Increasingly, though, a more cynical explanation seems likely. In 1944, Stalin parked his tanks for two months within striking distance of the Warsaw Uprising, while he let the Nazis slaughter independence-minded Poles by the hundreds of thousands. Only once those Poles who would be inclined to resist him had been utterly crushed did Stalin advance into the city and drive back the Nazis. Is Erdogan doing something similiar in Kobane? As TAI editor Adam Garfinkle discussed in his recent Reddit AMA, there are reasons to think so. If Kobane falls, the Syrian PYD party, which is aligned with the more radical factions of the PKK and is antagonistic to Ankara, could be decimated. Turkey could then move in and impose its own peace, on both the Kurds in the border region in Syria and the PKK at home. It could also use the Syrian refugee crisis as a “humanitarian” pretext to settle large numbers of Arabs in that region, diluting Kurdish power further. All that’s needed is a willingness to tolerate tens of thousands of unnecessary Kurdish casualties.
Posted on: Tue, 14 Oct 2014 22:25:29 +0000
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