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Please guys, stay on topic.
This thread is about the situation in Iraq and Syria. |
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/iraq-appeals-to-un-over-turkish-forces-deployment-.aspx?pageID=238&nID=92473&NewsCatID=352
Iraq appealed to the United Nations Security Council on Dec. 11 to demand an immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all Turkish troops from northern Iraq, calling Turkey’s military incursion a “flagrant violation” of international law.
“We call on the Security Council to demand that Turkey withdraw its forces immediately ... and not to violate Iraqi sovereignty again,” Iraqi Ambassador Mohamed Ali Alhakim said in a letter to U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power, president of the Security Council this month.
“This is considered a flagrant violation of the principles of the U.N. Charter, and a violation of Iraqi territorial integrity and sovereignty of the state of Iraq,” the letter said, according to an unofficial translation of the Arabic original.
The letter, which was seen by Reuters, was sent after Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi instructed the Foreign Ministry to lodge a formal complaint at the United Nations.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on Dec. 11 that he would not bow to Iraqi demands to withdraw Turkish troops from a camp close to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)-held city of Mosul.
Alhakim made clear that bilateral diplomacy had failed so far to end the dispute between the two neighbors.
“Iraq worked on containment of this issue by diplomatic means and bilateral talks, but these efforts did not succeed in convincing Turkey to withdraw its occupying forces from Iraqi territory,” Alhakim wrote to Power, noting that the Turkish incursion was an “aggressive act.”
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkish-troops-transferred-from-bashiqa-camp-.aspx?pageID=238&nID=92482&NewsCatID=352
A number of Turkish troops stationed at Bashiqa Camp near Mosul on Dec. 14 were transferred to a region under the control of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq, Turkish sources told Hürriyet Daily News.
The troops left the camp on Dec. 14, and will not return to Turkey at the moment, according to sources.
The decision came after the international community put pressure on Ankara over Baghdad’s harsh reaction to the deployment of Turkish soldiers in the camp.
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu said necessary steps have been taken for "new arragement" of troops, adding that presence would continue for military training.
"We are ready for any kind of cooperation," Davutoğlu said.
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/two-turks-appointed-to-key-nato-posts-.aspx?PageID=238&NID=92461&NewsCatID=510 Two Turks appointed to key NATO posts
At a time when the 28-member alliance is in bid to counter unprecedented security challenges both at home and abroad, two senior Turkish diplomats are being appointed to key posts at NATO.
Ambassador Tacan İldem, currently serving as the permanent representative of Turkey to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), is expected to be shortly appointed as NATO’s Assistant Secretary General for Public Diplomacy, while international career diplomat Burcu San, has already been appointed as the director of the Operations Division of NATO’s International Secretariat.
İldem, 59, is a career diplomat who entered the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Turkey in 1978. He started his career by working as second secretary at the NATO Department at the headquarters in the capital city of Ankara. In 1981, İldem served as second and later first secretary in the Turkish Delegation to NATO in Brussels.
From 2006 to 2009, İldem served as permanent representative of Turkey to NATO. After holding post of director- general for international security affairs at the headquarters from 2009, he was appointed to his current post as the permanent representative of Turkey to OSCE in June 2011.
As the head of Public Diplomacy Division, which plays a key role in conveying the alliance’s strategic and political messages to opinion formers and to the public in general, İldem will report directly to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and advise Stoltenberg on public diplomacy issues as a member of the secretary-general’s senior management team.
As for San, 45, who worked in separate units of NATO in the past, she was already working at the Operations Division before being appointed as the director.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
It seems Turkey is trying to find out how far NATO is willing to go to support their ridiculous little power plays. I guess we'll just wait and see.
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On December 13 2015 00:29 LegalLord wrote:
Everyone wants ISIS gone, but they also want Syria to develop on its own terms as a precondition for doing anything about it, which leads to this awkward and destructive stalemate in which ISIS flourishes.
I doubt Syria as a nation survives this Government vs Rebels vs Isis with all kind of international military intervention on all 3 sides cluster fuck.
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no one cares about countries here. this is corporate vs corporate warfare or, the future of warfare.
- US + iraqi kurds are siphoning oil from Iraq; the autonomous kurdish region from N-Iraq is illegal but since they're backed by US, that's only a technicality.
- Turks + IS are siphoning oil from Iraq and Syria
- Russia (+ Assad) is trying to get legal rights in exploiting syrian oil/gas fields
Turkey is the gateway or a gateway.
it goes like this - create or invent a threat(border-less threat: war on drugs, war on terrorism etc) then go to war.
- have vested interests(natural resources)
- use corrupt politicians as pawns
- have your board of directors control armies and media trusts
- use intelligence services, have them act as corporate officers
but most importantly, they(the corporations) have shareholders to account to and they demand results(profit).
Erdogan is a pawn. when he loses a shipment route, he gets shit on from all of the above; he then shits bricks and tries to remedy the situation by opening a new route.
now give a double hi5 for the achievements of globalization!.
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Sanya12364 Posts
US and Russia are playing the grand game of globalization.
Rojava, Turkey, and Assad are playing their local governance and sovereignty tunes.
Iran, Hezbollah, KSA, and Jordan are playing Sunni vs Shiite regional religious proxy war.
ISIS is playing up a global apocalyptic culture of death.
And Syrians... the people of Syria probably just want to be left alone.
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you're still buying into propaganda.
on the ground, IS looks like this: ... eavesdropping on an Islamic State leader as he attempted to rally his men.
“Right now, we are suffering, but it is a test from God,” the militant’s voice crackled over the air, betraying an Egyptian accent. “Stay on this road. This is the road of honor and dignity.”
the dudes running IS are not delusional. they know they can't have a state when everyone is pissing on them from the skies.
they are there to make money, the rest is just PR.
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On December 15 2015 18:44 xM(Z wrote:
no one cares about countries here. this is corporate vs corporate warfare or, the future of warfare.
- US + iraqi kurds are siphoning oil from Iraq; the autonomous kurdish region from N-Iraq is illegal but since they're backed by US, that's only a technicality.
- Turks + IS are siphoning oil from Iraq and Syria
- Russia (+ Assad) is trying to get legal rights in exploiting syrian oil/gas fields
Turkey is the gateway or a gateway.
it goes like this - create or invent a threat(border-less threat: war on drugs, war on terrorism etc) then go to war.
- have vested interests(natural resources)
- use corrupt politicians as pawns
- have your board of directors control armies and media trusts
- use intelligence services, have them act as corporate officers
but most importantly, they(the corporations) have shareholders to account to and they demand results(profit).
Erdogan is a pawn. when he loses a shipment route, he gets shit on from all of the above; he then shits bricks and tries to remedy the situation by opening a new route.
now give a double hi5 for the achievements of globalization!.
Proxy wars for resources isn't even a new thing this century let alone in the middle east. France and England were drawing native american tribes against eachother for furs long before the idea that we wanted to live there became a thing.
Corporations I believe were created from the weat and east india companies.
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Sanya12364 Posts
On December 16 2015 05:58 xM(Z wrote:you're still buying into propaganda. on the ground, IS looks like this: Show nested quote +... eavesdropping on an Islamic State leader as he attempted to rally his men.
“Right now, we are suffering, but it is a test from God,” the militant’s voice crackled over the air, betraying an Egyptian accent. “Stay on this road. This is the road of honor and dignity.” the dudes running IS are not delusional. they know they can't have a state when everyone is pissing on them from the skies. they are there to make money, the rest is just PR.
The frontline in military conflicts is morale and often empty PR. It's how you put a face or facade on the killing of fellow humans. This is stuff ISIS sells to its foreign fighters and has to maintain in order to uphold morale. Even if it is just a staged pose for social media, it is the most visible and interesting aspect to debate.
The substance of military campaigns (and also statecraft) is rather boring economics, readiness, and logistics. Principles of economic and logistics are pretty much universal. Readiness is more or less anchored in military tradition but depends. This is far more boring nuts and bolts discussion.
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you edited out the word "state" there; i won't argue against your new global apocalyptic culture of death shennanigans since i see it as early christianity- use ideology to enslave people then use people to rape and plunder.
@lastpuritan - i already posted about the retreat of turkish troops(read above); it changes nothing really.
+ Show Spoiler +(i find that this is a decent site for anything Iraq-Syria-Middle East related news) U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter has praised a new “Saudi-led Islamic anti-terrorism alliance” as being “in line with U.S. calls for a greater Sunni role” in the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). He was speaking during a visit to Turkey’s İncirlik air base on Dec. 15, which came only a day after the Pentagon gave a conceptual briefing about the front to U.S. President Barack Obama. The visit also came just a few days after Carter on Dec. 9 expressed his “wish” that Sunni Arab nations would do more in the fight against ISIL. ...The alliance includes Lebanon, which is home to a strong Hezbollah presence, in line with Iran, the world’s most important Shiite power. However it does not include Iraq, which also has a strong Shiite presence, raising questions about how to fight against a force that occupies almost a third of Iraq without the consent of Baghdad. There are other questions too, such as over which government in Libya will participate, or how Egypt and Turkey will cooperate without having diplomatic ties.
It seems like the “Sunni front” idea is simply another public diplomacy effort, rather than an effective organization.
But apart from it being a bad idea to establish a Sunni front in the fight against terrorism, what the Middle East does not need is any new emphasis on the sectarian dimension of the existing turmoil. Why on earth does the U.S. feel obliged to take sides in the sectarian divide within Islam? And why does it praise the leading role of Saudi Arabia, which is currently ISIL’s main human resources pool, and from which many radical movements - from the Wahhabis to al-Qaeda - have emerged?
And why on earth is Ankara is becoming part of this futile but dangerous idea of a “Sunni front,” while at the same time repeating the rhetoric that Turkey is against and above sectarian differences?
It is understandable that President Obama wants a local, Arab collaborative effort against ISIL. But trying to do that along the lines of the already explosive sectarian divide within Islam is unlikely to help calm the rising regional tension.
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkey-detains-27-russian-commercial-ships-in-retaliation.aspx?PageID=238&NID=92593&NewsCatID=345 As Russia has detained eight commercial ships flying Turkish flags in the Black Sea since the jet crisis erupted between the two countries, Turkey has detained a total of 27 Russian ships in a retaliatory move, as reported by daily Habertürk on Dec. 16.
The diplomatic crisis between Russia and Turkey has continued to result in economic ramifications since Nov. 24 when the Russian jet was downed by Turkey. One of these areas is marine trade, according to sources close to the matter.
Turkey is back at fighting against kurds as usual http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/three-turkish-policemen-killed-in-southeast-attack-clashes-continue.aspx?PageID=238&NID=92555&NewsCatID=341 Three policemen, including a ranking officer, were killed on Dec. 15 in an outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) attack in the Silvan district of Diyarbakır amid curfews and clashes in several southeastern provinces.
PKK militants remotely detonated explosives placed on the Diyarbakır-Silvan motorway during the passing of an armored police vehicle. Police Chief Ahmet Kabukçu, who was temporarily appointed to Diyarbakır, Mustafa Nohut, a special police force member, and official Nuri Yazaner were killed, Doğan News Agency reported.
more random stuff Italy is to send 450 troops to defend Iraq's strategic Mosul dam, near the city occupied by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group militants, Prime Minister Matteo Renzi announced.
The dam on the Tigris river, built by a German-Italian consortium in the 1980s and in which Italian company Trevi still has an interest, is a vital water and power source for Mosul, Iraq's largest northern city.
"The call (to protect the dam) was made by an Italian company... and we will send 450 of our men there to help protect it alongside the Americans," the prime minister said on national television late Dec. 15.
The United States and Russia agreed to plough on with efforts to halt Syria's brutal civil war, with a fresh round of international crisis talks set for this week in New York.
After a three-hour meeting in Moscow between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US Secretary of State John Kerry, the two sides appeared to be a step closer to each other's positions on Syria, though differences remained on the fate of President Bashar al-Assad.
...
"We discussed today in great detail the need to accelerate the effort," Washington's top diplomat said.
"You can't defeat Daesh without also de-escalating the fight in Syria," he said, using another name to refer to the jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
In Washington, State Department spokesman John Kirby predicted "the same level of activity and energy" at the New York talks as in two previous rounds among the 17 nations involved in Vienna.
Kerry and Lavrov admitted differences remained between Washington and Moscow on Assad's fate but stressed they would not let those ruin the political talks.
"What we have said is that we don't believe that Assad himself has the ability to lead the future Syria," Kerry said.
"But we focused today not on our differences about what can and can't be done immediately about Assad, we focused on the political process whereby Syrians will be making decisions about the future of Syria."
He also said he had conveyed to Putin Washington's concern "that some of Russia's strikes have hit the moderate opposition" in Syria, and not just ISIL fighters.
"And I'm pleased to say he took that under advisement," Kerry said. those look trollish statements to me. they probably talked (also)about Turkey because US is (currently)pressing Turkey to close its syrian border.
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Sanya12364 Posts
In the global media, ISIS is playing up the global apocalyptic culture of death. If you are looking at how they play on the global stage, it's their biggest impact. Otherwise, ISIS in Syria is just a small-time government apparatus with crumbling economics and weak logistics.
Saudi Arabia lead Sunni Anti-terrorism league. I'm going to take that as a symbolic gesture rather than anything of substance.
Also did Kerry back away from a policy of seeking regime change of Assad in Syria with Russia in order to get to a cooperative position with Russia?
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Yep, but he still thinks Assad has to go in longer run.
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) carried out an attack against a Sunni military camp in the Bashiqa region of northern Iraq, wounding four Turkish soldiers, as the Turkish prime minister said Turkey would take extra measures in the region despite a recent row with Baghdad over the matter.
Two Peshmerga soldiers were also killed.
The Turkish soldiers were slightly injured in the attack before they responded with howitzer fire, Turkey’s general staff said in a statement, highlighting the importance of the security at the base.
It said that some Katyusha ÇNRA projectiles fell into the camp in the Bashiqa region during the clashes between ISIL and Peshmerga forces at around 3:10 p.m.-DHA
And ISIS attacked that camp. Central Iraq should re-consider their camp-pinpointing strategy. They know ISIS are attention-whores who would attack anything to assist their propaganda globally.
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that's the reason Turkey is trying to use to remain in Iraq.
the attack on that camp was weird on all accounts - out of the blue, nothing to gain, it wasn't a takeover/conquest attempt, it did not help their propaganda at all; they sent their soldiers to die for no apparent reason.
- one could say that it played out in favor of turkish interests.
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that dude has been killed before in july in Golan Heights/Hader so i don't know.
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Sanya12364 Posts
Israeli and US interest in Syria are both anti hezbollah and anti Iran. It's probably brought up before, but US and Israeli might be looking at Syria as a way to bleed Iran and incite Shia and Sunni violence. Where a bit of losing on both sides is a win. A winner to the conflict is not the optimal outcome in the short term.
Of course, it's all ok if you export terrorists to Syria as long as you're not importing terrorism back home. But it would seem that this whole thing has gotten out of control
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Iraq's army chief was quoted on Wednesday as saying he needed only days to drive Islamic State from the city of Ramadi, whose fall in May exposed the weakness of the Baghdad government and dampened hopes of restoring control in the north and west.
Iraqi troops began advancing on Tuesday in an offensive complicated by rivalries and suspicions harbored by local Sunni tribes and by Shia militia backed by Iran. U.S. officials, concerned also by militant operations over the border in Syria, have expressed frustration at delays in seizing back the city.
"In the coming days will be announced the good news of the complete liberation of Ramadi," Iraqia TV cited army chief of staff Lt. General Othman al-Ghanemi as saying.
Government troops are now concentrating on the last district held by the militants in the center of Ramadi, a Sunni Muslim city on the river Euphrates some 100 km (60 miles) west of Baghdad and capital of Anbar province.
If it is captured, it will be the second major city after Tikrit to be retaken from Islamic State in Iraq. It would provide a major psychological boost to Iraqi security forces after the militant group seized a third of Iraq, a major OPEC oil producer and U.S ally, in a sweeping advance last year.Progress has been slow because the government wants to rely entirely on its own troops and not use Shi'ite militias in order to avoid rights abuses such as occurred after the recapture of Tikrit from the militants in April.
Iraqi officials say Shi'ite militias are reluctant to yield power amassed with Iranian backing, making it hard to forge a unified strategy. Operations are also complicated by competition for influence in Baghdad between Washington and Tehran.
Local Sunni tribes have not been involved directly in the assault, but have been active in support activities across the province - a contrast to the U.S.-backed Tribal Awakening campaign ten years ago when they united to drive al Qaeda elements from Anbar.
Joint operations command spokesman Yahia Rasool told Reuters the city would be handed over to the Anbar police and local tribes after it was fully cleared and secured.
By contrast to 2005, the Sunni tribes are now dealing with a government less given to sectarian Shia loyalties.
AIMING FOR MOSUL
The ultimate aim is to clear Islamic State from Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, and Falluja, which lies between Ramadi and Baghdad, as well as large areas of Syria - the core of what it has declared to be a caliphate.
The control of major population centers in Iraq and Syria allows it to maintain a revenue base, controlling oil resources and large, fertile agricultural areas, and possibly plan attacks outside its core territory.
Citing military statements, state TV said government forces had killed hundreds of militants since Tuesday. It gave no casualty toll for government forces.The offensive started on Tuesday at dawn, when units crossed the Euphrates river into central districts using two bridges - one rebuilt by army engineers, and a second floating structure, an army spokesman said, describing fighting as "ferocious".
There has been no major push into the center overnight, said an officer on the ground asking not to be identified. The fighting has been limited to skirmishes, sniper fire and exchanges of mortar rounds, he said.State TV cited the Anbar province military commander Major Gen. Ismail Shihab saying the army was proceeding cautiously so as to avoid civilian casualties.
www.reuters.com
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Oh dear! This is good Christmas dinner table fodder! Celebrating mine in a sunny & hot climate!
User was warned for this post
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EPT
