Arango on the Outskirts of Falluja: NYT's Reporting on Conflict in Iraq and Turkey

Tim Arango is one of The New York Times' better reporters. He is stationed in Turkey but he has been reporting out of Baghdad for some time. Reporting on Iraq NYT staff have to follow certain guidelines that are identical to USG talking points. First, Iraq is a sectarian mess mostly due to the corruption of Shiite leadership and the malign, Snidley Whiplashesque influence of Iran. The recrudescence of Al Qaeda in Iraq in the form of ISIS is blamed on former prime minister Nouri al-Maliki (onetime U.S. favorite). Almost no mention is made of the Wahhabi jihadis of Islamic State and their sectarianism and where it comes from. Next, as Iraqi forces, both Iranian-led militias and U.S.-led regular army and special forces, take back territory from ISIS there is a great deal of attention paid to the plight of civilians (compared with, say, Yemen).

Tim Arango in his story the other day, "Iraqis Who Flee Fighting in Falluja Find Hardship and Hunger," adheres to the guidelines in the first two-thirds of his dispatch from the outskirts of Falluja. But the able reporters find a way to subvert the standard narrative, and Arango delivers: the Iranian-led Shiite militias are conducting themselves professionally with no targeting of the civilian Sunni population fleeing the war zone, and any sectarianism appears to be fomented by Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf monarchies:

Shiite militias have played a prominent role in the offensive to retake Falluja after nearly three years of Islamic State rule. But because of that, the battle is playing out amid persistent worries that the campaign could intensify the sectarian tensions that are tearing the country apart. [A good distillation of the official U.S. position.]

The Sunni extremist fighters for the Islamic State have warned civilians that the Shiite militias would slaughter them in revenge attacks whenever possible. The news media in Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf countries have framed the battle in crass sectarian terms, warning that Iran’s militias were intent on killing Sunnis. [Not at all dissimilar from NYT's reporting.]

But for the most part, civilians who have fled the areas around Falluja have said they had tired of the grim life under the Islamic State and had been treated well by the militias and Iraqi soldiers.

“We were surprised that they treated us so well,” said a man at a camp who was in his 50s and gave his name as Abu Muhammad, standing on Sunday outside his tent. “Daesh had told us the Shiites wanted revenge and would kill us.” 

Instead, he said, he was given cookies and orange juice.

For evidence of ruthless state-sponsored terrorism which news consumers hear almost nothing about, Arango needs to travel back to his old turf, Turkey, where president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is waging a scorched-earth campaign against the Kurdish population of the country's southeast.

Erdoğan's Kurdish war fulfills all the guidelines of NYT's Iraq reporting, but the Gray Lady gives the Turkish government a pass for the most part. I say for the most part because Ceylan Yeginsu did have an informative piece yesterday, "Bomb in Istanbul Kills 11 Near Tourist District":

Violence has surged in the country’s predominately Kurdish southeast in recent months, after Turkey undertook a major military operation to eradicate militants from their strongholds in the region.

The Turkish authorities have imposed round-the-clock curfews across several southeastern cities and pounded Kurdish militant targets with tanks and artillery, and they claim to have killed almost 5,000 militants. In the process, they have reduced many Kurdish cities to rubble.

Critics of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan say he deliberately short-circuited the peace process with the Kurds last year to stir nationalist sentiments after his ruling Justice and Development Party fared poorly in a first round of parliamentary elections. Premeditated or not, the tactic worked, as the party went on to win in a landslide in November, prompting the president to say the country had voted for stability.

Despite that victory, violence sharply escalated and the P.K.K.’s youth branches, fighting for self-rule, began carrying out increasingly sophisticated attacks in urban areas.

Last month, lawmakers from Mr. Erdogan’s governing party pushed through a contentious amendment to the Turkish Constitution that would strip lawmakers’ immunity. Analysts say the move will lead to the ouster of Kurdish politicians, many of whom could face terrorism charges. Kurdish politicians have warned that their exclusion from Parliament could aggravate tensions in the southeast.

Erdoğan's Turkey has been rewarded by the E.U., under Merkel's leadership, for its help in keeping refugees away from European shores.

Authoritarianism in Turkey and the United States + Islamic State Responds to Russia

Turkish president Recep Erdoğan's strategy of tension appears to have paid off. His Justice and Development Party (AKP), confounding pollsters who predicted another dead-heat election, has won a majority in parliament. It took the shredding of a ceasefire with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and sowing divisions in Turkish society that will not be bridged anytime soon, but it guarantees that Erdoğan will remain in power for the foreseeable future and that he will take a crack at revision of the constitution to formalize an executive presidency. Right now the presidency is mostly a ceremonial post, which necessitates that Erdoğan rule through cut-outs like prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu.

Tim Arango and Ceylan Yeginsu report in "Erdogan’s Party in Turkey Regains Parliamentary Majority":

With 99 percent of the votes counted, according to the state broadcaster TRT, the Justice and Development Party, or A.K.P., captured 49.3 percent of the popular vote, giving it a solid majority of 316 seats in Parliament.

The victory for the A.K.P. came at great cost to the cohesion of Turkish society. Critics say Mr. Erdogan’s divisive rhetoric, by denigrating opponents as terrorists or traitors, helped polarize the country. And a government crackdown on dissent in the lead-up to the vote, with mobs attacking newspaper offices and a recent raid on a media conglomerate opposed to the government, raised concerns abroad about Turkey’s commitment to democracy.

Erdoğan's raids on and closure of opposition media has an approximate parallel in the United States. The Republican National Committee (RNC), following the CNBC-hosted GOP debate last Wednesday, pulled a debate scheduled for February that was to be televised by NBC News and Telemundo. The feeling among the Republican presidential candidates, as well as the RNC, is that questions from the moderators have been hostile. The candidates are seeking to have more control over the process. To that end, they convened in Alexandria, VA in an attempt to articulate a negotiating position towards the networks.

As Ashley Parker notes in "Republican Campaigns Meet in an Effort to Alter Debates":

They emerged with a modest list of demands, including opening and closing statements of at least 30 seconds; “parity and integrity” on questions, meaning that all candidates would receive similarly substantive questions; no so-called lightning rounds; and approval of any graphics that are aired during the debate.

The campaign representatives also moved to take the Republican National Committee out of the debate negotiating process, calling for the campaigns to negotiate directly with the TV networks over format, and to receive information about the rules and criteria at least 30 days before each debate.

Ben Ginsberg, a top Republican lawyer and debate negotiator who was invited to serve as a facilitator at the meeting, is drafting a letter — without the R.N.C.’s input — that the campaigns plan to send to the networks within 48 hours. Mr. Ginsberg called the committee immediately after the meeting to convey the group’s next steps.

It is hard to generate any sense of outrage on behalf of the corporate networks or the sidelined RNC. The media monopoly and the national duopoly central committees are working hard to make sure that the candidates who have raised the most corporate cheddar are waved through to the general election. This means Hillary, and now, with the approval of billionaire investor Paul Singer, Marco Rubio.

Nonetheless, the orchestrated Republican attacks on the liberal bias of the corporate mainstream media reek of authoritarianism.

Sadly, as Erdoğan proved again yesterday, authoritarianism works. It is just in the case of the CNBC debate brouhaha authoritarianism is being used against the font of authority, the mainstream corporate media. So who knows how this is all going to play out in the GOP primary.

I think it is pretty safe to say that the corporate mainstream has successfully circled the wagons around Hillary. With the phony challenge of a Biden bid successfully surmounted, her first debate performance hailed as a commanding victory and the Benghazi committee hearing rapidly receding in her rear-view mirror, Hillary is all set to roll up Sanders come Super Tuesday.

A triumphant Erdoğan means that Europe will come a-calling again in search of a solution to the refugee crisis, a crisis which promises to grow more acute. Turkey's election in June, the one that failed to deliver Erdoğan his majority, was purported to be a referendum of Turkish disapproval of the war in Syria. Now that Erdoğan is in possession of his majority I would imagine that Turkish support for jihadist networks in Syria and attacks on Kurds will be amplified.

The downing of a Russian charter jet in Egypt is clearly the work of jihadists. Islamic State in the Sinai is claiming responsibility. Yet the West is putting up a smokescreen, saying that it couldn't be a jihadist group because such groups don't possess surface-to-air missiles. Poppycock. No such hedging was indulged when it came to blaming Novorossiyan forces for the downing of MH17. What we have here is a reprisal for Russia's forceful entry into the war in Syria.

Russia's reply should be interesting. For what it is worth, if I were a ruling member of the House of Saud, I would be nervous.

Europe's Refugee Crisis: Best Hope for Peace in Syria, but Don't Count on It

The best hope for peace in Syria might very well be the mounting refugee crisis Europe is now confronted with. A good story by Ceylan Yeginsu and Anemona Hartocollis, "Amid Perilous Mediterranean Crossings, Migrants Find a Relatively Easy Path to Greece," detailing how Syrians get from the southern coast of Turkey to the nearby Greek island of Kos, appears in this morning's paper:

The International Organization for Migration, based in Geneva, said Friday that nearly 250,000 migrants had crossed the Mediterranean to Europe this year, already more than for all of 2014. Greece alone, it said, had reported 134,988 arrivals from Turkey this year. 

Singling out the strain on Greece, the United Nations has called for urgent action to address the crisis in Europe. 

For many of the refugees, Greece is seen as a steppingstone to Western Europe. Although Turkey is hosting nearly two million Syrian refugees, more than any other country, many Syrians say that they do not see a future there. 

To get to Europe, they depend on a vast illegal migrant smuggling operation that has grown over the past year as the Syrian civil war grinds on.

The problem for Europe is that it is wedded to the U.S.-Turkey-GCC regime-change policy dictating that Assad must go in order for there to be any peace. This policy of course has led to the efflorescence of jihadi groups using Turkey as an entry point to Syria and Iraq. Now we have a caliphate where slavery is practiced.

A particularly disturbing story by Rukmini Callimachi appeared last Friday, "ISIS Enshrines a Theology of Rape," which explains how the caliphate uses captured Yazidi girls and women as sex chattel. Here is how Callimachi ends her piece:

One 34-year-old Yazidi woman, who was bought and repeatedly raped by a Saudi fighter in the Syrian city of Shadadi, described how she fared better than the second slave in the household — a 12-year-old girl who was raped for days on end despite heavy bleeding. 

“He destroyed her body. She was badly infected. The fighter kept coming and asking me, ‘Why does she smell so bad?’ And I said, she has an infection on the inside, you need to take care of her,” the woman said. 

Unmoved, he ignored the girl’s agony, continuing the ritual of praying before and after raping the child. 

“I said to him, ‘She’s just a little girl,’ ” the older woman recalled. “And he answered: ‘No. She’s not a little girl. She’s a slave. And she knows exactly how to have sex.’’’ 

“And having sex with her pleases God,” he said.

No wonder there is a refugee crisis. What Turkey facilitated on the front end by funneling jihadis across the border, it is now promoting on the back end by acting as a transit center for not only Syrians, Afghans, Iraqis, but Pakistanis and Bangladeshis as well.

Expect the number of refugees to mount. Increased fighting appears to have returned to the suburbs surrounding Damascus. The UNHCR is calling for a plan of action. The problem is that right-wing nativism is on the upswing in Europe. Governments will not want to risk popular reaction by implementing a system that will lead to the introduction of more refugees.

The obvious thing to do would be to end the fighting in Syria and Iraq and roll up the Islamic State. But Europe cannot exercise its sovereignty when it comes to war and peace. The U.S. calls the shots. We saw this clearly in Ukraine.

So the U.S. double game -- aiding the jihadis while fighting the jihadis -- will continue and the European Union will likely continue to fracture.

Turkey Finally Gets Its No-Fly Zone in Syria

A good argument can be made that the Ghouta sarin gas attack of two years ago was a false-flag job launched by Turkey with the goal of establishing a no-fly zone over Syria which would then lead to the collapse of Bashar al-Assad's government. Sy Hersh made such an argument last year in "The Red Line and the Rat Line."

Now, with this morning's announcement, "Turkey and U.S. Agree on Plan to Clear ISIS From Strip of Syria’s North," despite official U.S. denials, it looks like Turkey is finally getting its wish. The story is written by trusted USG mouthpieces Anne Barnard, Michael Gordon and Eric Schmitt:

BAGHDAD — Turkey and the United States have agreed in general terms on a plan that envisions American warplanes, Syrian insurgents and Turkish forces working together to sweep Islamic State militants from a 60-mile-long strip of northern Syria along the Turkish border, American and Turkish officials say. 

The plan would create what officials from both countries are calling an Islamic State-free zone controlled by relatively moderate Syrian insurgents, which the Turks say could also be a “safe zone” for displaced Syrians.

***

In another complication, gains for such insurgents would come at the expense of Syrian Kurdish militias that are already fighting the Islamic State farther east with American air support and that have been eyeing the same territory.

Turkish officials and Syrian opposition leaders are describing the agreement as something just short of a prize they have long sought as a tool against Mr. Assad: a no-fly zone in Syria near the Turkish border. They want such a zone in order to curb devastating Syrian government airstrikes on opposition areas, to allow refugees in Turkey to go home and to insulate Turkey from the war, and they call the new plan a “safe zone” that could achieve some of those goals.

But American officials say that this plan is not directed against Mr. Assad. They also say that while a de facto safe zone could indeed be a byproduct of the plan, a formal no-fly zone is not part of the deal. They said it was not included in the surprise agreement reached last week to let American warplanes take off from Turkish air bases to attack Islamic State fighters in Syria, even though Turkey had long said it would give that permission only in exchange for a no-fly zone.

Instead, United States officials said Turks and Americans were working toward an agreement on the details of an operation to clear Islamic State militants from a heavily contested area roughly between the eastern outskirts of the city of Aleppo and the Euphrates River.

That is an ambitious military goal, because it appears to include areas of great strategic and symbolic importance to the Islamic State, and it could encompass areas that Syrian helicopters regularly bomb. If the zone goes 25 miles deep into Syria, as Turkish news outlets have reported, it could encompass the town of Dabiq, a significant place in the group’s apocalyptic theology, and Manbij, another stronghold. It could also include the Islamic State-held town of Al Bab, where barrel bombs dropped by Syrian aircraft have killed scores, including civilians, in recent weeks.

American officials emphasized that the depth of the buffer zone to be established was one of the important operational details that had yet to be decided. But one senior official said, “You can be assured many of the principal population centers will be covered.”

The plan does not envision Turkish ground troops entering Syria, although long-range artillery could be used across the border. Turkish ground forces would work on their side of the border to stem the Islamic State’s ability to infiltrate foreign fighters and supplies into Syria.

Inside Syria, the plan calls for relatively moderate Syrian insurgents to take the territory, with the help of American and possibly Turkish air support.

That would entail a far higher degree of coordination with Syrian insurgents than the United States has yet undertaken. American officials said they would need to arrange the same kind of system for calling in airstrikes that American Special Operations forces have worked out successfully with Kurdish fighters to the east in Syria.

Insurgents, as well as their supporters in the Syrian opposition and the Turkish government, are already envisioning the plan as a step toward establishing an area where alternative governance could be set up without fear of attack by Islamic State or government forces.

Once the plan is put in place, “safe zones will be formed naturally,” Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said at a recent news conference, adding that displaced Syrians could return there.

American officials in recent months have argued to Turkish counterparts that a formal no-fly zone is not necessary, noting that during hundreds of American-led strike missions against Islamic State in Syria, forces loyal to Mr. Assad have steered clear of areas under concerted allied attack.

But until now, those missions been mostly farther east, in areas that are not seen as priorities for Mr. Assad, and where there are few non-Islamic State insurgents to benefit, except for Kurdish militias that the government views as less of a threat.

By contrast, the new plan directly benefits Syrian Arab insurgents. Islamic State attacks on them east of Aleppo have complicated their efforts to take the half of that city, Syria’s largest, that remains in government hands.

“Any weakening of ISIS will be a privilege for us on the battlefield,” Ahmad Qara Ali, a spokesman for Ahrar al-Sham, an insurgent group that often allies with the Nusra Front, Al Qaeda’s Syria affiliate. “As for our role, we are already in an open battle against I.S.”

Such Syrian Arab insurgents would gain at the expense of the People’s Protection Units, a Kurdish militia known by the initials Y.P.G. that is seeking to take the same territory from the east. While the United States views the group as one of its best partners on the ground, Turkey sees it as a threat; it is affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, a militant group whose longstanding conflict with Turkey has flared anew in recent days.

The area has become more crucial to the Islamic State since the Kurds recently drove the group from a border crossing farther east at Tal Abyad, denying it supply routes and revenues. The operation seeks to stop the Islamic State from establishing new routes anywhere between the Kilis border crossing and Jarabulus on the Euphrates.

Make no mistake, this new agreement is all about Turkey keeping the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) at bay; in particular, the militia of the Syrian affiliate of the PKK, the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), which as Barnard et al. note above was making gains against ISIS from the east. Moon of Alabama reported in a post yesterday, "Turkey's War On Kurds Realigns Syrian Kurds With Their Government," that Syrian Kurds were ready to cut a deal with Assad and join the Syrian Arab Army:

The Kurds in Syria and their leader Salih Muslim are under attack from the Islamic State and now also from Turkey. They have now offered to reconcile with their only reliable partner, the Syrian government. Salih Muslim said that the Kurds would join the Syrian army if that army would show a "new mentality". He spoke favorably of the father of Bashar al Assad and his relations with the Kurds and discussed various forms of federalism.

THIS IS HUGE!

Should the Syrian government take up this offer for talks (likely!) and guarantee some kind of Kurdish autonomy within some federal Syrian structure the Syrian army would regain the manpower to again go on the offense. Supported by Iran and Russia and united with the Kurds the Syrian army would again be dominant power in the country and likely be able to retake the insurgency and islamist occupied areas.

Clearly, the U.S.-Turkey buffer zone announcement is designed to prevent this from happening.

An excellent story by Ceylan Yeginsu, "Strikes on Kurd Militias Elevate Tensions in Turkey," lends credence to the notion that the lightning rapprochement between Turkey and the United States over joint operations targeting Islamic State, a rapprochement that was spurred by a suicide bombing targeting pro-Kurdish activists in the Turkish town of Suruc which was then used by Erdogan's government to attack PKK camps, was likely a false-flag operation:

Although Turkish officials said that large-scale counterterrorism operations had been planned for some time, the measures put into place last week were prompted by a suicide bombing at a cultural center in the border town of Suruc last Monday that killed 32 people and wounded more than 100. 

The attack, which targeted a group of pro-Kurdish activists and was carried out by a Turkish citizen with suspected ties to the Islamic State, laid bare a sociopolitical fault line in Turkey, as Kurds accused the government of allowing the Islamic State to operate in the country.

“The conflict in Syria has spilled across the border into Turkey, and the Turkish state has a big part to play in that reality,” said Fatma Edemen, a journalism student at Ankara University who survived the attack. “The government has let ISIS roam freely in Turkey for years.”

Ms. Edemen, 22, is a member of a pro-Kurdish socialist youth group that had gathered at the Amara Culture Center on Monday to discuss rebuilding the war-ravaged Syrian border town of Kobani, which was besieged by Islamic State militants last year in a battle that drew crucial support from the American-led coalition.

The Turkish government’s reluctance to take part in the Kobani campaign inspired violent protests across Turkey, with Kurdish nationalists accusing Ankara of aiding the Islamic State. At least 30 people died in the demonstrations.

Turkey’s lack of response over Kobani also bolstered the Kurdish election campaign in June, after conservative nationalist Kurds, who had previously voted for Mr. Erdogan’s Islamist Justice and Development Party, defected to the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party, or H.D.P., which won representation in Parliament for the first time by passing a 10 percent threshold in the June 7 election.

The success of the pro-Kurdish party stripped Mr. Erdogan’s party of its majority in Parliament, opening the possibility of a coalition government for the first time in more than a decade.

Earlier this month, Mr. Erdogan gave Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu amandate to form a government. If the prime minister fails to establish a coalition within 45 days, Mr. Erdogan is likely to call for another election in November.

Selahattin Demirtas, the co-chairman of the H.D.P., has accused the government of supporting the attack in Suruc as part of a larger strategy to drag the country into a war — and improve the Justice and Development Party’s election prospects.

Analysts say that Turkey’s campaign to bundle the crackdown on the Islamic State with the P.K.K. could help Mr. Erdogan and Mr. Davutoglu regain the disaffected nationalist voters that they lost in the last election (though probably not the conservative Kurdish voters).

“Erdogan’s strongman image is being restored with the strikes,” said Soner Cagaptay, director of the Turkish Research Program at the Washington Institute. 

“His persona of someone that gets things done at home and abroad has been shattered by Turkey’s failure in Syria and against the rise of the P.K.K.,” he added. “These strikes have revived that image.” 

The greatest risk of Turkey’s new counterterrorism policy, according to analysts, is that it could reignite unrest in the Kurdish southeast.

Time and again we see this neocon logic at work with large state powers, principally the United States: "If first you don't succeed, if things aren't going your way, try again -- by making things worse." That is why there are so many failed states and war is on the rise.

Future of Caliphate at Risk in Battle for Kobani

Turkey, a NATO ally, is insistent that Syria under Assad is a greater threat than Islamic State; hence, the Turkish demand for a buffer zone along its border as a quid pro quo for the country's participation in the U.S.-led coalition to degrade and destroy ISIS. As Tim Arango and Ceylan Yeginsu report today in "Turkey Seeks Buffer Zone on the Border With Syria":

While Turkey has largely described the plan in humanitarian terms — to protect refugees and also Turkey’s border — the argument made privately is that a buffer zone would quickly evolve into a place where moderate rebels would be trained to fight Mr. Assad’s government; in other words, a fledgling rebel state.

“It would mainly be a place where an alternate government structure would take root and for the training of rebels,” said Frederic C. Hof, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and a former American envoy to the Syrian opposition.

It should be noted that Fred Hof has been an advocate for regime change in Syria from the outset, and he remains the go-to guy in the prestige press for an easy warpig quote.

Make no mistake, the buffer zone is not about toppling Assad; it is about beating down the Kurds. Erdogan prefers a caliphate on his southeastern flank to a "fledging" Marxist-inspired Kurdish state:

Some analysts say that Turkey’s call for a buffer zone would allow it to forestall any bid for Kurdish autonomy within northern Syria, and the Kurds have opposed the idea. 

“Turkey is ultimately using the no-fly zone and talk of taking part in the coalition against ISIS as a cover for seeking international legitimacy for what they actually want to do, which is to crush the Kurds,” said Halil M. Karaveli, an expert on Turkey and a senior fellow at the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute in Stockholm.

For a brief presentation of the enormous importance of the ISIS vs. YPG battle over Kobani, check out yesterday's Syria Comment post by Carl Drott, "What is at Stake in Kobani: Islamic State and Kobani Calculations." Drott sees the current struggle for the Kurdish enclave as basically determining whether the caliphate will survive or a Kurdish homeland in northern Syria will:

To conclude: If IS forces capture Kobani, their victory will be definite and irrevocable. If YPG manages to hold IS at bay, its forces will eventually have to take back enough territory to create sustainable living conditions. The scale of their ambitions will depend on what is feasible. In their very different ways, IS and YPG both have the capacity to govern these areas over time.

U.S. dithering makes more sense in light of Kobani's importance. After all, the U.S. has an ownership stake in ISIS; it does not want Islamic State to collapse before Sykes-Picot can be remade according to plan, whatever exactly that plan is (though it definitely includes a non-Baathist Syria and a tripartite, federalized Iraq). If the Leftist Kurds, the Syrian branch of the PKK, were to successfully beat back the jihadis, it would represent a great strategic victory, as Drott explains:

Before the attack started, YPG controlled some territory between Shiukh bridge and Qara Quzak bridge along the eastern shore of the Euphrates. Even more importantly, YPG controlled a stretch of the main motorway east of Qara Quzak bridge. This territory has now been captured, which means significantly improved communications within the northern parts of the “caliphate.” Kobani town itself is relatively insignificant, but the survival of a YPG-controlled enclave would tie up military resources and constitute a security problem for IS in the longer term. 

If the tables are turned at some point in the future, YPG will certainly look east towards Tel Abyad. The capture of this town would enable the isolated Kobani enclave to be connected with the much larger Jazira area that also borders the Kurdistan Region in Iraq (a successful attack would most likely come from this side). For IS, on the other hand, getting expelled from this area would mean losing all access to Turkey east of Jarabulus.

Erdogan has apparently risked all -- scrapping the peace process with the PKK, butting heads with the Obama administration, outing Turkish support of ISIS -- because the future of the caliphate is at risk in Ayn al-Arab. We can expect the Turks to do everything in their power to make sure the YPG does not triumph. The Obama administration, given its split between State Department neocons and Pentagon reluctant warriors, will continue to dither.