Credit: Guardian
After Opening Way to Rebels, Turkey Is Paying Heavy Price -- NYT
HABUR BORDER GATE, Turkey — In normal times, hauling 50,000 pounds of frozen chicken into Iraq is a routine job for Turfan Aydin, a Turkish trucker who has been working the route for years. But the cross-border trade has suddenly all but halted, locked up by the insurgent offensive in Iraq and the kidnapping of 80 Turkish citizens.
Once this border was wide open, as Turkey allowed rebel groups of any stripe easy access to the battlefields in Syria in an effort to topple President Bashar al-Assad. But that created fertile ground in Syria for the development of the Sunni militant group that launched a blitzkrieg in Iraq this month, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
“For three years, we have seen ISIS flags in Syria, and that is because of Turkey,” Mr. Aydin said, eyeing hundreds of Iraq-bound trucks that snaked in a line over the horizon. “Turkey let them in.”
Now, with the rise of ISIS, the Turkish government is paying a steep price for the chaos it helped create.
Read more ....
My Comment: Turkey was always fixated on removing Syrian President Assad .... but they should have spent some time focused on the rising rebel movements in Syria. This failure in strategy coupled with an unwillingness to calculate the consequences of their actions on what would happen if the Syrian rebel groups should succeed has now blown up in their face .... and the cost of this failure is starting to add up right now.
4 comments:
I agree with your comment, but this piece and others like it recently is a concerted effort to deflect blame from the US administration.
The country most asleep at the switch has been Iran and they are currently paying the highest price for their lapse. ISIS, ISIL, and the Sunni resurgence threatens almost their entire foreign program, certainly their most important. Beyond short term economic disruption and the long term low level spread of in country radicalism, they have little to fear from ISIS and ISIL. Turkey is ISIS's only real overland outlet to the world, they shouldn't mess with that.
If I was ISIS my near term goals would be to capture or isolate Baghdad, establish minimum governmental control in captured areas, especially for taxes and to watch my so called allies (especially the ex-Bathists).
Long term would be guard my flanks from Iranian-Shia counter attacks and hold the Syrian theater in a stalemate. Then it's south to Saudi Arabia. To take Mecca, Medina, and control of the oil would be their Holy Grail and this a golden opportunity.
" Beyond short term economic disruption and the long term low level spread of in country radicalism" I was speaking of Turkey here.
I agree James.
A lot of deflecting going on from the New York Times. A LOT.
If anything the US is probably just as much to blame.
I do not know about Iran being asleep .... but they have certainly been arrogant/confident/and cocky that their strategy with Maliki in Iraq would succeed .... I guess not. Ditto with Turkey.
I concur about the NYT .... they are deflecting a lot. It also tells me that their "friends" in the White House are genuinely concerned on what is happening .... otherwise they would not even bother printing stories like this one.
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