Turkey's Dirty Wars

In a speech held in Istanbul on the 26th of June 2015, the Turkish islamic conservative President Recep Erdogan vowed to prevent the establishment of a Kurdish state in northern Syria.

"I am addressing the whole world: We will never allow a (Kurdish) state to be formed in northern Syria, south of our border," Erdogan said at a Ramadan event organized by Turkish Red Crescent.

www.hurriyetdailynews.com...< br />
Erdogan's government just put this threat into action as Turkish war planes attacked the Kurdistan Worker's Party positions in Iraq in a raid on the 24th of July 2015, thereby breaking a truce upheld since 2013.

A government statement issued on Saturday said the Turkish air force had hit PKK shelters, bunkers, storage facilities and other "logistic points" in northern Iraq, including the Qandil mountains where the PKK's high command is based.

Turkey's military had also shelled Islamic State and PKK positions from across the Turkish border, the statement said.
Turkey was "determined to take every step to ensure the peace and security of our people", it added.
www.bbc.com...
With its “people”, Turkey obviously does not include the Kurds, which makes up about 18 % of the population in the country. Turkey has a long, shady history of racism, human rights abuse, oppression of Kurds and other ethnic minorities, a tradition dating back to the Ottoman era. The best known cases of Turkish dealings with minorities are the Genocide of Armenians in 1915-17 (en.wikipedia.org...), and the lesser known Greek genocide, a systematic ethnic cleansing of the Christian Greek population from its homeland in Anatolia during World War I and its aftermath 1914–23 (en.wikipedia.org...). Kurds and other minorities in Turkey who refuse to take on a 'Turkish' identity are often harassed and treated as secondary citizens (en.wikipedia.org...). Turkey has on many occasions been involved in full-scale war with the Kurdish guerilla/freedom fighters, a war that to the Kurds spans back to to the 16th century, when the expansionist Ottoman empire started to roll in on the Kurdish kingdoms, then eventually conquered and annexed them.
Turkey has now taken matters beyond its borders to prevent the possible formation of a Kurdish state and independence. The reason for this is that a large part of Southeastern Turkey is ethnically Kurdish, and to the Kurds it is a part of Kurdistan, a contested nation sliced up between Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran. Any type of Kurdish independence elsewhere would bolster Kurdish claims on South-Eastern Turkey.

On the one side, Erdogan's regime champions the cause of the Palestinians (who's cause do not need to be championed by Erdogan's religious/nationalistic agenda, but for humanitarian reasons), while they bomb and repress the Kurds on the other. One could wonder what the difference really is between the Kurdish and the Palestinian situation, except that it's better for Turkey if all eyes are set on Israel and Gaza (kurdistantribune.com...).

In late July 1974, Turkey invaded Cyprus, a then independent nation but populated mostly by Greek cypriots.Turkey feared rising Greek nationalism and a possible Greek annexation of the island. They used a small Turkish minority in northern Cyprus as a pretext to invade. In spite of Cypriot resistance, Turkish armed forces eventually ended up occupying 37% of the Island, conducted massacres of several thousands and forced 200 000 Greek cypriots from their ancestral homes, then brought in colonists from the Turkish mainland to re-populate (en.wikipedia.org...). The Cypriot capital Nicosia is today divided by a UN buffer zone between Greek and Turkish Cypriots, and the only thing preventing a peaceful solution is Turkey's refusal to withdraw from the occupied land. I wonder how President Erdogan got the idea that he was in the moral position to criticize Israel for something Turkey is doing as well (www.washingtontimes.com...).

Strangely, there are hardly no threads in this forum denouncing the Turkish occupation of Cyprus, nor Turkey's war on the Kurds. It's as if the sorrows of the Cypriots and the Kurds simply did not weigh as heavy as that of the Palestinians. Why not?

a reply to: Heliocentric

The Turkish PM has also clearly made his views of the U.S. known...somewhat less than positive...

Little to no media coverage of that, either.

I believe that back in the mid to late 60s, the Turks attempted an airborne assault of Nicosia's international airport by a Turk airborne unit. My understanding is that airport was held by the airborne unit of the PPCLI out of Canada-the U.N. must have had wind of this move for that unit to be located in Cyprus- that effort was repulsed with massive Turk casualties and received zero international media coverage.

The Turks and the PKK have been fighting for decades. They had a ceasefire but, after a PKK terror attack the Turks considered that over. The Turks relations with the KRG in Iraq is the exact opposite with the each being main trade partners and Turkey providing them arms. In Syria Turkey has pretty good ties with main Kurdish groups but, not with the PYD who has close ties with the PKK. Both the PKK and PYD are kept at an arms link by the moderate main Kurdish groups.

It is a PYD controlled area that the Turks have said that they would not allow to form a separate state allied to the PKK.

As for the Cyprus people do not give Turkey a hard time because they were responding to a Coup by the Military Junta in Greece in an attempt to annex Cyprus to Greece which Turkey said violated the Treaty of Guarantee

Article I bans Cyprus from participating in any political union or economic union with any other state.

That lead to the military regime in Greece collapsing and a return to Constitutional rule in Greece. Both sides were accused of doing bad things as is always the case in war.

originally posted by: MrSpad

As for the Cyprus people do not give Turkey a hard time because they were responding to a Coup by the Military Junta in Greece in an attempt to annex Cyprus to Greece which Turkey said violated the Treaty of Guarantee

I wonder who you mean by 'people'. The United Nations has clearly condemned the Turkish invasion and occupation of Cyprus and has taken five resolutions against it. The UN has also called on its members not to recognize Northern 'Turkish' Cyprus.

en.wikipedia.org...

If you mean the US, their stance on the matter is ambiguous since Turkey is a member of NATO and an ally in a greater geopolitical game than Cyprus. After the invasion 1974, the US did impose an arms embargo on both Turkey and the so called Rep. of Cyprus.The US embargo on Turkey was lifted after three years by President Jimmy Carter, although the embargo on Rep. of Cyprus is still in place.

originally posted by: MrSpad
That lead to the military regime in Greece collapsing and a return to Constitutional rule in Greece. Both sides were accused of doing bad things as is always the case in war.

Since when is it okay to invade another country just because you suspect that another country is planning a coup in that country? Perhaps you think we should thank Turkey for sapping the Greek Junta and occupying Cyprus?

It's really #ed up the way the Turks are treating the Kurds , The Kurdish people are barely surviving against the Islamic state while the Turks helps their neighboring country by bombing the hell out of them.

originally posted by: Heliocentric

originally posted by: MrSpad

As for the Cyprus people do not give Turkey a hard time because they were responding to a Coup by the Military Junta in Greece in an attempt to annex Cyprus to Greece which Turkey said violated the Treaty of Guarantee

I wonder who you mean by 'people'. The United Nations has clearly condemned the Turkish invasion and occupation of Cyprus and has taken five resolutions against it. The UN has also called on its members not to recognize Northern 'Turkish' Cyprus.

en.wikipedia.org...

If you mean the US, their stance on the matter is ambiguous since Turkey is a member of NATO and an ally in a greater geopolitical game than Cyprus. After the invasion 1974, the US did impose an arms embargo on both Turkey and the so called Rep. of Cyprus.The US embargo on Turkey was lifted after three years by President Jimmy Carter, although the embargo on Rep. of Cyprus is still in place.

originally posted by: MrSpad
That lead to the military regime in Greece collapsing and a return to Constitutional rule in Greece. Both sides were accused of doing bad things as is always the case in war.

Since when is it okay to invade another country just because you suspect that another country is planning a coup in that country? Perhaps you think we should thank Turkey for sapping the Greek Junta and occupying Cyprus?

They did not suspect a coup the Greek controlled Cyprus military had a coup and started plans to annex Cyprus to Greece while at the same time launching attacks on the Turkish enclaves which they knew would resist the annexation. The Turks saw this as a violation of the treaty and invaded. And yes the Turkish invasion and failure of the Greek Military Junta to annex Greece for ending military rule in Greece although that was not the intent.

Although even with Coups and treaty violations aside attacking the Turkish enclaves made Turkish intervention assured.

originally posted by: MrSpad
They did not suspect a coup the Greek controlled Cyprus military had a coup and started plans to annex Cyprus to Greece while at the same time launching attacks on the Turkish enclaves which they knew would resist the annexation. The Turks saw this as a violation of the treaty and invaded. And yes the Turkish invasion and failure of the Greek Military Junta to annex Greece for ending military rule in Greece although that was not the intent.

Although even with Coups and treaty violations aside attacking the Turkish enclaves made Turkish intervention assured.

So, according to you, Turkey was 'forced' by the hand of Greece to invade Cyprus? Kind of the same reasoning that 'forced' Russia to invade Georgia and Ukraine? Let's just say that I went along with thins reasoning - which I don't, but let's just say if, this all happened in 1974. Today, Greece is no longer ruled by a military junta. It has a democratically elected government and is a member of the European Union. The country is devastated economically and does in no way, militarily or other, pose a threat to Turkey or the Turkish Cypriots. What justifies Turkey's occupation of more than a third of Cyprus today?

originally posted by: Heliocentric

originally posted by: MrSpad
They did not suspect a coup the Greek controlled Cyprus military had a coup and started plans to annex Cyprus to Greece while at the same time launching attacks on the Turkish enclaves which they knew would resist the annexation. The Turks saw this as a violation of the treaty and invaded. And yes the Turkish invasion and failure of the Greek Military Junta to annex Greece for ending military rule in Greece although that was not the intent.

Although even with Coups and treaty violations aside attacking the Turkish enclaves made Turkish intervention assured.

So, according to you, Turkey was 'forced' by the hand of Greece to invade Cyprus? Kind of the same reasoning that 'forced' Russia to invade Georgia and Ukraine? Let's just say that I went along with thins reasoning - which I don't, but let's just say if, this all happened in 1974. Today, Greece is no longer ruled by a military junta. It has a democratically elected government and is a member of the European Union. The country is devastated economically and does in no way, militarily or other, pose a threat to Turkey or the Turkish Cypriots. What justifies Turkey's occupation of more than a third of Cyprus today?

My late brother was a military surgeon on the island of Cyprus back in 1974 . I saw the photographs he brought back with from Cyprus ; the dossier he had to compile for evidence . Suffice to say that the images of dead civilians were heart breaking . There is this eternal hatred that burns the heart of every Greek Cypriot and to lesser extent every Greek .

If you are an orthodox Cypriot , you have a fat chance of escaping the brainwashing and you can't help but become a Turk Hater for life . Simply put , this is the lowest of the low ; brainwashing kids to hate others from an early age .

I myself have been thought NOT to hate ordinary Russians nor carry a grudge against ordinary Orthodox people . But then again , I am a Circassian and in our culture things are done differently .

We don't teach our children to hate ; we know that it is not right to corrupt an innocence soul and the children don't pay for their fathers deeds .

You ask what justifies the existence of 30.000 Turkish troops on the island of Cyprus .

The Security of Turkish Cypriots is the answer . You seriously asking world to believe that the Cypriot Greeks would treat Cypriot Turks as equals and don't attempt to kill them all , yet again ?

No one really believes that the Cypriot Greeks have the maturity and humanity to keep the peace between themselves and the Cypriot Turks .

originally posted by: 23432

No one really believes that the Cypriot Greeks have the maturity and humanity to keep the peace between themselves and the Cypriot Turks .

What if you replaced "Cypriot Greeks" with Palestinians, and said that no one really believes that the Palestinians have the maturity and humanity to make peace between themselves and with the Israelis, how do you think people in this forum would react?

originally posted by: Heliocentric

originally posted by: 23432

No one really believes that the Cypriot Greeks have the maturity and humanity to keep the peace between themselves and the Cypriot Turks .

What if you replaced "Cypriot Greeks" with Palestinians, and said that no one really believes that the Palestinians have the maturity and humanity to make peace between themselves and with the Israelis, how do you think people in this forum would react?

Nice try but dollar short and a day late argument .

Here is my answer to you :

Thanks for the video! I know that there are Muslims for Israel, I even made a thread about it years ago:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

I wasn't really trying anything, except provoking a reflection on your opinion of Greek Cypriots. Obviously it is not the best and somewhat resembles what many Israelis feel about Palestinians.

originally posted by: Heliocentric
Thanks for the video! I know that there are Muslims for Israel, I even made a thread about it years ago:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

I wasn't really trying anything, except provoking a reflection on your opinion of Greek Cypriots. Obviously it is not the best and somewhat resembles what many Israelis feel about Palestinians.

My opinion on the Psyche of Greek Cypriots is as follows : They are a traumatised bunch , just like the Palestinians and Jews .

I personally witnessed the hatred in the eyes of Greek Cypriot children who once were an innocent human beings but following a summer camp in Cyprus ; they were turned into a walking hate bag .

I am aware that the similar sentiments rule the roost between some of the members of the semitic tribes too .

It's a shame for all concerned and I say that as someone who has Khazar heritage .


Anyhow , the dirty war is nothing new and there is nothing shocking about any of the attrocities committed by all sorts of human beings against other human beings .