US allies in the Syrian war
A claim which has been circulating on social media for quite some time was sent to me by my readers: “The U.S., which has not yet approved the Lausanne Treaty, is actually attempting to violate Lausanne by changing Turkey’s Syrian border.”
I will come to the Syrian issue but I have to deal with these Lausanne legends first. The U.S. did not take sides in the Lausanne talks, it was only an observer. The Lausanne Treaty signed on July 24, 1923, founding an independent Turkey has nothing to do with the U.S.
What the U.S. has not endorsed is the trade agreements signed between former Prime Minister and President İsmet İnönü and American diplomat Joseph Grew. At that time, the U.S. had adopted a stance of not meddling in any outside affairs; they had even rejected endorsing the Versailles Treaty.
They are all empty words, the one that say there were some secret clauses in the Lausanne Treaty.
I mean, when a lack of knowledge joins ideological bigotry…
It is a fact that the U.S. is supporting the Democratic Union Party (PYD) in Syria today. Just like Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) President Masoud Barzani’s administration in northern Iraq, it wants to gain the PYD as an ally which it sees as permanent in Syria.
U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby said Washington did not recognize the PYD as a “terrorist” group and would continue to support its operations in Syria.
Now, Turkey is shelling PYD targets advancing north of Aleppo. This time, Kirby has cautioned the PYD to stop taking advantage of the instability in Syria by seizing new territory in northern Aleppo. He has also “urged Turkey to cease such fires.”
The U.S. is supposedly balancing its ally and NATO member Turkey with the PYD, which it also sees as its ally. This is the issue, and it is big.
According to the BBC, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev defined the current situation as a “new Cold War.” He said, “Strains between Russia and the West have pushed the world into a new Cold War… On an almost daily basis, we are being described as the worst threat… to Europe, America or other countries,”
The BBC story also noted that the Cold War was a period of ideological confrontation between the former Soviet Union and the West. It began after World War II and ended with the collapse of the Soviet-led communist camp in 1989. Those 45 years of tension were marked by espionage and proxy wars involving client states - all undertaken with the knowledge or fear of the nuclear catastrophe an actual war would bring.
With Syria, the proxy war concept has come into circulation again.
When the U.S. entered Iraq it had formed an alliance with Barzani’s administration, as it had no other land force to count on. Now it is trying to do the same in Syria with the PYD.
As a matter of fact, the PYD is Russia’s and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s frank ally. Al-Assad has personally declared that they armed the PYD.
The PYD is the Syria branch of the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK), which has issued statements saying, “We reject liberal democracy.” An official 2015 report of the U.S. State Department explained how it “ethnically cleansed” the places it dominated.
Russia is consciously conducting a “Cold War” with Ukraine, Crimea and Syria…
There is indeed excessiveness and mistakes in Turkey’s Syrian policies, but the real problem is what kind of a Syria will come out of this bloody picture.
The U.S., by regarding the PYD as its ally, is adopting such a Syrian policy that a Syria totally under the hegemony of Russia will come out; a Syria that will constitute a threat to all other Western ally countries in the region and to Turkey…
The U.S. is carrying wood to the fire in Syria.