Well, know, this is a fascinating ISIS-aiding complication, now isn't it? The One has tried so hard to digitally stimulate the self-proclaimed "Islamist" and aspiring Sunni caliph despite - or perhaps because of - his turning Turkey against Israel and rendering his country's membership in NATO a vestigial liability, given Ankara's feud with Vladimir Putin, in order to regain access to the Turkish air base at Incirlik for his own phony "war" against the Islamic State. For all the fiction about "Syrian rebels" that's been levitated in smokescreen fashion by this White House, Kurdish militias and groups are the only real-world exception to that otherwise non-existent categorization, and they're the only faction - including us - that has actually held its own against ISIS on the battlefield (with, it should be reiterated, no help from O, so I'm not sure why Erdogan is raising such a stink about what amounts to meaingless diplomatic symbolism without any tangible weaponry substance, other than that he wants a shot at bitch-slapping Barry as well).
At any rate, the Turkish başkan is making this a thing, and we all know what will ensue from it:
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan expressed anger over a U.S. official's visit to a Kurdish militia group controlling the Syrian town of Kobane, urging Washington to choose between Turkey and the "terrorists" there.
A delegation including senior U.S. diplomat Brett McGurk, special envoy to an international coalition fighting the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, last week met members of the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), a powerful militia that is in control of Kobane.
The meetings come after the YPG's political wing, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), was excluded from new peace talks in Geneva being organised by the UN. Ankara had threatened to boycott the talks if PYD was invited.
"He visits Kobane at the time of the Geneva talks and is awarded a plaque by a so-called YPG general?" Erdogan told reporters on his plane returning from a trip to Latin America and to Senegal.
"How can we trust [you]?" Erdogan said.
"Is it me [sic] who is your partner or the 'terrorists' in Kobane?"
Actually, the ostensible answer is both. Which illustrates that, to quote Secretary of State Barbie [TM}, "foreign policy is hard".
Y'see, the Turks consider the PYD and YPG to be affiliates of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has for decades been attempting to carve an independent Kurdistan out of Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. However, the PYD, YPG, and PKK have also been our allies in the sitzkrieg against ISIS, because al-Baghdadi's boys are occupying a great deal of what would be Kurdish territory (which is why the Kurds are fighting ISIS), giving the Kurds and ourselves a common foe. And the White House is obsessed with getting locals to do all of our fighting for us, so there you go.
Erdogan isn't and has not been unaware of all of this, and yet green-lighted our access to Incerlik anyway. And yet now he avails himself of this opportunity to gin up a diplomatic "incident" with King Hussein over a not out of the ordinary interaction with another member of O's so-called "coalition"....just because.
And because it stands a good chance of weakening that anti-ISIS "coalition".
Expect the PYD and YPG to be XYZ'd from the "coalition" by Barack Obama in short order. Because an Islamist told him to, and his infernal majesty ALWAYS obeys his imams, caliphs, and ayatollahs.
Besides, it's not like we're arming them anyway.
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