
Turkey has begun attacking Syria - jbegley
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/09/world/middleeast/syria-turkey-kurds.html
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throwaway5752
Not Syria, the Kurds in Syria. US allies, that were fighting ISIS alongside US
armed forces (and before that, assisted them in the Iraq war). Turkey is doing
this in coordination with Iran and Russia. The US president agreed to this for
nothing in return to the US.

edit: It is shameful to HN that this is flagged. This is an act of genocide.

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magduf
I hope the Kurds and other such groups remember this in the future. You can't
count on the US as an ally.

~~~
throwaway_law
People hardly remember the Bay of Pig...CIA armed/trained/funded Cuban
dissidents to overthrow the Castro regime and promised air support, the US let
the go in and reneged in the support and the CIA backed Cuban's got
slaughtered. The only difference is imagine if JFK had taken to twitter to
mock the deaths.

~~~
aries1980
You don't have to go back that far. Check the 2008 Russo-Georgian War:
[https://www.history.com/news/russia-georgia-war-military-
nat...](https://www.history.com/news/russia-georgia-war-military-nato)

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Donald
Welcome to the future: Erdoğan ‏publicly announced this attack via Twitter.

[https://twitter.com/RTErdogan/status/1181921311846735872](https://twitter.com/RTErdogan/status/1181921311846735872)

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ashelmire
This title is misleading. They are _not_ attacking Syria, they are attacking
separatist groups backed by the US in coordination with Syria's military.

~~~
kingofpandora
First I've heard that Turkey is attacking with (or in coordination with) the
Syrian Army.

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sgt
Why is this relevant on HN?

I'm not saying this is uninteresting, but I think it's a good idea to have
clarity on what should be relevant on HN and what shouldn't.

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whoisjuan
It will be flagged.

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fallingfrog
It’s the end of the first successful socialist experiment since the 30’s.
Systems of people are interesting to nerds too. I don’t see why this would be
off topic.

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lm28469
Turkey ? Socialist experiment ? Did I miss something ?

~~~
fallingfrog
Not turkey, rojava

[https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vice.com/amp/en_uk/article/...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vice.com/amp/en_uk/article/43dmgm/the-
most-feminist-revolution-the-world-has-ever-witnessed)

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exar0815
Weird how everyone focuses on Trumps -admittedly- idiotic retreat and his
tweets, while one thing is very rarely mentioned: How the bloody hell can it
be that one NATO-Member needs troops on the ground to prevent another NATO-
Member from comitting a genocide?

~~~
beat
That rabbit hole leads to asking why NATO members are considered more moral
and enlightened than other nations.

Turkey was invited to be a NATO member (and accepted) due to Cold War fear of
the USSR, and historic conflicts with Russia. So NATO overlooked Turkey's
shortcomings in the interest of realpolitik, and Turkey played nicer in the
interest of NATO's reputation.

~~~
exar0815
As far as I recall, NATO was always seen as a organization of western
democracies. IIRC there are and were only at least nominally democratic
countries members - Spain was only admitted after Franco. And genocide was
always the line every country drew - e.g. Bosnia, Rwanda...

~~~
luckylion
Neither Bosnia nor Rwanda were ever members (or close to becoming one). Turkey
is a very special case, so much so that it's still militarily occupying parts
of an EU member state while being a NATO member.

The Red Scare and later having millions of loyal voters inside Western Europe
are very good playing cards though, and Turkey knows that Europe hates
conflict and won't ever go beyond uttering concern.

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beat
Really looking forward to _this_ set of phone conversations getting
declassified.

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costcopizza
What are some good sites to stay abreast of this issue (and foreign affairs in
general)?

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supercall
The Intercept is incredible:
[https://theintercept.com](https://theintercept.com)

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oriettaxx
Erdogan is facing serious internal problems: how to solve it?

Start a war, search for enemies: force newspapers talks about something else.

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sidcool
Iran, who is a Kurds ally, has started military drills along Turkish border.
Hope this does not escalate.

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Waterluvian
I think the American Republic is failing. We expect a certain steady-stateness
about things given how short our lifespans are. But there's no guarantees that
the American system is or continues to be a viable one.

My understanding is that the tremendous power given to the Executive is
balanced by the Legislative. But I cannot believe that the Republicans in the
House and Senate are supporting the White House in good faith I'm pretty
convinced they're playing a metagame, largely about keeping their jobs,
keeping their power, worrying about re-election and the 2020 election. So, to
me, that system is broken and there is nobody stopping the President from
acting like a King.

I used to say to my wife that if he ever did anything completely off limits,
that would be it. But clearly I'm wrong. So my joke years ago about the U.S.
annexing part of Canada the way Russia did with Ukraine is not insane anymore.
Clearly nothing needs to make sense for Trump. And the Americans in congress
are spineless cowards.

I also don't think any of this is appropriate for Hacker News. But I don't
social media and I'm angry and scared.

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simonh
We can't just blame Trump for this though. It goes all the way back to the
House's vetoing Obama from reprisals against Assad for using chemical weapons
in 2013, on the basis that Syria wasn't America's problem.

Trump simply supported that position in his campaign, and lo and behold, what
happens a matter of weeks after the US has both a president and a House
leadership that have said bombing Assad for using chemical weapons is not in
the US's interests?

Assad uses chemical weapons, because why wouldn't he, and Trump ends up
bombing him for it anyway. Meanwhile about a hundred civilians, including a
hospital full of children, die.

Now I'm a UK citizen, so I sympathise. The US is in an unenviable position.
Nobody in the US deserves to carry the can for any of this. Nevertheless, this
is the world we live in and it's the job leading politicians sign up for.
Moral, responsible leadership matters.

I'm a Reagan-Thatcher era lifelong conservative voter. I supported the second
Gulf War, I still think it's up in the air whether that was the right thing to
do. The status quo back then was also horrible and arguably breaking the
deadlock with Saddam was worth attempting. But I've had it with modern US
Republicanism. It's demonstrated very clearly it will knowingly sacrifice
lives for electoral gain, and allow a situation to deteriorate in which the US
and Western allies have already lost lives and are likely to lose them again.

This isn't the conservatism I grew up with.

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MichaelApproved
Article without a paywall. [https://cnn.com/2019/10/09/politics/syria-turkey-
invasion-in...](https://cnn.com/2019/10/09/politics/syria-turkey-invasion-
intl-hnk/index.html)

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fallingfrog
Every time there is a libertarian socialist experiment, they are almost
immediately surrounded by millions of armed fascists. Happened in Catalonia,
happens every time.

I just hope that there are not mass rapes, ethnic cleansing, and so forth as
has happened in the past.

War is always terrible but this one we are directly responsible for which is
very painful.

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Theizestooke
Why did this comment get downvoted? It's not falsifying the situation, or
what's going to happen.

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AnimalMuppet
Probably because most of us think that Turkey is going after the Kurds in
Syria not because the Kurds tried to implement socialism, but because the
existence of their separate space in Syria encourages the Kurds in Turkey to
also want a separate, independent space (or state).

~~~
fallingfrog
Right but everything I said and everything you said about Erdogan’s
motivations can be true at the same time.

Look: in rojava you have Kurds, yazidis, Arabs, all living together without
conflict. In turkey you have the suppression of the Kurdish language and
ongoing ethnic strife. The two motivations go together.

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greatpatton
Another great success for Trump...

But everybody since the independence war should know that being a US ally is
not something you can really count on.

