Donald Trump is about to abandon the one group in Iraq that has consistently been on the United States' side for the last 17 years of conflict in Iraq and Syria. Turkey has begun a ground assault against Kurdish forces who helped defeat ISIS.
Turkish troops crossed the Syrian border into the Kurdish enclave of Afrin on Sunday morning, beginning a ground assault against American-allied militias there, as the first accounts of casualties emerged amid rising international criticism of Turkey’s military action.Turkey is ostensibly our ally, but Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has become increasingly authoritarian in the past few years (with Trump cheering him on), turning Turkey from a secular democracy into a radical Islamic dictatorship. Erdoğan doesn't limit his thuggish behavior to Turkey: he has had his security forces beat American citizens on American soil, more than once.
Turkish fighter jets were again in the skies Sunday bombing Kurdish militia targets in the border region. Ten people were reported killed in the bombing raids, according to Kurdish militants, and three people died on the Turkish side of the border in retaliatory shelling, local people said.
Turkey also co-opted Michael Flynn, paying him tons of cash to push pro-Turkish positions before and after the election. Yes, Trump's security advisor was on the payroll as a foreign agent for the Turkish government!
Turkey is now allying itself with Iran, Russia and Syria against the Kurds, who were gassed by Saddam Hussein in the 1980s. The Kurds are not Arabs and have long been discriminated against in the Middle East and Turkey, often being forbidden to speak their own language, which is an Indo-European language.
When borders in the Middle East were reorganized after WWI and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire the Kurds did not get their own country. Their lands were split up among Turkey, Syria, and Iraq. Turkey has attacked non-Turkish minorities within their border relentlessly, killing or deporting millions of Kurds and Armenians who had lived there for centuries.
Some Kurds have engaged in terrorist activities in Turkey and other countries. They consider themselves freedom fighters, rebelling against governments that have consistently denied their basic human rights. When the Iraq War started the Kurds thought they could finally get help from the United States, with its history of democracy and freedom.
But the United States under Donald Trump has utterly no moral authority. He can't tell Turkey to ease up on the Kurds -- they'll just point to what he's doing in this country: throwing Muslim and Hispanic men, women and children into prison to await deportation to countries where they will likely be killed. Many of these people were raised as Americans, think like Americans, talk like Americans and speak no language other than English.
At the UN in September Trump boldly declared that every country should have their own version of America First: “As president of the United States, I will always put America first. Just like you, as the leaders of your countries, will always and should always put your countries first.”
Trump showed what he meant by that when he endorsed Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte's campaign of mass murder without due process. Trump has no respect for the rule of law; he only respects power and the show of brutal force.
Under Trump most of the rest of the world has lost faith in the United States. Except, of course, in dictatorships like Russia, Kazakhstan, and Belarus, and theocracies like Israel where Arab Christians and Muslims are second-class citizens.
There is a real danger of the Turkish-Kurdish conflict becoming an all-out war, with Turkey going for a "Final Solution" for the Kurdish problem, aided by Syria, Iran and Russia.
Will Trump stand by and let Turkey commit genocide on the only people who've stood by the United States in Iraq? Based on how Trump treats his own allies in Congress, it looks like the Kurds are on their own.
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