While the Kobane clashes pose a security test for Turkey, and regional conflict zones are shaped on the basis of the emotional sensitivities of the Kurds, we haven’t found the opportunity to ask ourselves “what lies behind all this.”
We haven’t been able to examine the reasoning behind actions such as why the PYD (Democratic Union Party, the Syrian affiliate of the PKK) raised such a furor over Kobane while it had kept quiet over the loss of many other regions, including some that it had surrendered. We also haven’t been able to examine the reasoning behind the formation of an international coalition over Kobane, or why the United States shares intelligence with an organization like the PYD and overtly supplies it with weapons.
We haven’t been able to find out who recommended to ISIL that it amass its forces in the northern region and prioritize its clashes with the Kurds, when we thought that it wanted a showdown with Iran and the Baghdad administration, which is under Iran’s sphere of influence.
We didn’t stop for one moment and think that nightmarish scenarios for all of us might be lurking behind these campaigns to besmirch ISIL’s image and thereby generate sympathy for the PKK and PYD in public opinion, and force people to take sides.
We have to carefully follow this stage in the creation of a new Middle East, which has been underway without interruptions since the occupation of Iraq in 2003. While doing this we have to grasp the meaning behind this emotional and mental engineering being carried out, and even more than that we have to grasp the meaning of this strategic showdown related to the drafting of maps for the future. This is because those that are forcing us to look at today only, and are rendering us blind by bringing terrorism within our borders, are up to something else in secret.
THE STATE DOING BUSINESS WITH THE ORGANIZATION IS DANGEROUS
Kobane is a type of war that no longer is between two organizations but is one of taking a position on a global level. Germany is providing all kinds of support to the PYD. The United States is overtly providing weapons and sharing intelligence with the PYD. Turkey is opening a corridor for Peshmerga forces in order to save the PYD.
All of a sudden, organizations that were called terrorist until yesterday, are garnering international sympathy and becoming determining factors in the equation. Dangerous results could emerge from states doing business with such organizations. Tomorrow those weapons might point in another direction. Tomorrow those organizations might strike at targets we weren’t expecting them to.
One PYD official said, “Turkey is a brother country for us.” An official of a terrorist organization says this about a country/state and no one finds anything strange about it.
No one stands up and says, “Who do you think you are? Are you a country, a State? Are you speaking on behalf of Syria, or on behalf of Iraq?” Or it simply doesn’t cross anyone’s mind. They don’t find anything strange about this strangeness.
Anyway, these are just instant reactions. This is not the essence of the matter, which we should be concerned about. The issue is one of being able to see where it will lead when states and terrorist organizations are placed together in one equation.
THAT CORRIDOR WOULD HAVE BEEN IN TURKEY
2003 was a year of occupation for Iraq. The U.S. military would enter Iraq from Turkey. There was major debate over the March 1 bill that would permit this, and Turkey did not allow such a move. What Turkey didn’t permit actually was not the passage of U.S. troops. In fact these crossings took place later.
The United States wanted one more thing apart from passage for its troops. It wanted U.S. troops to be based on Turkish soil along a belt that extends from İskenderun to the border with northern Iraq. Tens of thousands of troops would be based there and the region would be transformed into a corridor. This was what we opposed at the time.
We opposed the basing of U.S. troops on Turkish territory and converting the belt on Turkey’s side of the border that runs from northern Iraq to İskenderun into some sort of U.S. logistics base.
This was a test and check of sorts to destabilize this belt and not allow it to be brought under control again. Regional operations and actions to destabilize and sow division in the region would be commanded from this belt. Turkey could not and did not permit its territory to be used for such a thing. From that day onward the northern Iraq-Mediterranean corridor has been talked about and debated.
I have written many articles from 2004 onward pointing out that this corridor strategy means a lot more than just logistics support. The British publication, The Times, published a map this week -- just like it used to in those days as well – depicting borders that connected northern Iraq to the Mediterranean.
I have already written in the past that the northern Iraq-Mediterranean corridor would become the most unstable area in the region and would hurt Turkey. It would also increase international intervention in the eastern Mediterranean and this corridor would play a defining role in the map of a new Middle East.
IT IS NOW BEING ESTABLISHED ON THE SYRIAN SIDE
When these topics were debated in 2004 and 2005 they looked to be superfluous. I believe that those behind bringing the Kurds and Arabs into conflict through two organizations in Kobane today have taken this project as their main basis.
Since this corridor was not possible on the Turkish side of the border it has to pass through Iraqi and Syrian territory. For 10 years now, many events have occurred in the region that support this thesis.
My belief is also supported via the PYD maps that show it controlling Syrian territory along its entire border with Turkey and also the question of why ISIL made it a priority to carry out attacks in these regions.
While the United States, Germany and the United Kingdom have openly taken up positions in this conflict, attention needs to be paid to Israel’s silence and the campaign of disinformation carried out by the British media. In truth, they all support this conflict.
If the bill of March 1 had passed into law, that belt would have been created on Turkish territory. Now it is being created on Syrian territory. And in fact the Kobane war is about this. Let’s take a look at this with the region’s energy maps laid out in front of us. Or we could take another look by placing the region’s geopolitical and ethnic maps, or the area of power struggles. We will reach the same conclusion.
A BUFFER ZONE SOUTH OF TURKEY
In this sense, both ISIL and the PYD are carrying out a proxy war. Some people are tearing apart the region’s ethnic elements and the region itself by making use of these organizations.
Some people are both tearing up the areas south of our border and trying to open energy corridors there.
One of the organizations has adopted an ethnic nationalist identity while the other has adopted an Islamic one. Those that put aside these ideological identities and look at the roles they have taken up will see the truth.
Do not forget that the setting up of such a corridor between northern Iraq and the Mediterranean means the establishment of a buffer zone south of Turkey. Who will be in charge of managing this buffer zone? Do you think it will be the Kurds or Arabs? Most certainly not. Whoever the masterminds of the project are will be the ones in charge.
One of their most important aims is to sever the bond between Turkey and the Arabs. It is also their aim to supervise Turkey’s connection to the south and to start directing the balancing of the region’s future.
The meaning of Ankara’s thesis regarding the “creation of safe zones” becomes clear now. Exceeding the issue of intervening in existing conflicts, it is resistance toward international supervision of this belt, the taking away of control of the area from regional countries, and its conversion into a front or garrison.
Leaving aside our issues with the Kurds and the Arabs, we don’t want new masters and bosses in this region. And nobody should try to force us to declare a stance by making use of terrorist organizations and the logic used by them.
They will not succeed this time.
