On February 26 2015 01:57 nunez wrote: war nerd dressing down of the macabre turk charade:
The war nerd: Tomb Raiders of Kobane
...
So in October 2014, as Islamic State convoys pushed toward Suleyman Shah’s tomb on the Euphrates River southwest of Kobane, we had the conditions for a lab-quality experiment: Would IS’s ferocious Wahaabist intolerance for fancy tombs triumph over its sleazy alliance with Turkey? Would ideology trump realpolitik?
Quick answer: Nah. Islamic State “threatened” to blow up the tomb, and could’ve done it easily, since the Turkish military assigned only 40 soldiers to the site. But threats are for suckers; what you watch for is whether they do it or not. And IS never touched that tomb in months of occupying the country around it.
That non-action, from a group like IS that’s pretty much non-stop mayhem everywhere else, is exhibit Z in the long list of indications that Islamic State and Turkey made a deal. They both deny it, but there’ve been too many videos of Turkish soldiers waving howdy to IS jihadis, investigative reporters killed in convenient car crashes, and outright confessions by IS vets about being smuggled back and forth across the Syrian border with full Turkish cooperation.
Turkish policy made sense, in a grim way, back in the Autumn of 2014, when everyone was looking forward to the fall of Kobane. The radical Kurds of PKK/YPG/J were a real threat to Turkish sovereignty in the East, while the Arabs and assorted war tourists of IS seemed like a joke, with no potential to cause trouble in Turkey proper.
It’s not that Turkey likes IS, or shares its attitudes. You won’t find a lot of real support for IS outside a particular demographic: Young, male, middle-class wannabe thugs. It’s the same demographic that supplied most recruits for the James brothers, Quantrill, and Anderson, and the appeal is the same: Rape, plunder, sectarian revenge, escape from the boredom of downwardly-mobile civilian existence.
Turkey’s ruling elite, obsessed with the Kurdish “threat,” just saw IS as a useful pest-control device, and made a deal with it—one that included a promise to make Suleyman Shah’s tomb the only one in IS territory that wouldn’t be touched. If Turkey had really been worried that IS might desecrate the tomb, it would have sent a convoy to recover the coffin back when IS had undisputed control, a few months ago. It didn’t. Instead, Turkey waited until YPG/J Kurdish militia, driving south after liberating Kobane, were about to take the area around Suleyman Shah’s tomb.
Only then, on February 22, 2015, did the Turkish Army decide to drive south and rescue the body of Suleyman. The timing makes their motive clear: Turkey didn’t want to be indebted to the Kurds, the socialist radicals of YPG/J, for protecting Suleyman’s body. There was no threat from the YPG/J; they make a point of respecting all religious beliefs and would never dream of desecrating a tomb. Erdogan and his bigoted hick constituency, which hates Kurds with an insane passion, just couldn’t stand the idea of owing them anything.
Most humiliating of all was the fact that the route to Suleyman’s tomb led south through…Kobane. Oooo, that had to hurt! Back in October ’14, Erdogan was “warning”—which is to say, hoping and praying—that Kobane would fall in hours.
Now the defenders of Kobane were tickling the banks of the Euphrates, after blasting IS’s demoralized amateurs out of hundreds of villages around Kobane. There hasn’t been an offensive like this from a socialist army since 1945, not that you’d know it if you asked queasy pampered first-world socialists.
Erdogan doesn’t like commies (Islamists rarely do, as Indonesia 1965 demonstrated) and he doesn’t like Kurds. And he has the same ol’ birth rate fears all old racists have—so Turkey didn’t take any chances when it sent its convoy south to get Suleyman’s bones. The convoy consisted of 39 tanks and 57 APCs, manned by 572 soldiers.
I still can't believe the relationship between the rest of NATO and the Turks hasn't really suffered under the Turkish dirty hipocrisy regarding IS.
Turkey has threatened war with Greece, another NATO member in the past too. So why would 'just' supporting terrorists affect the relationship? The reality is that for Turkey, NATO membership was about defending against Soviet encroachment and now that Russia and Turkey are mirror images of each other in their political system -- down to trying to reclaim some vague historical imperial regalia -- they are the best buds and so NATO is much less relevant to them.
who would write such an article claiming there has not been an offensive since 1945, when there is mosul one also by IS, and who says kobani did not fall. while troll turkish army watches everything, islamic state took control of every village around and every hill around, and %75 of the city. some brave kurdish forces tried to stand and fight but most of them fleed like iraqi kurds, simply because is's arsenal was way more better. there was no chance but destroying entire city to push isis back, and that was a good idea, cities can be rebuilt. i feel ashamed whenever a middle eastern army puffs out his chest like they ever do something to end this while US saves the day again and again.
On February 26 2015 01:57 nunez wrote: war nerd dressing down of the macabre turk charade:
The war nerd: Tomb Raiders of Kobane
...
So in October 2014, as Islamic State convoys pushed toward Suleyman Shah’s tomb on the Euphrates River southwest of Kobane, we had the conditions for a lab-quality experiment: Would IS’s ferocious Wahaabist intolerance for fancy tombs triumph over its sleazy alliance with Turkey? Would ideology trump realpolitik?
Quick answer: Nah. Islamic State “threatened” to blow up the tomb, and could’ve done it easily, since the Turkish military assigned only 40 soldiers to the site. But threats are for suckers; what you watch for is whether they do it or not. And IS never touched that tomb in months of occupying the country around it.
That non-action, from a group like IS that’s pretty much non-stop mayhem everywhere else, is exhibit Z in the long list of indications that Islamic State and Turkey made a deal. They both deny it, but there’ve been too many videos of Turkish soldiers waving howdy to IS jihadis, investigative reporters killed in convenient car crashes, and outright confessions by IS vets about being smuggled back and forth across the Syrian border with full Turkish cooperation.
Turkish policy made sense, in a grim way, back in the Autumn of 2014, when everyone was looking forward to the fall of Kobane. The radical Kurds of PKK/YPG/J were a real threat to Turkish sovereignty in the East, while the Arabs and assorted war tourists of IS seemed like a joke, with no potential to cause trouble in Turkey proper.
It’s not that Turkey likes IS, or shares its attitudes. You won’t find a lot of real support for IS outside a particular demographic: Young, male, middle-class wannabe thugs. It’s the same demographic that supplied most recruits for the James brothers, Quantrill, and Anderson, and the appeal is the same: Rape, plunder, sectarian revenge, escape from the boredom of downwardly-mobile civilian existence.
Turkey’s ruling elite, obsessed with the Kurdish “threat,” just saw IS as a useful pest-control device, and made a deal with it—one that included a promise to make Suleyman Shah’s tomb the only one in IS territory that wouldn’t be touched. If Turkey had really been worried that IS might desecrate the tomb, it would have sent a convoy to recover the coffin back when IS had undisputed control, a few months ago. It didn’t. Instead, Turkey waited until YPG/J Kurdish militia, driving south after liberating Kobane, were about to take the area around Suleyman Shah’s tomb.
Only then, on February 22, 2015, did the Turkish Army decide to drive south and rescue the body of Suleyman. The timing makes their motive clear: Turkey didn’t want to be indebted to the Kurds, the socialist radicals of YPG/J, for protecting Suleyman’s body. There was no threat from the YPG/J; they make a point of respecting all religious beliefs and would never dream of desecrating a tomb. Erdogan and his bigoted hick constituency, which hates Kurds with an insane passion, just couldn’t stand the idea of owing them anything.
Most humiliating of all was the fact that the route to Suleyman’s tomb led south through…Kobane. Oooo, that had to hurt! Back in October ’14, Erdogan was “warning”—which is to say, hoping and praying—that Kobane would fall in hours.
Now the defenders of Kobane were tickling the banks of the Euphrates, after blasting IS’s demoralized amateurs out of hundreds of villages around Kobane. There hasn’t been an offensive like this from a socialist army since 1945, not that you’d know it if you asked queasy pampered first-world socialists.
Erdogan doesn’t like commies (Islamists rarely do, as Indonesia 1965 demonstrated) and he doesn’t like Kurds. And he has the same ol’ birth rate fears all old racists have—so Turkey didn’t take any chances when it sent its convoy south to get Suleyman’s bones. The convoy consisted of 39 tanks and 57 APCs, manned by 572 soldiers.
I still can't believe the relationship between the rest of NATO and the Turks hasn't really suffered under the Turkish dirty hipocrisy regarding IS.
Turkey has threatened war with Greece, another NATO member in the past too. So why would 'just' supporting terrorists affect the relationship? The reality is that for Turkey, NATO membership was about defending against Soviet encroachment and now that Russia and Turkey are mirror images of each other in their political system -- down to trying to reclaim some vague historical imperial regalia -- they are the best buds and so NATO is much less relevant to them.
if you are not familiar with the project in short words, russia and turkey are building a new gas line inside turkey to europe, russia's plan is to build a stronger turkish economy, so they allow turkey to price it. if that happens, turkey will be third strongest economy and second strongest army in europe, as germany and many eu nations reduce their defense budget lower and lower every year, turkey is increasing it since 10 years, building its own heavy tanks and herons and nuclear reactors. i dont know what are written in this picture but spot the blue line:
turkey is joker country in this game. since they are light muslim and less arabic, they are easy to convert if you play and respect their own plans as a nation. i am full of with hatred towards their government but i totally understand what and why they are doing all of these over Syria, over Kurds and Greece. best is to hope an urgent government change, maybe into a liberal one. but i dont even know if they have that ideology in that county haha.
The gdp growth forecast by the worldbank for turkey in the next years is always between 3 and 4 percent, and uks forecast is between 2 and 3 percent, with the headstart that the uk has, it takes at least 30 years with those growth rates for turkey to catch up.... such a long timespan makes this projection utterly ridiculous, since the economic realities will not stay the same for so long and to add further hilarity to the notion to predict this: turkeys gdp (ppp) has to triple to become number 3 in europe, you know how much can change in the time needed to triple your gdp?
101st (FSA) gathering and targeting Regime forces and militia near Idlib.
Contrary to reports by Lebanese and Hezbollah-affiliated media outlets regarding a widespread, successful offensive designed to purify the Syrian Golan Heights of rebel forces, it turns out that the military operation carried out by the Assad regime and the Shiite terrorist group has not borne much fruit.
The major operation, which was devised with the assistance of Iranian officials, began about two weeks ago. During the first days of the offensive, Lebanese and Syrian media reported rapid gains by regime and Hezbollah forces in the Syrian Golan Heights, citing the occupation of a large number of villages that had previously been under opposition control.
In reality, however, the military achievements of the operation were poor and there have been no substantive gains in the region. A couple of thousand Syrian army soldiers along with a few hundred Hezbollah fighters indeed did take control of individual villages and several outposts, yet the Syrian opposition — both secular factions and members of the al-Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front — also managed to capture several villages and outposts.
The situation in the Syrian Golan Heights, in essence, has not changed at all following the operation. Hezbollah first explained that this was due to the difficult weather. However, even after the storms and blizzards passed, the offensive did not pick up. Several battles are still raging across the region, but neither side can claim a decisive advantage yet.
It reminds me of the time Iraq tried to reclaim the Isthar gate. Although i oppose the imperialism and colonialism that led to the Ishtar gate being reconstructed in Berlin, i am somewhat glad that it and relics like it are safe.
On February 27 2015 03:56 puerk wrote: It reminds me of the time Iraq tried to reclaim the Isthar gate. Although i oppose the imperialism and colonialism that led to the Ishtar gate being reconstructed in Berlin, i am somewhat glad that it and relics like it are safe.
Agree. Looking at the wholesale destruction that has happened and is happening all over the middle east, having German, English and French archaeologists plunder the region a century ago was one of the smartest moves in the colonial period.
At a covert training camp just north of Mosul, ten miles from the front lines with the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), the first wave of Assyrian Christian volunteers for the Nineveh Protection Unit (NPU) have just completed boot camp. Funded in part by an Assyrian-American telethon campaign and trained by a handful of freelance U.S. military veterans, around 500 men are set to deploy next week as part of an unorthodox — and unproven — project.
But as ISIL pillages what’s left of their ancestral homeland, and Iraqi government forces prove incapable of stopping them, some among the region's dwindling Assyrian Christian minority have placed their hopes for self-preservation in the NPU, which plans to grow by the thousands in the coming months.
“Their morale and capabilities are higher than almost anything I’ve seen,” said Matthew VanDyke, an American filmmaker and former rebel fighter in Libya who organized training sessions over the past two months to whip the NPU into fighting shape. “The kidnapping of their people, the loss of their homeland, the use of their women as sex slaves — it’s really put a fire in them.”
The idea for a professionalized Assyrian army was first conceived last summer, when ISIL mounted its infamous surge across northwestern Iraq’s Nineveh plains, slaughtering or enslaving hundreds of Assyrians and other religious minorities who stood in its path. Their supposed protectors, the U.S.-backed Iraqi army, wilted before the onslaught, with many soldiers reportedly abandoning their posts and stripping off their uniforms to avoid detection.
Destroying ancient sculptures is nonsensical even when you use their failed logic. Right now they are not cult objects, becouse today nobody believes in Assur or Ishtar. Thus, they are no longer Idols to be destroyed, becouse there is not even one believer alive. Its only the remnants of great cultural heritage that monkeys from ISIS anihilated forever.
Islamic State Video Appears to Show Destruction of Ancient Artifacts Some experts say most of the statues and sculptures were modern replicas rather than originals.
2nd segment Hopefully a bit of relief to some about that.
On February 26 2015 17:37 lastpuritan wrote: who would write such an article claiming there has not been an offensive since 1945, when there is mosul one also by IS, and who says kobani did not fall. while troll turkish army watches everything, islamic state took control of every village around and every hill around, and %75 of the city. some brave kurdish forces tried to stand and fight but most of them fleed like iraqi kurds, simply because is's arsenal was way more better. there was no chance but destroying entire city to push isis back, and that was a good idea, cities can be rebuilt. i feel ashamed whenever a middle eastern army puffs out his chest like they ever do something to end this while US saves the day again and again.
On February 26 2015 01:57 nunez wrote: war nerd dressing down of the macabre turk charade:
The war nerd: Tomb Raiders of Kobane
...
So in October 2014, as Islamic State convoys pushed toward Suleyman Shah’s tomb on the Euphrates River southwest of Kobane, we had the conditions for a lab-quality experiment: Would IS’s ferocious Wahaabist intolerance for fancy tombs triumph over its sleazy alliance with Turkey? Would ideology trump realpolitik?
Quick answer: Nah. Islamic State “threatened” to blow up the tomb, and could’ve done it easily, since the Turkish military assigned only 40 soldiers to the site. But threats are for suckers; what you watch for is whether they do it or not. And IS never touched that tomb in months of occupying the country around it.
That non-action, from a group like IS that’s pretty much non-stop mayhem everywhere else, is exhibit Z in the long list of indications that Islamic State and Turkey made a deal. They both deny it, but there’ve been too many videos of Turkish soldiers waving howdy to IS jihadis, investigative reporters killed in convenient car crashes, and outright confessions by IS vets about being smuggled back and forth across the Syrian border with full Turkish cooperation.
Turkish policy made sense, in a grim way, back in the Autumn of 2014, when everyone was looking forward to the fall of Kobane. The radical Kurds of PKK/YPG/J were a real threat to Turkish sovereignty in the East, while the Arabs and assorted war tourists of IS seemed like a joke, with no potential to cause trouble in Turkey proper.
It’s not that Turkey likes IS, or shares its attitudes. You won’t find a lot of real support for IS outside a particular demographic: Young, male, middle-class wannabe thugs. It’s the same demographic that supplied most recruits for the James brothers, Quantrill, and Anderson, and the appeal is the same: Rape, plunder, sectarian revenge, escape from the boredom of downwardly-mobile civilian existence.
Turkey’s ruling elite, obsessed with the Kurdish “threat,” just saw IS as a useful pest-control device, and made a deal with it—one that included a promise to make Suleyman Shah’s tomb the only one in IS territory that wouldn’t be touched. If Turkey had really been worried that IS might desecrate the tomb, it would have sent a convoy to recover the coffin back when IS had undisputed control, a few months ago. It didn’t. Instead, Turkey waited until YPG/J Kurdish militia, driving south after liberating Kobane, were about to take the area around Suleyman Shah’s tomb.
Only then, on February 22, 2015, did the Turkish Army decide to drive south and rescue the body of Suleyman. The timing makes their motive clear: Turkey didn’t want to be indebted to the Kurds, the socialist radicals of YPG/J, for protecting Suleyman’s body. There was no threat from the YPG/J; they make a point of respecting all religious beliefs and would never dream of desecrating a tomb. Erdogan and his bigoted hick constituency, which hates Kurds with an insane passion, just couldn’t stand the idea of owing them anything.
Most humiliating of all was the fact that the route to Suleyman’s tomb led south through…Kobane. Oooo, that had to hurt! Back in October ’14, Erdogan was “warning”—which is to say, hoping and praying—that Kobane would fall in hours.
Now the defenders of Kobane were tickling the banks of the Euphrates, after blasting IS’s demoralized amateurs out of hundreds of villages around Kobane. There hasn’t been an offensive like this from a socialist army since 1945, not that you’d know it if you asked queasy pampered first-world socialists.
Erdogan doesn’t like commies (Islamists rarely do, as Indonesia 1965 demonstrated) and he doesn’t like Kurds. And he has the same ol’ birth rate fears all old racists have—so Turkey didn’t take any chances when it sent its convoy south to get Suleyman’s bones. The convoy consisted of 39 tanks and 57 APCs, manned by 572 soldiers.
I still can't believe the relationship between the rest of NATO and the Turks hasn't really suffered under the Turkish dirty hipocrisy regarding IS.
Turkey has threatened war with Greece, another NATO member in the past too. So why would 'just' supporting terrorists affect the relationship? The reality is that for Turkey, NATO membership was about defending against Soviet encroachment and now that Russia and Turkey are mirror images of each other in their political system -- down to trying to reclaim some vague historical imperial regalia -- they are the best buds and so NATO is much less relevant to them.
if you are not familiar with the project in short words, russia and turkey are building a new gas line inside turkey to europe, russia's plan is to build a stronger turkish economy, so they allow turkey to price it. if that happens, turkey will be third strongest economy and second strongest army in europe, as germany and many eu nations reduce their defense budget lower and lower every year, turkey is increasing it since 10 years, building its own heavy tanks and herons and nuclear reactors. i dont know what are written in this picture but spot the blue line:
turkey is joker country in this game. since they are light muslim and less arabic, they are easy to convert if you play and respect their own plans as a nation. i am full of with hatred towards their government but i totally understand what and why they are doing all of these over Syria, over Kurds and Greece. best is to hope an urgent government change, maybe into a liberal one. but i dont even know if they have that ideology in that county haha.
pls tell me where u get your supplies, i so wanna smoke what you're smoking
srsly tho, even if we disregard the elephant in the room (russia being a non-factor in terms of world domination wet dreams some ww3 enthusiast have), wasn't it discussed on TL before how bulgarians would be last to support anything russian related? and u put them up as prime example lol. im fairly certain same goes for every other small balkan country, excluding serbia.. economically corrupt or not. also, sorry to further derail. ever since japan-china islands crisis there weren't many apocalypse posts, i couldnt resist ^_^
EPT![[image loading]](http://i.milliyet.com.tr/GazeteHaberIciResim/2014/12/02/fft16_mf5040726.Jpeg)
![[image loading]](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B-yzlRSUAAA6Koj.jpg:large)
