Last month President Trump took a great deal of criticism for calling Turkish President Erdogan and congratulating him on the narrow referendum victory. Many critics of Trump said he was congratulating a dictator, without also recognizing Turkey is a NATO member.

As long as Turkey is allowed to remain in NATO the entire member nation alliance will always be compromised by the self-serving Islamic interests of Erdogan.  The EU and the political left, demand President Trump recognize the value of NATO – and hypocritically denounce Trump for speaking to a NATO nation’s leader.  This is the mindset of the idiots in the EU and their defenders amid the political left.

Today, the Trump administration announces they are arming the Kurdish fighting forces in Northern Syria. President Erdogan hates the Kurds and considers them as adversaries and political opposition to his control over Turkey.

Within the dynamic you can see a multidimensional problem. The Kurds are fighting short-term against ISIS and Bashir Assad in Syria; however, in the larger Kurdish goal they are also attempting to establish their own independent state, Kurdistan.

Erdogan opposes Assad, but Erdogan more strongly opposes the Kurds and any Kurdistan formation efforts because it would destroy his goal of establishing the new Ottoman empire he dreams of leading.

President Trump wants ISIS defeated.  Additionally, long as ISIS is still around, Assad is safe and can work on killing his political opposition under the guise of fighting ISIS.

Unfortunately for the goal of destroying ISIS, Bashir Assad uses “fighting ISIS” as a foil/ruse. In actuality there’s no motive for Assad to fight ISIS, it’s against his current interests to do so.

SYRIA – President Donald Trump has approved arming Kurdish forces in Syria in the fight to reclaim territory from Islamic State, a decision made over strong objections from Turkey, according to the Pentagon.

U.S. military officials have argued that Kurdish forces are needed in the effort to retake Raqqa, the self-declared capital of Islamic State. But officials in Turkey, a U.S. ally and NATO member, maintain the Kurdish fighters are linked to militants in their country that the U.S. classifies as terrorists. (read more)

The Associated Press adds this report: […] The decision is meant to accelerate the Raqqa operation, but it clashes with the Turkish government’s view that the Syrian Kurdish group known as the YPG is an extension of Kurdish terrorist organization that operates in Turkey.

The U.S. sees the Kurds as its most effective battlefield partner against IS in northern and eastern Syria.

After lengthy deliberations, the administration approved plans to provide additional weaponry to the Kurds. A full list wasn’t immediately available, but officials had indicated in recent days that 120mm mortars, machines guns, ammunition and light armored vehicles were possibilities. They said the U.S. would not provide artillery or surface-to-air missiles.

The U.S. officials who disclosed the Trump administration decision weren’t authorized to publicly discuss the matter and demanded anonymity. They described no firm timeline, with the American intention to provide the new weapons to the Syrian Kurds as soon as possible.

A congressional aide said officials informed relevant members of Congress of the decision on Monday evening.

Senior U.S. officials including Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have met repeatedly with Turkish officials to try to work out an arrangement for the Raqqa assault that would be acceptable to Ankara. The Turks have insisted that the Syrian Kurds be excluded from that operation, but U.S. officials insisted there was no real alternative.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is to visit President Donald Trump in Washington next week. An Erdogan adviser, Ibrahim Kalin, met on Tuesday with Thomas Shannon, the State Department No. 2 official.

And in Denmark earlier Tuesday, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said he had useful discussions with Turkey and described the two countries as working out differences over a U.S. alliance with Syrian Kurds in fighting Islamic State militants.

“That’s not to say we all walk into the room with exactly the same appreciation of the problem or the path forward,” Mattis told reporters after meeting with officials from more than a dozen nations also fighting IS. Basat Ozturk, a senior Turkish defense official, participated.

“We’re going to sort it out,” Mattis said. “We’ll figure out how we’re going to do it.” (read more)

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