş said.

“Turkey’s operations do not aim at taking measures against Islamic State. The main objective is to prevent the formation of a Kurdish entity in northern Syria,” he said.

Air strikes

Ankara is uncomfortable with the steady advance of Syrian Kurdish PYD forces, helped by U.S. air strikes, against ISIL. Around half of Syria’s 900 km (560 mile) border with Turkey is now controlled by Kurds.

Erdoğan and the AKP worry that those advances will embolden Turkey’s own 14 million Kurdish minority and rekindle a three-decade insurgency by the PKK, deemed a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the United States and Europe.

After Ankara agreed to open its air bases to the U.S.-led coalition last week following years of reluctance, Turkey and Washington are working on plans to provide air cover for Syrian rebels and sweep ISIL fighters from a strip of northern Syria along the Turkish border.

But the move will also ensure that territory remains out of the hands of the PYD, preventing Syria’s Kurds from joining up areas under their control into what could otherwise become a strip of Kurdish land running from the Iraqi border almost to the Mediterranean.

“Erdoğan stressed in the past that they would never allow the unification of Kurdish cantons in northern Syria. Jarablus is the only obstacle for this unity,” Demirtaş said, referring to a Syrian town on the edge of the proposed “safe zone”.

Turkish officials have said the aim in Syria is to push ISIL away from the border and their operations will not target Syrian Kurdish groups.

They say the strikes against PKK camps in northern Iraq, meanwhile, are a response to increased militant violence in recent weeks, including a series of targeted killings of police officers and soldiers blamed on the Kurdish militant group.

At least nine members of the security forces have been killed over the past week by suspected Kurdish militants.

The PKK has said the air strikes are an attempt to “crush” the Kurdish political movement and create an “authoritarian, hegemonic system” in Turkey.

July/30/2015

Erdogan needs anti-Kurdish hysteria to hold early elections in Turkey

July 29, 2015 By administrator

An anti-Kurdish hysteria is building up in Turkey, and the probability of early elections in the country is 75%, with a 25% chance of forming a new government, Director of the Institute of Oriental Studies of Armenia’s National Academy of Sciences, academician Ruben Safrastyan told a press conference today.

According to him, the present tense situation is to the advantage of the current Turkish government and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is prepared to hold early elections as he hopes to gain a majority of votes in the parliament and form a homogeneous cabinet instead of a government coalition.

The expert stressed that the escalation of the situation may result in a chaos in Turkey’s internal political life. ‘Based on the history of Turkey, I can say that in most cases they solve problems by force,” the expert said in response to a question about the likelihood of a civil war in Turkey and violation of its territorial integrity.

Speaking about activities of the Islamic State (IS) militant group, R. Safrastyan said that IS poses a threat to the whole region. He noted that among the group members are Azerbaijani militants who will return to their homeland one day.

The situation in Turkey has escalated over the past week after the terrorist act perpetrated by the Islamic State in the city of Suruc on the border with Syria and the killings of policemen in southeastern provinces, with the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) claiming responsibility for the murders, followed by Turkey’s air strikes on IS in the north of Syria and PKK in northern Iraq. In response, PKK said on its website that a truce with Ankara is senseless. Turkish President Erdogan also rejected the peace process.

Source: Panorama.am

Let’s be realistic about Iraqi Kurdistan; it’s a deeply unpleasant autocracy

July 28, 2015 By administrator

By Alastair Sloan | The Middle East Monitor

In May last year, who in the West had heard of the “Peshmerga”? Wasn’t that a kind of scarf? No, the BBC, CNN and Sky News told us, these were warriors for freedom, brave Kurds, rallying against the ISIS threat when the Iraqi army had fled in disarray. Even Marie Claire, the woman’s lifestyle magazine, did a piece on them, highlighting with some justification the role that female fighters play in their ranks.

What’s more, the Peshmerga weren’t scary Arabs, which meant we could send them guns. And boy did we send them guns. The United States air-dropped Russian-made weapons almost immediately, although where they had bought them remains unclear. Then Washington agreed to send, via Baghdad, fifteen thousand hand grenades, eighteen thousand assault rifles, forty-five thousand mortar rounds, forty thousand RPG rounds and nearly three thousand RPG launchers.

Germany, in a rare example of the government exporting weapons to a live conflict zone, armed four thousand Kurds with equal alacrity, sending troop transport vehicles, Milan anti-tank rocket launchers, armour-piercing bazookas, heavy machine guns, sixteen thousand rifles, eight thousand pistols and six million rounds of ammunition.

Despite its slashed defence budget, even Britain joined in, gifting half a million more bullets, forty heavy machine guns and an unspecified number of mortars and sets of body-armour. While a British presence in Iraq is almost comically small (“David Cameron is not in Iraq”), the British Army has deployed its considerable expertise in training Peshmerga forces on how to avoid and defuse mines and improvised explosive devices (IEDs). We have also supplied fifty tonnes of non-lethal and medical equipment, according to the Ministry of Defence; meanwhile, RAF pilots have helped to deliver a further “three hundred tonnes” on behalf of other nations.

This, apparently, is still not enough. “Ninety per cent of the burden of this war is on the shoulders of the Peshmerga,” claimed Masrour Barzani, the chief of the Kurdish intelligence corps, “and ninety per cent of the work is done by the Peshmerga, but we are only getting ten per cent of the weapons.” Barzani’s brothers are both leading Kurdish generals. His father, Masud, is President of Kurdistan.

Now, let’s be clear, the Peshmerga are certainly brave and they are certainly holding back ISIS, but their rulers, the Barzani clan, are dictators and gangsters. Masud Barzani isn’t meant to be president; there is a strict two term limit on the post, which he’s just ignored. When a Kurdish poet wrote a satirical piece recently poking fun at the Barzani family, he was arrested and executed. If Kurdish businessmen don’t pay the right bribes to the Barzanis, they too face arrest. Numerous journalists writing critically about the clan have simply disappeared.

“You son of a dog, if you publish that magazine tomorrow, I’ll entomb your head in your dog father’s grave,” one newspaper editor was told. Eighteen months later, he was shot dead outside his home. When Arab Spring-inspired street marches hit Kurdistan in 2011, there were over three hundred and fifty attacks on journalists by the Barzanis’ thugs. There have been hundreds more since then.

The Barzanis also appear to be overseeing a campaign of ethnic cleansing, both directly in Iraqi Kurdistan and via their affiliated fighters in Syria. They deny these charges, but diplomats and several aid workers attest to seeing Sunni Arabs driven from their homes in their thousands, their former dwellings burned to the ground. Many of the displaced Sunnis have lived there for decades, having been encouraged to move there by Saddam Hussein.

Looting, arson and forcible removal hardly seems a recipe for ongoing stability, and with the West simply standing by, often the only place for the Sunni Arabs to go is into ISIS-controlled territory.

You will see or hear almost none of this in the Western media. CNN, Bloomberg and other major outlets have all interviewed Masrour Barzani, giving him a platform to call for yet more weapons to strengthen his nascent mafia state. The Kurds remain lionised in the media to the extent that former soldiers and Western adventurers have been inspired to fight alongside them. In reality, there are no good guys in this fight.

So while the Western arms continue to pour in for the Barzani clan and their troops, are we helping “degrade and destroy” ISIS, or simply propping up another local dictatorship? The Iraqi Kurds certainly haven’t shown any desire to attack ISIS beyond their own borders. Hats off to the Peshmerga for the work they’ve done, but let’s be realistic about what Kurdistan is; a deeply unpleasant autocracy run by mafia bosses who kill, imprison or displace anyone who gets in their way.

Turkey-Kurdish conflict: Every regional power has betrayed the Kurds so Turkish bombing is no surprise

July 28, 2015 By administrator

By Robert Fisk,

You would have thought that, by now, the Kurds might have learnt their lesson

But under the Treaty of Sèvres, in 1920, they got a little nation in what had been Turkey. Then along came the Turkish nationalist Mustafa Kemal Ataturk who took back the land that the Kurdish nation might have gained. So the victors of the Great War met in Lausanne in 1922-23 and abandoned the Kurds (as well as the Armenians), who were now split between the new Turkish state, French Syria and Iran and British Iraq. That has been their tragedy ever since – and almost every regional power participated in it. The most brutal were the Turks and the Iraqi Arabs, the most cynical the British and the Americans. No wonder the Turks have gone back to bombing the Kurds.

When they rebelled against Saddam Hussein in Iraq in the early 1970s, the Americans supported them, along with the Shah of Iran. Then the US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger engineered an agreement between Iran and Iraq: the Shah would receive a territorial claim and, in return, abandon the Kurds. The Americans closed off their arms supplies. Saddam slaughtered perhaps 182,000 of them. “Foreign policy,” remarked Mr Kissinger, “should not be confused with missionary work.”

You would have thought the Kurds might have learnt their lesson. But at the start of the first Gulf war to liberate Kuwait, they were urged by the Americans – or rather, a covert CIA radio station operating from Saudi Arabia – to rise against Saddam. And they did. The Americans let them die in their thousands again, only shamed weeks later into creating a “safe” zone in northern Iraq after tens of thousands of Kurdish civilians trekked under fire in a biblical exodus to the safety of Turkey. America’s “safe” zone eventually proved illusory.

Even when the US planned to invade Saddam’s Iraq through Kurdistan in 2003, the Kurds found that the Turks planned to send 40,000 troops with them. The Turks wanted to stop the Kurds grabbing the Iraqi cities of Mosul and Kirkuk; Ankara feared that a self-governing Kurdish pseudo-state would creep across the border to Turkey.

Time: Why Turkey Sees the Kurdish People as a Bigger Threat than ISIS

July 28, 2015 By administrator

By Rebecca Collard / Gazientep,

Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) fighters take up positions inside a damaged building in al-Vilat al-Homor

The Kurds’ success against ISIS might encourage advocates of a Kurdish state across parts of Iraq, Syria and Turkey report Time

As Kurdish forces headed to the frontlines to fight the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) this weekend, they came under attack, not by ISIS but by Turkish fighter jets.

“They were going to Kirkuk and Sinjar to fight ISIS,” says Zagros Hiwa, a spokesman for the Kurdish PKK forces. The PKK, The Kurdistan Workers’ Party, is a Kurdish separatist group and also one of the forces fighting ISIS on the ground in Iraq and Syria. They are now also under attack by Turkey.

Last week, the Turkish government announced it was joining the war against ISIS. Since then it has arrested more than 1,000 people in Turkey and carried out waves of air raids in neighboring Syria and Iraq. But most of those arrests and air strikes, say Kurdish leaders, have hit Kurdish and left wing groups, not ISIS.

They say Turkey is now hindering, rather than helping, the fight against ISIS. “Most of our forces that have been targeted were forces that were preparing themselves to go to fight against ISIS,” says Zagros.

Kurds are an ethnic minority that live in parts of Syria, Iraq, Turkey and Iran. They have been persecuted for decades — from Turkey’s suppression of Kurdish identity and banning of Kurdish language to Saddam Hussein’s use of chemical weapons on Kurdish communities. Their leaders, from the numerous different parties and rebel groups that represent them, have long sought an independent Kurdish state encompassing that territory and have fought against their respective governments to try to achieve that.

For decades, Turkey fought the PKK in a guerrilla war to push for sovereignty in Kurdish areas of Turkey, but for the past two years the parties have had a truce and were engaged in a peace process. In recent days, Turkey has arrested hundreds of Kurdish activists and politicians and hit the PKK with more than 450 strikes, according to Kurdish leaders. The Turkish government hasn’t said how may air raids it has carried out or who were the targets.

Hoshang Waziri, a political analyst based in Erbil, says the Kurds’ recent territorial gains in Syria along Turkey’s border and their increasing political legitimacy in the eyes of the West, have made the Kurds a bigger threat to Turkey than ISIS. “The fear of the Turkish state started with the Kurdish defeat of ISIS in Tel Abyad,” says Waziri.

NATO fully supports Turkey terrorism in the Region & in its offensive against the Kurds

July 28, 2015 By administrator

The Atlantic Alliance, meeting in emergency Tuesday in Brussels at the request of Turkey, has provided strong support for Ankara in its dual offensive against Kurdish rebels and the Islamic State group.

“NATO following developments very closely and we assure our Turkish ally our strong solidarity,” said the secretary general of NATO, Norway’s Jens Stoltenberg, at the opening of the meeting of ambassadors of the 28 member countries the Alliance.

“Terrorism in all its forms can not under any circumstances be justified or tolerated,” Mr. Stoltenberg argued, citing “instability to the gates of Turkey and the borders of NATO.”

Long accused of complacency vis-à-vis the radical organizations in struggle against the regime in Damascus, the Turkish Islamic-conservative government comes to change tack after the deadly suicide bombing Suruç (southern Turkey), attributed to IE, and the death of one of its soldiers killed in a jihadist attack on the Syrian border.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan reiterated on Tuesday that his country would not bow to the threat “terrorist” and continue with “determination” its fight against the jihadists of the Islamic State (EI) and the rebel Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK ).

“There’s no way to retreat. This is a long process and this process will continue with the same determination, “Erdogan promised when opened the Nato meeting on the security situation in Turkey.

You would have thought that, by now, the Kurds might have learnt their lesson

Read more: Turkish raids throw ceasefire with Kurds into jeopardy Was approving air strikes US’s worst error since Iraq? Two soldiers killed in Turkey car bomb attack blamed on Kurds

The Kurds’ success against ISIS might encourage advocates of a Kurdish state across parts of Iraq, Syria and Turkey report Time

Read more: Turkish raids throw ceasefire with Kurds into jeopardy
Was approving air strikes US’s worst error since Iraq?
Two soldiers killed in Turkey car bomb attack blamed on Kurds