We can not serve God and Mammon. The State Department seems to have understood this and by the mouth of the spokesman Mark Toner, publicly declares what everyone knows for months: Turkey, entered in Syria with the official motivation to fight ISIS, actually continues to hit Kurdish posts by enlarging the military intervention also in Iraq.
Toner's utterances refer to "a deep concern" of the United States about the total lack of coordination between Ankara and the US-led ISIS anti-coalition for what concerns the military operations between Syria and Iraq.
The alarm follows the latest news coming from the camp: Turkish warplanes would have hit nonstop in the last days Kurdish positions in the Sinjar area, in Iraqi territory but less than 20 km from the Syrian border. The confirmation of the raids came nothing less than from President Erdogan himself, interviewed Tuesday by Reuters.
The Turkish leader insisted very clearly on Ankara's vital need to continue striking Kurdish militias both in Syria and in Iraq, because they are all identifiable as a political and military continuation of the PKK. Erdogan has pointed out the preventive sharing with the United States and Russia of the actions, but according to Toner's words, Washington would fall from the pear tree.
The US position is delicate: the repression of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), of Marxist inspiration and included in the list of terrorist groups from Ankara, is an internal issue to Turkey. The military operations against the Kurdish guerrilla now disarmed within the Turkish territory, however, have moved into Rojava (Syrian Kurdistan) and especially on the northern Iraqi front, where the Kurds are particularly strong. As Washington laments, it is inevitable that Turkish operations will adversely affect the fight against the Islamic State, within which the role of Kurdish militiamen has so far been of primary importance.
Against the US interests also plays the government (Shiite) of Baghdad, which albeit loyal allied in the war to the Caliphate and officially contrary to the Turkish interference on its territory, frowns for a possible downsizing Kurdish in the north, especially in light of renewed separatist moods .
In this regard it should be recalled that a structural component of the fight against the Sunni jihad comes from the Shiite paramilitaries (Popular Mobilization Forces, PMU) operating on the front of Mosul. Their relationship with the Kurds is controversial, to the point that the raids of Turkey in Syrian and Iraqi Kurdistan, although apparently in contrast to the anti-ISIS coalition, actually end up in the interests of many. Erdogan knows it very well and plays with cunning.
The embarrassment of the State Department is given by the priorities: is the fight against the Caliphate more important or keeping the recalcitrant (and almost former) Turkish ally close?
The equilibrium in the Syria-Iraq-Turkey triangle is very fragile and much depends on the future structure of the Middle East.
(photo: Türk Hava Kuvvetleri - web)
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