Turkish incursion inside Syria: A terribly sinister development

 Image and inset video from Reuters.  Turkish army tanks entering Syrian border town Jarablus.


Turkish tanks today entered Syrian territory, starting operations against Kurds and blatantly violating the sovereignty of Syria. Turkish jets and special forces backed by U.S. also left Adana to launch an offensive in Syria. It comes three or four days after the bombing in Gaziantep by Daesh. Tayyip Erdogan is using the Gaziantep incident with a twist against Syria. Shortly prior to the Turkish offensive, he referred to it as "attacks from Syria against our country, Gaziantep, Kilis, brought this to a point .." He states "attacks from Syria," not attacks from ISIL even though Turkish authorities confirmed it was ISIL. The official report that Turkish incursion in Syria is against ISIL is a big hoax. It's meant to target the Syrian Kurdish party - Democratic Union Party or PYD - whom Erdogan sees as "terrorists." PYD is focused on fighting ISIL and Erdogan isn't comfortable with that either.

Recently U.S. was allied with PYD against ISIL during the fight and recapture of Manbij. However, senior U.S. officials have made it clear that Turkey has the backing of the United States in the illegal incursion into Syria, that U.S. / PYD partnership against ISIL has ended and now the Kurds must take orders from the Turks.   U.S. strategy against ISIL in Syria and Iraq is carefully balanced. Its purpose is to periodically weaken ISIL just a bit so that the terror group stays within limits of U.S. control.  Neither the U.S. nor Turkey intend to eradicate ISIL completely.

Pepe Escobar addresses the recent Ankara/ Tehran/ Moscow coalition as "ATM" in one of his latest interesting pieces posted at RT.  But I think there's still more to the real story than meets the eye. The United States was seemingly only mildly displeased with the recent failed coup in Turkey. That broke Tayyip's chicken-heart and he felt somewhat betrayed, pushing him closer to the Russian front. With Iran already there, it automatically rolled up the three of them into a coalition of strange bedfellows. However, the scenario cannot be taken at face value. Erdogan is furtively complicated and so is Vladimir Putin. Iran needs to be smart enough to assess the long-term futility of "ATM" coalition. It has neither placed Ankara nor Moscow on a collision course with Washington. Russia has been carefully playing a balancing game between Turkey, Iran, U.S. and Israel ever since it got involved in the Syrian war. Turkey is a longtime ally of U.S. and Israel with occasional love-frown relations with the U.S.  Tayyip Erdogan has been on his feet, to and fro, perpetually searching for suitable modus operandi to dismember Syria on the pretext of a defensive war, no matter how long it takes.  Both U.S. and Israel have loved that idea. Putin hasn't been averse to it either, as long as he is assured that those proxy thugs galore will stay locked up inside the territories of Syria and Iraq and not hamper with regions in the north close to the Russian federation.