Turkey is sinking into the quagmire of Syria

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In its southeast, Turkey is battling a violent insurgency and engaging in bloody urban conflict - a PKK attack on a military convoy near Diyarbakir on Thursday morning reportedly killed six Turkish soldiers. Meanwhile, it's taking regular and deadly hits to what should be its best-protected areas.

The signs suggest terrorists, Turkish and Syrian, have built the kind of infrastructure that's extremely difficult to eradicate. It's no secret that ISIL and the PKK have it in for Turkey, nor that they can strike almost at will. A list of other potential enemies would include YPG, Assad, and Russia.

Meanwhile, both of the last two suicide bombers have been Syrian refugees. Some 2.5 million Syrian refugees now live in Turkey, and many others continue to pass through Turkey seeking the relative stability of the European Union, posing a potential security threat.

Ozgur Unluhisarcikli, Ankara Office Director of the German Marshall Fund, points to three government steps that have undermined Turkey's security capabilities in recent years: the massive coup-plot cases, known as Ergenekon and Balyoz, that led to the dismissal or imprisonment of top military officials and eroded military morale; the purge of thousands of police officers linked to the Gulen movement, which has reduced the force's effectiveness; and increasingly troubled relations with neighbouring states, which have curbed diplomacy and intelligence-sharing.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2016/02/turkey-sinking-quagmire-syria-160218130117675.html

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1. Yet another unacceptable, giant sucking sound.....nt

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2. Quicksand seems like a good analogy. nt

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3. Agreed....nt

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4. Kurds warn Turkey of 'big war' with Russia if invades Syria

Russia has promised to protect Kurdish fighters in Syria in case of a ground offensive by Turkey, a move that would lead to a "big war," the Syrian group's envoy to Moscow said in an interview on Wednesday.

"We take this threat very seriously because the ruling party in Turkey is a party of war," Rodi Osman, head of the Syrian Kurds' newly-opened representative office said in Kurdish via a Russian interpreter. "Russia will respond if there is an invasion. This isn't only about the Kurds, they will defend the territorial sovereignty of Syria."

Conflicting interests in Syria have created a dangerous new phase in the country's five-year war, even as world powers struggle to implement a truce agreement. Turkey fears Kurdish gains along its border will morph into an autonomous state and inspire similar ambitions among its own Kurdish minority. But a ground intervention risks conflict with Russia, which backs the Kurds militarily, and would anger the United States, which sees the group as a major ally in the fight against Islamic State.

Turkey has been shelling Syrian Kurdish forces since the weekend, and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu blamed them for a bombing in Ankara that killed 28 people on Wednesday.

http://www.stripes.com/news/middle-east/kurds-warn-turkey-of-big-war-with-russia-if-invades-syria-1.394840

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5. Turkey and the gates of chaos

The dangers in our region multiply by the day. Friday was supposed to be the start of a ceasefire agreed a week ago by the participants in the international conference on Syria. Instead of the guns going silent, though, hostilities are raging on many fronts. The most serious development is the speed with which Turkey is sliding into the chaos of war, both within and outside its borders.

Turkey is perhaps the most crucial player in the region. It could play the most positive role, to the benefit of stability, but also, with its mistakes, could threaten further catastrophe and a continued flow of refugees. In its single-minded effort to prevent the establishment of an autonomous Kurdish region on its border, Turkey is taking decisions that cancel each other out and cause grave danger.

The bomb attack against military buses in the heart of the Turkish capital on Wednesday night underlines the complexity of the problems that Ankara faces. The government immediately cast blame on Syria’s Kurds, naming the alleged bomber (said to be a refugee from Syria) and describing the operation and those involved. On the other hand, the investigations into the attacks by so-called Islamic State (ISIS) operatives against demonstrators in Ankara and other cities in past months, with scores of dead, are not moving ahead, according to activists and victims’ lawyers. Ankara’s priority is to persuade the international community that the Syrian Kurds’ military organization (YPG) is a terrorist group. However, the United States and Russia disagree – because in the Syrian cyclone, the Americans are working with the Kurds against ISIS while the Russians are allied with them against other forces opposed to the Syrian regime.

In the past week, the YPG’s advance in the border region was met by Turkish artillery. In other words, a NATO member is fighting against an organization that is allied both with the United States and with Russia, prompting the US and the European Union to urge Ankara to stop the attacks. When in November Turkey shot down a Russian jet fighter, the Turkish government rushed to NATO for support. Today Ankara’s relations with Moscow remain dangerously tense, and at the same time the Turkish government is challenging Washington in a move that is clearly self-defeating. It is noteworthy that the US did not hasten to comment on Turkey’s charges against the YPG – which denied any involvement in Wednesday’s attack. On the contrary, a leader of the PKK – the Kurdish autonomous guerrilla movement of Turkey – said that perhaps a renegade Kurdish group acted in revenge for the last few months of military activity in southeastern Turkey, where hundreds of Kurds have died and tens of thousands are displaced.

http://www.ekathimerini.com/206140/opinion/ekathimerini/comment/turkey-and-the-gates-of-chaos