Why Is Turkey Still a NATO Member?

"The United States does not endorse this attack and has made it clear to Turkey that this operation is a bad idea."

"From the first day I entered the political arena, I made it clear that I did not want to fight these endless, senseless wars -- especially those that don't benefit the United States ... We expect Turkey to abide by all of its commitments, and we continue to monitor the situation closely."

"I told Turkey if they do anything outside of what we think is humane ... they could suffer the wrath of an extremely decimated economy."

U.S. President Donald J.Trump

 

"We will clash against the Turks to not allow them to cross the border. We will use all our possibilities against Turkish aggression."

"[The SDF had turned back the ground incursion near the border town of Til Abyad.] No advance as of now."

"[ISIS] 'sleeper cells' [attacked Kurdish positions in Raqqa, Syria, in the early hours]." 

Mustafa Bali, spokesman, Syrian Democratic Forces 

A photo taken from Turkey's Sanliurfa province shows smoke rising at the site of Ras al-Ain

"[The border areas of northeast Syria] are on the edge of a possible humanitarian catastrophe." 

"[We call upon the international community and those countries fighting against ISIS] to carry out their responsibilities [to avoid a] possible impending humanitarian disaster."

Syrian Democratic Forces,  General Command

 

 "[The country had\s] completed our preparations and action plan." 

"[We are ready to launch a] ground and air operation [east of the Euphrates river, with the goal of establishing] peace [by clearing the region of] terrorists."

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan 

Turkish army soldiers drive towards the border with Syria near Akcakale in Sanliurfa province on October 8, 2019

"Turkey is one of the countries most affected by DAESH's bloody activities and has fought against this terrorist organization both domestically and beyond its borders with increasing tempo and intensity", the blatantly disingenuous statement by the Turkish Defence Ministry, when it was clear years ago that Islamic State principals had safe haven in Turkey, and used the country as a black market conduit for the crude oil shipments it extracted from the oil installations it commandeered in Iraq and Syria.

 

Turkey's Minister of National Defense, Hulusi Akar, tweeted that the United States, United Nations and NATO, among others, had been informed of its intended offensive operation in northeast Syria at 7 a.m. ET. The response from the United Nations and NATO is absolutely deafening. No ostensible objections whatever. It appears that Syria's mass murdering tyrant Bashar al-Assad was right when he warned in the early stages of the Syrian civil war that disrupting Syria would have far-reaching, profound effects across the Middle East and beyond.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan's long-wished-for 'safe corridor' between Syria and Turkey (on the Syrian side) where his intention has always been to forcefully move the Kurdish presence away from the border where the YPG and the PKK have been too comfortable in their shared antagonism against Turkey and its response to their push for a greater Kurdistan to be established on its own heritage territory absorbed within the borders of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey all of which refuse to surrender to the 40 million Kurds what is long overdue.

A tank trundles down from a truck as Turkish armed forces approach the border with Syria near Akcakale in Sanliurfa province on October 8, 2019.BULENT KILIC/AFP via Getty Images)

The perpetually bad-natured, demanding, tyrannical Erdogan has appealed to U.S. President Donald Trump's vanity in pressing him to make a decision he has demanded to yank the Kurdish presence in Syria further from the Turkish border. Resisted halfheartedly to this point, though Trump has always intended to withdraw the U.S. presence from the area. One angrily demanding telephone conversation on Sunday succeeded in convincing Trump that the Kurds were no longer worth defending, despite the U.S. dependence on the Kurdish valiant fighting spirit to challenge and defeat the Islamic State.

Now, the tens of thousands of ISIL terrorists held by the SDF are in danger of breaking free from prison camps no longer as closely guarded by Kurdish soldiers, hurriedly dispatched as a suddenly-imposed priority to the scenes of Turkish attack, in defence of Kurdish towns and villages in direct danger of aerial bombardment and Howitzer attacks by the second largest military in NATO, and one of the best equipped, prepared to shed as much Kurdish blood as it will take to cleanse the border area of their presence under guise of fighting "terrorists".