Between Turkey and Syria

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

Cartoon: Turkey and Syria border pic.twitter.com/aEYVTUEy1F

— Hassan Hassan (@hxhassan) October 7, 2014

Comments

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

@hxhassan (https://twitter.com/hxhassan) No no, no. They don't enter Syria *with* weapons, Hassan. ;)

— Michael Weiss (@michaeldweiss) October 7, 2014 (https://twitter.com/michaeldweiss/status/519556004573237248)

@michaeldweiss (https://twitter.com/michaeldweiss) true, the cartoon is misleading..

— Hassan Hassan (@hxhassan) October 7, 2014 (https://twitter.com/hxhassan/status/519556325403930624)

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

Gallows humor helps, I think.
A little human spirit in the face of such macabre absurdity.

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

Confusing. Should we want Turkey to let in fighters?

~ ~ ~

During the 1944 Warsaw uprising, Stalin ordered the advancing Red Army to stop at the outskirts of the city while the Nazis, for 63 days, annihilated the non-Communist Polish partisans. Only then did Stalin take Warsaw.

No one can match Stalin for merciless cynicism, but President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey is offering a determined echo by ordering Turkish tanks massed on the Syrian border, within sight of the besieged Syrian town of Kobani, to sit and do nothing.

For almost a month, Kobani Kurds have been trying to hold off Islamic State fighters. Outgunned, outmanned, and surrounded on three sides, the defending Kurds have begged Turkey to allow weapons and reinforcements through the border. Erdogan has refused even that, let alone intervening directly. Infuriated Kurds have launched demonstrations throughout Turkey protesting Erdogan’s deadly callousness. At least 21 demonstrators have been killed.
Because Turkey has its own Kurdish problem — battling a Kurdish insurgency on and off for decades — Erdogan appears to prefer letting the Islamic State destroy the Kurdish enclave on the Syrian side of the border rather than lift a finger to save it. Perhaps later he will move in to occupy the rubble.

-- Charles Krauthammer at National Review (http://www.nationalreview.com/article/389985/erdogans-double-game-charles-krauthammer)

Or is it that he is letting in fighters to help destroy the Kurds? This sounds right.