{"id":182522,"date":"2015-08-23T22:32:00","date_gmt":"2015-08-24T03:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2015\/08\/23\/yep-we-are-getting-sick-of-erdogan\/"},"modified":"2015-08-23T22:32:00","modified_gmt":"2015-08-24T03:32:00","slug":"yep-we-are-getting-sick-of-erdogan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2015\/08\/23\/yep-we-are-getting-sick-of-erdogan\/","title":{"rendered":"Yep, We are Getting Sick of Erdo\u011fan"},"content":{"rendered":"

In addition to pulling Patriots out of Turkey, we now have our Secretary of Defense calling out the Turkish disinterest in fighting ISIS<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The Pentagon’s top official said Thursday that Turkey must “do more” to help in the fight against the Islamic State militant group, commonly known as ISIL or ISIS.<\/span>

<\/span>US Secretary of Defense Ash Carter called Turkey’s participation in anti-ISIL operations “overdue.” And while the decision by Turkey to help with the air campaign against the militant group is welcome, Carter specifically called out the need for Turkish forces to secure the border with Syria in order to stop the flow of supplies and ISIL operatives.<\/span>

<\/span>“We need them \u2014 also, as a neighbor to this conflict zone, as longtime NATO ally and a responsible member of the anti-ISIL coalition \u2014 to control the border, the long border that they have with both Syria and Iraq, more than it has been controlled over the last year,” Carter said. “It is a border over which logistics for ISIL and fighters cross, and so we’re looking for them to do more in that regard as well, and we’re in active discussions with them in that regard.”<\/span>

<\/span>For the last year, Turkey avoided large-scale engagement with the militant group. However, after an ISIS suicide bomber killed 32 people on a Turkish town bordering Syria on July 20, the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan decided to clear US airstrikes from inside its territory.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I think that the Turkish government’s priorities, basically promoting Sunni Islamism and bombing the crap out of the Kurds, are clearly not serving the interests of their NATO allies.<\/p>\n

I’m wondering if we are going to engineer a coup to remove Erdo\u011fan.<\/p>\n

Certainly, military takeovers have been a regular feature of Turkish politics, so if there were a coup, it would not be unprecedented.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In addition to pulling Patriots out of Turkey, we now have our Secretary of Defense calling out the Turkish disinterest in fighting ISIS: The Pentagon’s top official said Thursday that Turkey must “do more” to help in the fight against the Islamic State militant group, commonly known as ISIL or ISIS.US Secretary of Defense Ash …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[981,964,1099,978,1098],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-182522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-civil-war","category-foreign-relations","category-near-east","category-politics","category-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182522"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182522\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}