Erdogan threatens Kurds
This Friday, April 28, 2017 still taken from video, shows U.S. forces patrolling on a rural road in the village of Darbasiyah, in northern Syria. U.S. armored vehicles are deploying in areas in northern Syria along the tense border with Turkey, a few days after a Turkish airstrike that killed 20 U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters, a Syrian war monitor and Kurdish activists said Friday. (AP Photo via APTV)
Chief Tango sends us a link from the Associated Press which reports that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who used the war against ISIS as an opportunity to attack Kurds, is threatening to further those attacks, instead of participating in the defeat of ISIS.
Last week, Turkey struck at YPG positions inside Syria, killing 20 fighters and media activists, according to the group, prompting Kurdish parties to call for a U.S.-enforced no-fly-zone over northern Syria.
U.S. troops were seen Saturday in armored vehicles in Syria in Kurdish areas in a show of force apparently intended to dissuade Turkey and Syrian Kurdish forces from attacking one another. Kurdish officials describe the U.S. troop movement as “buffer” between them and Turkey.
Video from northern Syria showed the U.S. patrols parked alongside Kurdish units flying the YPG flag.
Erdogan is no ally in this war, he’s an opportunist. By all accounts, the Kurds are the last best chance for Iraq in the region. Erdogan is doing his best to negate that chance. He is meeting Trump in Washington on May 16th. Maybe the US president can set him straight.
Category: Terror War
It is nice to see another conservative opinion that does not support Erdogan merely because Trump supports Erdogan.
Erdogan is going to be a disaster for the war against ISIS and a disaster for stability in Turkey and the surrounding region. Potentially even a destabilizing factor in Europe.
I was not surprised to hear Trump congratulate Erdogan, but was alarmed with Trump supporters defending Trump’s approval of Erdogan’s win.
Personally, I have no conservative acquaintances that support Islamists.
Sometimes you have to work with what you have, but that is hardly “support”.
HRC called Trump to congradulate him.
Is that support?
I do not know a single conservative, personally, that “supports” Erdogan.
Given that this vote was not even close to democracy and was rigged from start to finish Trump’s calling and congratulating Erdogan was seen as approval and support. The election and Erdogan’s win was being roundly criticized by all but Trump. Who decided to call Erdogan and celebrate the win.
It is not like he HAD to call, and it is not like he had to congratulate him. Choosing to do so is diplomatic support.
So, Hillary supports Trump, or was being polite and trying to keep a diplomatic door open.
Or does only your side do that stuff?
You are again rather inconsistant, if one is “support” and the other “not”.
So, do you consider JFK “choosing” to meet with an avowed enemy of the West and dictator (Khrushchev) in 1961 “diplomatic support” for the dictator and enemy? Does that make JFK an enemy of the US?
Or was JFK merely doing what US Presidents do – meet with foreign leaders, even those who are hostile, if the circumstances require?
First of all, we don’t know the actual content of the Trump/Erdogan phone call. All we have to go by is paraphrased third-hand media reports of what was said. There’s also the context that Erdogan threatened back in January to close the two American air bases in Turkey. Something that shouldn’t be taken lightly.
In the words of Will Rogers, sometimes the art of diplomacy is saying “nice doggie” until you can find a rock.
It’s also a faulty syllogism that Erdogan’s win “being roundly criticized by all but Trump,” even if true, can automatically be seen as a celebration by Trump and Erdogan.
How about Pelosi’s support of Syria’s Assad. Or Kerry’s support of Syria’s Assad? Simply because Assad wasn’t a fan of the Bush Administration
First, I will never defend Pelosi. She is part of the problem.
As for Kerry, I am generally disinclined to defend him but his visit to Assad was not support and it was not because Assad was not a fan of the Bush administration. Kerry first went in 2009 as a member of the House Foreign relations committee sent as an envoy to get Assad’s support in the middle east peace process that had stalled and because Syria was seen as vital to trying to maintain stability in Iraq. Bush was not even President at the time and it had nothing to do with Assad’s view of Bush.
By that logic, Poodle, apparently the LDS church must have officially supported Obama in 2012.
http://www.deseretnews.com/user/comments/865566225/Mormon-leaders-congratulate-Obama-urge-members-to-pray-for-him.html
You are either denser than DU – and I’m not talking the website (though that metaphor also works) – or you are intentionally trolling. I’m guessing you know full well that exchange of such pleasantries, even when hypocritical, is routine between national leaders. I believe it’s part of something called “diplomacy”.
I think he has a point. This goes a bit further than shaking hands in public or sending a congratulatory tweet. I’m sure there would be proclamations of condemnation if Erdogan were not an ally and so useful to us right now. I hope Trump has enough decency to at least be disturbed by having to publicly “support” a wannabe dictator like him.
No, Poodle is talking out of his 4th POC again due to inability to see the world through anything but ideological blinders.
Hell, JFK met with Khrushchev in Vienna in June 1961. JFK also sent him a congratulatory telegram after Gagarin’s space flight in April 1961. By Poodle’s logic, that means JFK must have been a supporter of the USSR and its government, right? Disregard the fact that the Vienna Summit happened after the Bay of Pigs and that afterwards we had the Berlin and Cuban Missile Crises.
Sending congratulations to and meeting with other world leaders – even if they’re prospective enemies and dictators – is simply part of what the POTUS does. It doesn’t necessarily show support for them in any way.
Stop defending Trump on this.
I am too lazy to re-argue my point…
“…trying to claim that his call to Erdogan was fine or not an issue is nonsense. It is a huge issue in both the support it signaled and in the message it sent to those that support Turkish democracy, oppose Turkish Islamicism, and it was a terrible signal to our Kurdish allies.
At best it was idiotic. At best. But I find it far more troubling than that. I think the US can survive an idiot as president. But the shit Trump is up to is not mere idiocy.”
Then explain why JFK’s meeting with Khrushchev in Vienna in 1961 is any different. Or are you saying that JFK was an idiot also?
“I am too lazy to re-argue my point”
Well, you got that half right (I’ll let you figure out which half).
You have a point? Besides the one on top of your head?
We did survive an idiot as president, two in fact. Carter and Obama.
False comparison.
This is a sitting US president calling a dictator to congratulate him for winning an election that was rigged from start to finish and was designed to secure a stranglehold on the government and dissolve much of the remaining democratic institutions to set up a Nationalist Islamist authoritarian government in one of the most strategically important locations in the world in an era of increased Islamic militancy.
Please tell me you see what a problem that is. And how it is not the same as LDS calling on members to pray for Obama.
See my more recent comment above. By your logic, JFK must have been a big supporter of the USSR and world Communism – the Bay of Pigs, Operation Mongoose, Berlin Crisis, Cuban Missile Crisis, and coup d’etat resulting in the Diem Assassination notwithstanding.
Maybe you really are as dense as depleted uranium. Then again, as we’ve seen here before you rarely if ever let logic and facts get in the way of your parroting standard Progressive talking points.
You defense of Trump on this says a lot about the partisan “my team” attitude you take about politics.
Trump’s action was idiotic at best.
Defending it is ridiculous.
Diplomacy is rediculous?
Seriously?
Answer the question, Poodle. Does this mean you consider JFK an “idiot” for meeting with Khrushchev in Vienna in 1961? Have you forgotten Khrushchev’s “We will bury you” threat in 1956?
If not, why not – since you obviously think Trump is an “idiot” for making a congratulatory call to the leader of an allied nation?
My point here is not to defend Trump. It’s merely to point out that what he did here is nothing out of the ordinary. The POTUS routinely has to deal with foreign leaders he finds repulsive for no other reason than that they’re foreign leaders. Hypocritical “congratulations” in such circumstances is merely part of routine diplomacy – just like JFK’s congratulatory telegram to Khrushchev in 1961 after Gagarin’s successful manned orbital flight was merely routine diplomacy. I’ll guarantee that JFK’s congrats there were NOT sincere.
You could have picked any number of reasons to criticize Trump with at least a modicum of justification. But here you’re criticizing him for normal behavior expected of the POTUS and practiced by every POTUS since the US became a world power. That in turn exposes you as what you are: nothing but a blinder-wearing ideologue incapable of independent thought who does little besides parrot Leftist propaganda talking points.
But we already knew that about you.
And let’s not even get started with Nixon and the Chinese back in 1972.
Or Eisenhower inviting Khrushchev to Camp David in 1959. Or FDR meeting with Stalin at Tehran and Yalta during World War II. Or Truman meeting with Stalin at Potsdam after the war.
Only a mental midget would hold that all of those meetings were expressions of across-the-board approval of everything those foreign leaders did and/or stood for. They obviously implied no such thing. Rather, those were meetings where the POTUS engaging with those objectionable and/or hostile foreign leaders was in the US national interest – regardless of how much a dictatorial bastard they were.
US Presidents meet with – and exchange often-insincere pleasantries with – all manner of foreign leaders. Some of them are evil bastards and dictators. Some are the proverbial “salt of the earth”. Most are somewhere in between.
It’s called “part of the job of being POTUS”.
Turkey is no friend to the west. They shouldn’t be NATO.
They are NATO because of their strategic location.
But I do think we absolutely should not be in a treaty that requires mutual defense of a nation that is swiftly becoming a Ultra-Nationalist Islamist authoritarian regime. One that is dead set on destroying one of our most effective and reliable allies on the ground in the region.
Alright, I am now looking out the window expecting to see some flying workers! I actually agree with the chewtoy….
Damn spell check…it was supposed to be porkers!
Well, this was just dumb.
Erdogan is a stupid ass. He has Putin backing him. He thinks that will get him the win he wants. It won’t. His enemy is not the Kurds, it’s ISIS, but he doesn’t seem to get that.
I think there will be more turmoil to come in Turkey, despite his clamping down on people. He should have known better.
I rather admire Erdogan. Turks aren’t Americans and do not have the same perspective on life and liberty that we do. If ever one needed proof of just how differently we see things than most of the rest of the world, Just look at the internal ops of Iraq (pre and post Laughing Boy) and, Libya, pre and post Chesty Medals.)
No, they aren’t the same as us. I think their view is far narrower than ours, which limits them. Going after the Kurds instead of ISIS is just dumb, but they can’t see past the word ‘Kurd’.
I understand that many of you take issue with my claim that what Trump did is diplomatic support.
And my claim that conservatives are defending Trump.
But the response has been a lot of people on this thread defending Trump by trying to spin this as having been OK or no worse than what democrats have done.
I honestly do not give a fuck what democrats may or may not have done. It has no bearing on what Trump did or whether it was OK.
And trying to claim that his call to Erdogan was fine or not an issue is nonsense. It is a huge issue in both the support it signaled and in the message it sent to those that support Turkish democracy, oppose Turkish Islamicism, and it was a terrible signal to our Kurdish allies.
At best it was idiotic. At best. But I find it far more troubling than that. I think the US can survive an idiot as president. But the shit Trump is up to is not mere idiocy.
If Trump is an idiot, and he beat your candidate…..
Nice one.
WORD
Answer the question, Poodle. Do you consider JFK an “idiot” for meeting with an avowed enemy of the West and dictator (Khrushchev) in Vienna in 1961? Was that “diplomatic support”? If the answer in either case is, “No” – why?
Give it up, Hondo. He can’t answer that question and you know it.
Better watch out, Hondo… he may pull out some “empirical data” on you to prove his point… ’cause he’s educated.
😉
President Trump is dealing with the huge mess his ultra-narcissist predecessor left him. You don’t know what you’re talking about, all those years of UC Berzerkely Kool-Aid has left you brain damaged!
The JEF was too busy on vacay, golfing, hanging with celebs and pimping out the White House for rap concerts to be concerned with world events… cause it’s all about looking cool.
Modern day version of Nero fiddling while Rome burned.
Here’s something else about the JEF that I saw yesterday: http://www.dailywire.com/news/15843/obama-says-he-considered-gayness-new-biography-amanda-prestigiacomo
GAG.
Read the article; maybe there is some truth to those rumors about his gym activities. Or maybe he was just “bi- curious.” (Not that there is anything wrong with that, as Jerry used to say)
“I honestly do not give a fuck what democrats may or may not have done. It has no bearing on what Trump did or whether it was OK.”
Proof of intellectual inferiority displayed for all to see.
OF COURSE you believe it does not matter. Because it proves the point that there is always continuity.
I’m sure you would be so happy to praise him for breaking off all relations and condemning Erdogan…
Of course not.
It is not surprising that you are wrong, not at all. What is surprising is that you believe that restating your fallacies makes them true.
“It is a great pleasure to welcome my friend, Prime Minister Erdogan, back to the White House.” The POS who finally got the hell out of our White House last January said that. Just heaped praise on the guy. Erdogan was merely PM then and had been for years. The remarks by POS were made in 2013. That’s the way it goes. Commissar’s attacking President Trump for calling to congratulate Erdogan is just plain silly. Hell, in 1938 Winston Churchill said some damn flattering things about Hitler. For a guy who claims to be a student of political science, Lars sure is stupid. On the other hand, it appears that Lars only studies communism and all of its many flavors. If it ain’t traceable to Karl, it’s just fascism and to be dismissed, I guess.
I guess that means Poodle thinks the previous Occupant, 1600 Penn Ave, Wash DC is an idiot too – because by Poodle Logic that SCoaMF “provided support” to Ergodan by meeting with him and welcoming him to the White House.
Or maybe he’s OK with the previous guy providing support simply because it was “his side” doing the welcoming – and is against it when Trump did it because he hates Trump. That hypothesis also seems to be supported by the facts. The fact that he apparently refuses to answer my question about JFK one way or another lends further credence.
In the absence of other evidence, I guess we’re each free to think for ourselves – and make up our own minds concerning which hypothesis is correct.
“Poodle Logic” – hmm. Might be able to do something with that . . . . (smile)
Go for it, Hondo.
He ignored you because as always, he was outsmarted by real-world stuff. Did you ever wonder if his dreamworld is curdling in his coffee cup?
Check back after lunch. (smile)
Speaking of idiots, the guy in charge of the DNC reportedly wants to distance The Party from those who oppose abortion. There’s no room at the inn for such people. This is great. Just when one might think The Party would want to soften the edge on its progressive/marxist/commie bullshit, it sharpens that edge.
Ah! That’s one way to ensure a decline in their population, isn’t it?
Well, it certainly is a way for The Party to effect a decline in membership.
Wait. I think I said the same thing that you did.
Great minds think alike, darlin’.
FINE BY ME, let ’em cull their herd even more!😀
And have them spayed and neutered at the same time.
They say they’re pro-euthanasia as well, thus I’m all for them leading by example!
^^^THIS^^^
Will they start with their old and feeble? A couple of ex-presidential candidates come to mind…
Ahem:
“Trump’s action was idiotic at best. ”
“At best it was idiotic. At best. But I find it far more troubling than that. I think the US can survive an idiot as president. But the shit Trump is up to is not mere idiocy.”
Hmmm. What was that I read a while back? Oh yeah….
ARTICLE 88. CONTEMPT TOWARD OFFICIALS
Any commissioned officer who uses contemptuous words against the President, the Vice President, Congress, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of a military department, the Secretary of Transportation, or the Governor or legislature of any State, Territory, Commonwealth, or possession in which he is on duty or present shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.
Laddie… don’t ya think you should… rephrase that?
Proggies have no honor and don’t take oaths seriously if it doesn’t suit their ideology or present objective. So, he could care less about Art.88. Most of them also think that rules are for thee but not for me.
*POW!*, right in the kisser! 😀😎
But… but, “rules for thee, but not for me”… “speaking truth to power”… that’s not what the “empiric data” tells me….
I’m sure he’s getting ready for the local May Day parade, so he’s too busy to get back to us “uneducated” people….
You’re right. I should have said that Trump should be hauled away as garbage!
🙂
“Maybe the US president can set him straight.” If someone shows him where Turkey is on the map first.
Joe, have you forgotten who’s POTUS today? You’re obviously thinking of the SCoaMF who departed 1600 Penn Ave Wash DC, on 20 Jan of this year. That . . . individual is not the POTUS any more.
If you believe Trump is dumb, and yet he beat -your- candidate like a cheap rug……
Joey must be sad over missing the marches to protest carbon-based fuels yesterday. Snow in Colorado canceled the festivities.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/05/01/colorado-climate-march-postponed-due-to-heavy-snow/