CENTRAL VIEW for Monday, October 14, 2019

Erdogan and the troublesome Turks

Confused about the fighting along the southern border of Turkey and the northern border of Syria? No wonder. The problem stems from the decades-long failure of the United States to insist upon the establishment of an independent Kurdistan.

Moreover, anyone with even a meager knowledge of the history of the region knows that the Turks are savagely genocidal when it comes to the Armenians, the Greeks, and the Kurds. Our collective sense of humanity causes us to want to reach out to the Kurds and reject the Turks. As Victor Davis Hanson says, "We are not allied with the Kurds, who are our friends. We are allied with the Turks, who are our enemies."

With perfect hindsight, Turkey should never have been included in NATO. That was done in the hope of shoring up NATO’s southern flank and to have a supposed ally in charge of the waters linking the Black and Mediterranean Seas. Now, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan is in the process of making Turkey into an Iran-like Islamic dictatorship.

While serving with NATO, this soldier had the misfortune to spend some time in Turkey, traveling to Izmir, Ephesus, Diyarbakir, and Adana, living for weeks at Incirlik Air Base, and even on maneuvers with the Turkish Army. No doubt, some Turks must be nice; however, they escaped my notice. And what kind of nation jails prostitutes for prostitution and then lets them out of jail at night so they can practice prostitution to pay their fines? Go figure.

For the last four years, Erdogan has been extorting millions of Euros from the European Union nations in exchange for virtually imprisoning millions of Muslims who want to depart Turkey for Western Europe. Erdogan is a Muslim thug who, if he dares to come to the United States, will be confronted by someone who grew up in Queens, dealing with thugs.

Due to President Obama’s way too early withdrawal of all U.S. Forces from neighboring Iraq, Obama gave birth to ISIS which quickly occupied parts of Rojava, the semi-autonomous region between Turkey and the Kurdish region of northwestern Iraq.

When the Trump Administration took off Obama’s kid-glove, rules-of- engagement and destroyed ISIS, the Kurds had much to gain. In fact, as the size of the ISIS Caliphate was reduced in geographic size, the Kurds moved westward into portions of northern Syria. Understandably, the Kurds do not want to relinquish the territory they gained while fighting ISIS.

President Erdogan, who does not want Kurds along Turkey’s southern border, is attacking northern Syria in an attempt to push the Kurds back to the east. When Erdogan announced he would invade northern Syria, President Trump was faced with pulling out the 50 or so U.S. peacekeepers along Turkey’s southern border or going to war with Turkey over who gets to occupy war-torn northern Syria. The Turks or the Kurds?

Now, President Trump, after smashing ISIS, is pulling all 1,000 U.S troops out of northern Syria. That fulfills a campaign promise to remove our troops from endless local conflicts.

The neo-cons in the military-industrial complex are outraged. Instead, they should be demanding the establishment of an independent Rojava now, followed by an independent Kurdistan, later.

©2019. William Hamilton.

William Hamilton, is a laureate of the Oklahoma Military Hall of Fame, the Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame, the Nebraska Aviation Hall of Fame, the Colorado Aviation Hall of Fame, and the Oklahoma University Army ROTC Wall of Fame. Dr. Hamilton is the author of Formula for Failure in Vietnam: The Folly of Limited Warfare, McFarland Books, (2019). For pre-publication orders: Toll free: (800) 253-2187 "Central View," can also be seen at: www.central-view.com.

Dr. Hamilton can be contacted at:

Email: william@central-view.com