Erdogan's Cynical Slaughter of the Kurds – and the West’s Silence – Must End
Haaretz.
Opinion?|?Erdogan's Cynical Slaughter of the Kurds – and the West’s Silence – Must End
All of Erdogan’s actions, including his charm offensive toward Israel, are meant to improve his electoral situation. In his view, only an external war against the Kurds will save him.
The Kurdish people are being massacred. Last Saturday night, the Iranian and Turkish regimes began a coordinated slaughter of Kurdish civilians. These civilians’ main “crime” was wanting to live and to be equal, and equality for women in particular.
In Iran, the Kurds are the driving force behind the ongoing uprising against the regime. The uprising was sparked by the police’s?murder of a young Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini, known to her family by her Kurdish name, Jina.
It’s no accident that the slogan spearheading the uprising throughout Iran, and even at the World Cup, is something she said – “Woman, life freedom.” For years, this has been a Kurdish political slogan.
In Iran, Turkey and Syria, the Kurds have a policy of joint leadership – one man and one woman jointly hold every post. The Kurdish leadership realized years ago that the oppression of women was the region’s fundamental problem, and that changing it was the key to broader change.
Consequently, female Kurdish fighters played?a significant role in the defeat of the Islamic State?– a defeat that saved the West and cost the lives of 20,000 Kurds. The Kurds paid this price as the frontline fighters of the U.S.-led coalition. Now they feel betrayed, and rightly so.
Iran’s police force has been facing off against protesters throughout the country. But since last Saturday,?the situation has changed in Kurdish areas. The Iranian government is now employing the military against them – tanks and heavy weaponry against innocent civilians. There are reportedly many civilian victims. How many is unknown, because social media and electricity have been completely shut down in Kurdish cities.
It’s no coincidence that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan?began his slaughtering?of the Kurds at the same time. Iran’s interior minister spoke openly about how the two countries coordinated with each other.
Erdogan has been saying for months that?he wants to invade?the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in Syria, known as Rojava. Until now, the Americans have stopped him. But now, Erdogan has found a pretext – the terror attack in Istanbul two weeks ago, which he blamed on the Kurds in Syria.
But the chances that it was perpetrated by the Syrian Kurds are roughly equal to the chances that I did. The Syrian Kurds have never attacked any Turkish target across the border. Nor have they ever attacked civilians. Erdogan’s blood libel was sewn with crude stitches. The suspect he prepared, arrested and immediately flaunted, Ahlam al-Bashir, is an Arab woman who doesn’t speak Kurdish and has ties to the Islamic State.
The truth is utterly different. Next June, Turkey will hold elections. Turkey still isn’t Vladimir Putin’s Russia; the results there still align closely with reality. And Erdogan is poised to lose.
Turkey has an inflation rate of over 80 percent, and there is enormous public anger. The party that Erdogan, a former mayor of Istanbul, leads lost the last local elections in Izmir, Istanbul and Ankara. He is expected to lose the general election, as well.
All of Erdogan’s actions, including his charm offensive toward Israel, are meant to improve his electoral situation. In his view, only an external war against the Kurds will save him. But to conduct one, he needs the West’s silence. He is trying to gain this silence through extortion – hinting that absent such silence, he may?interfere with Sweden and Finland joining NATO. Israel’s silence is also essential for him.
But Israel’s and the West’s geostrategic interests are just the opposite. The conquest of Rojava and the ethnic cleansing of its Kurds would put northern Syria in Iranian hands, and the hands of jihadists, including the Islamic State.
Such a mortal blow to the Kurds, alongside the massacre of Kurds by the Iranian regime as it tries to quell unrest, is quite likely to crush the protest all over Iran, because the Kurds are its driving force.
But morality must be considered before strategic interests. Kurdish autonomy in Syria is what defeated ISIS, at a tremendous cost. And it is the most progressive and feminist actor in the entire region. How can they be abandoned and allowed to be massacred? By Erdogan, of all people – a significant element in the rise of ISIS, when his emissaries helped and continued to help the jihadists with money, logistics, and by turning a blind eye.
The silence of the West is disgraceful. How can we abandon a nation of 40 million, a regional leader in the practice of equality in general and that of women in particular, to be massacred by regimes that are the enemies of democracy and human freedoms? Why reward the jihadists, who will become stronger, and the Iranian extremists? The United States and the rest of the West, where?women’s rights are in retreat, will pay the price of this folly.
Erdogan’s Turkey does not act according to NATO’s values. During the Iraq War, it did not allow the U.S. to operate from its territory. And since then,?the suppression of democracy there?has actually intensified, with tens of thousands of journalists, social activists and civilians imprisoned for crimes they didn’t commit.
Why help Erdogan continue to rule? And Iran? How can we ignore the acts of slaughter by a regime that is an enemy of all human liberty? Silence is destructive. The flowers of evil grow in the dark.
From a historical perspective, the silence of the West and its cooperation with these murderous dictators by turning a blind eye, is not “just” strategic foolishness. It is also an incomprehensible moral disgrace. This silence must end. The U.S. and the West have the power to stop such a strategic disaster. They have the power to stop the invasions, and the massacre.
Erdogan's Cynical Slaughter of the Kurds – and the West’s Silence – Must End - Opinion - Haaretz.com
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NATO chief says ‘door is open’ to Ukraine
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on Tuesday said the “door is open” to admitting Ukraine into the security alliance and that the country would one day be a member.
Stoltenberg reaffirmed the commitment to bringing Ukraine into the Western alliance and said Russian President Vladimir Putin would also have to contend with Finland and Sweden soon joining NATO after both countries applied in the wake of Russia’s late February invasion of Ukraine.
“President Putin cannot deny sovereign nations to make their own sovereign decisions that are not a threat to Russia,” Stoltenberg?said in comments ahead of a NATO foreign ministers meeting?in Bucharest, Romania. “I think what he’s afraid of is democracy and freedom, and that’s the main challenge for him.”
Ukrainian?President Volodymyr Zelensky?announced he would apply for NATO membership in late September with the hope to fast-track the application process amid the ongoing war with Russia.
Ukraine is unlikely to be admitted anytime soon. Stoltenberg?said last month?that all 30 members of the alliance must approve and reach a consensus, while the main priority for NATO at the moment was providing support for Ukraine’s war effort.
Finland and Sweden are waiting on just two nations to ratify membership. Along with Ukraine, all three countries will have representatives in Romania this week.
The meeting of foreign ministers in Romania is likely to result in new funding for Ukraine as the war heads into the winter months.
Russia has pounded Ukrainian infrastructure, including energy grids, with missile strikes as it seeks to knock out power in cities across the country. NATO could announce additional nonlethal support for the nation, including generators and medical supplies.
Stoltenberg on Tuesday said, “We must prevent President Putin from winning.”
“We are all paying a price for Russia’s war against Ukraine,” he said. “But the price we pay is in money, while the price Ukrainians pay is a price paid in blood.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report
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领英推荐
Invitation: INSS - Institute for National Security Studies, Tel Aviv, IL
04/12/2022
Sunday | 15:00-17:00 | Broadcast on the INSS website and social media
(14:00 CET)
The Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) invites you to watch a conference on Turkey’s foreign policy. INSS researchers and outside experts will discuss Ankara’s foreign policy, focusing on the regional, international, and Israeli arenas.?The conference is online only?and will be broadcast directly on the INSS website and Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter pages.
Schedule
The Regional Arena: Will the Normalization Efforts Hold? (in Hebrew)
Moderator: Dr. Ofir Winter, INSS
Pazit Ravina,?Makor Rishon
Dr. Carmit Valensi, INSS
Dr. Omri Eilat, HMS, University of Haifa
Dr. Gallia Lindenstrauss, INSS
The Global Arena: Dilemmas in the Shadow of the War in Ukraine (in English)??
Moderator: Morr Link, INSS
Amb. Arkady Mil-Man, INSS
Dr. Ziya Meral, RUSI
Dr. Zuhal Mert Uzuner, Marmara University
Remi Daniel, INSS
Turkish-Israeli Relations: Normalization 2.0 (in English)
Moderator: Owen Alterman,?I24 News
Yusuf Erim,?TRT World
Dr. Arad Nir,?Channel 12
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WSJ. Qatar Signs Limited Natural-Gas Supply Deal With Germany
The agreement will help Berlin diversify supplies but falls far short of the amounts needed to replace missing Russian natural gas.
Qatar signed a small-scale agreement to supply Germany with natural gas, its first long-term deal with Europe, as Berlin races to cover future needs after the?end of its energy relationship?with Russia.
Qatar, one of the world’s largest exporters of the fuel, has agreed to send Germany two million tons of liquefied natural gas a year for at least 15 years, starting from 2026, in a deal with U.S. energy major ConocoPhillips. The volume would cover around 3% of Germany’s 2021 annual gas consumption.
While the agreement will help Germany diversify its supplies, it will do little to?replace missing Russian supplies?in the short term. Before the war in Ukraine, Moscow provided more than half of Berlin’s gas imports. This summer, however, Moscow cut off the flows in what Berlin has called an economic attack in retaliation for its support for Kyiv.
To compensate for the losses, Berlin has scrambled to import LNG from the U.S. and other suppliers via neighboring countries, build its own import terminals and reduce consumption. Helped by warmer weather, Germany, along with other European countries,?managed to fill gas storage facilities?to the brim as officials try to avoid having to ration gas, which would deepen an already brewing recession in Europe.
The deal will help Qatar “contribute to efforts to support energy security in Germany and Europe,” said Saad al-Kaabi, Qatar’s energy minister and CEO of QatarEnergy.
ConocoPhillips will supply gas from Qatar’s North Field East and South projects to the Brunsbüttel LNG terminal currently under construction in Germany, Qatar said.
Germany, which doesn’t have a single LNG import facility, is currently building several along its northern coasts that will be able to cover around one third of its current gas demand.
The deal follows an agreement Qatar signed with China last week to supply Sinopec with LNG for 27 years, the longest LNG deal to date.
While Germany began talks about a gas deal with Qatar shortly after the war began, negotiations had been fraught with differences over conditions such as the length of contracts and pricing.
“The companies must know that the imports to Germany will decrease at some point if we want to reach our climate goals,” Germany’s economy minister, Robert Habeck, said on Tuesday. Germany wants to be climate-neutral by 2045, Mr. Habeck said.
After the war in Ukraine broke out, the Persian Gulf kingdom emerged as one of Europe’s best hopes for weaning itself off Russian natural gas. Germany, France, Belgium and Italy have been in talks with Qatar to buy LNG on a long-term basis.
Qatar has been selling natural gas superchilled into liquid form—a process used for shipping the fuel—to China, South Korea, Japan and other Asian consumers on long-term contracts, helping the country of less than three million people become one of the largest exporters of gas.
Qatar is in the midst of a multibillion-dollar plan to boost its gas production capacity by 40% by 2026.
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