Distorting Reality; a Turkish Delight

"We are of the opinion that there isn't a humanitarian tragedy there. Our priority is for them to remain within their border."
"We will continue to provide humanitarian aid to them."
Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus

Syrians fleeing through broken fences to enter Turkish territory at Akcakale border crossing on 14 June 2015.

Photograph: Bulent Kilic/AFP/Getty Images

The thousands of Syrians who desperately  fled the conflict in northern Syria taking place between Kurdish fighters and the jihadist forces of Islamic State, are under the impression that it's better to leave all they hold dear behind than to remain where they were, to find death waiting for them courtesy of violent Islamism. That it is the Islamic State terrorists whom they fear and that their lives may be lost in the crossfire between the Kurdish fighters and the jihadists seems fairly clear to them.

Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Kurtulmus, however, has the real inside scoop on the situation. It is not the conflict between the Kurdish forces and Islamic State that has so traumatized Syrians, but rather the U.S.-led coalition bombings. For the United States and its allies dedicated to combating and pushing back the advance of the Islamic State chooses to bomb innocent Syrian civilians rather than focus on bombing the advances of the terrorists. It's just one of those things peculiar to the West.

Something that a member-country of NATO is eager to point out, just in case there are those who are in ignorance of the obvious. Turkey is disinterested in giving any quarter to the Syrian Kurds, preferring to sit on the sidelines in the hope that Islamic State will live up to its credentials and destroy as many of the Kurds as conceivable. For it is not the jihadists that Turkey loathes in point of verifiable fact, but the Kurds, be they Turkish, Syrian, Iraqi or Iranian Kurds.

The Kurdish nation, nascent though it yet is, presents as a threat to Turkey in its fervent desire for independence and a homeland of its own. Turkey is hugely unamenable to giving up a sliver of its geography. Even as it condemns another country, Israel, for defending itself against a rival Arab terrorist group which insists that traditional Jewish territory and its heritage capital be surrendered to the aspirations of the Palestinians.

But that, of course, is a whole other story. This story is one of desperate refugees surprising Turkish troops assembled to keep them from crossing the border into Turkey for presumed safety and security. And in the Turkish border village of Akcakale, thousands of Syrians cut a border fence to cross into Turkey in flight from conflict, taking the troops stationed there by surprise. The troops soon rallied, however, and reinforcements enabled them to corral the refugees.

Turkey is now, according to its Deputy Prime Minister, providing humanitarian aid to the refugees on the 'other side' of the border. Strangely enough, Turkey relented, no doubt in response to international criticism, opening the border to the refugees, and later reporting that ISIL militants who by then appeared at the border, prevented the Syrian refugees from crossing into Turkey. What a truly peculiar coincidence; Turkey using its influence with ISIL?

Islamic State fighters order people back to the Syrian city of Tal Abyad after they tried to enter Turkey through the border crossing at Akcakale on Sunday 14 June 2015. Thousands of refugees are fleeing fighting between Isis and Kurdish forces in northern Syria.  Photograph: Bulent Kilic/AFP/Getty Images

Does it give nightmares to Turkish authorities to know that the main Syrian Kurdish force, the People's Protection Units (YPG), have taken over 200 small Kurdish and Christian towns in northeastern Syria back from the Islamic State jihadis, along with strategic mountains that ISIL had earlier seized? "It's only a matter of time before this area is liberated", stated Kurdish official Idriss Naasan, noting that ISIL fighters left Suluk, southwest of Tal Abyad, the town now held by the Kurds.

How's this then for irony? While the Islamic State jihadists have taken possession of the U.S.-supplied heavy weapons from fleeing Iraqi military in Iraq, the YPG have picked up ammunition, weapons and vehicles that the jihadists have left behind in their flight to exit the area in their own stronghold of Raqqa.