Neo-Ottoman expansionism: when will Turkey annex Northern Syria?
Ankara has used the Turkistan Islamic Party, a Uighur Islamic faction grouped in Idlib and considered a terrorist movement, to fight the Kurds and offered to compensate its members by settling them and their families in Syria.
Excerpts from a lengthy, detailed article in the current issue of the Middle East Quarterly. (The creation of Daniel Pipes, who decidedly has his own ax to grind.)
Turkish Imperialism: When Will Turkey Annex Northern Syria?
During the past five years, Turkish forces launched four military operations that led to the establishment of four border zones under their control….
Last year, the Turkish army launched Operation Spring Shield in the Idlib governorate following a military assault by the Syrian regime to regain control over vast areas in the northwest. That assault ended with a ceasefire agreement between Damascus’s ally Russia and Turkey in Idlib in March 2020.
Turkey controls nearly 4.9 percent of Syria with between 12,000 and 15,000 soldiers stationed there.
As a result of these actions, Turkey now controls more than 8,000 square kilometers in Syria, or nearly 4.9 percent of the war-torn country. Between 12,000 and…
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Universal Human Rights Index
Piazza della Carina 
The Grayzone has produced massive proof that the ‘Uighur genocide’ myth was created with CIA funds. And it takes less than an hour to read. Everything in this video is true, and easily demonstrated, but it is rather long. Mao ordered that every child in the PRC must learn to read and write Mandarin, but since the Uighur children only spoke Uighur, the Mandarins in Xinjiang said the UIghur teachers (who only understood Uighur) must teach all Uighur children to read and write in Uighur, which uses the Arabic alphabet. Uighurs worked as herders and were very poor in the ’70s and had homes with holes in the roof that leaked badly when it rained. The ‘Concentration Camps’ started in the last 20 years forced all working age Uighurs to learn to read and write Mandarin Chinese and also some European languages, after which some of the Uighurs got jobs in Chinese factories paying much better salaries, and others got jobs as tourist guides to the many tourists that go to Xinjiang to see the history of the Silk Road, and all now all have good homes with electricity and A/C. The Western press says Uighur are forced to pick cotton as slaves. In the ’70s, picking cotton in Xinjiang paid very well, so only Han Chinese got all the cotton-picking jobs. Today, almost all the cotton is picked by slaves: slaves made of iron and silicon. The autonomous machines plant the cotton, water and fertilise the cotton, and harvest the cotton. A little bit of very high quality cotton must be picked by hand, but the salary is very good, one can live for a year on three months’ work. And now, some Uighurs are allowed to pick cotton, and they like it very much.
In the ’70s, religion was illegal in the PRC, so halal food was not allowed, was not sold in any stores. Religion became legal in 2000, so today, most restaurants in Xinjiang are halal, and most Chinese cities have a mosque and at least one halal restaurant. Xinjiang has had all its historic mosques restored, and many new mosques built. An Imam from Pakistan was invited to go all over Xinjiang and said it is a very good place for Muslims to live.
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Meanwhile, Russia has given up the northernmost 5% of Syria to Turkey, and the Syrian oilfields to the US. If Russia expels Turkey, NATO Article 5 means all of NATO must support Turkey, so Russia figures giving up that 5% beats WWIII. But at least Russia has freed most of Syria for the Syrians.
Right, every nation should sacrifice themselves to U.S. NATO to avoid WW3 [sic]. Personally I’d rather let them die with the rest of us in a massive nuclear war than live as their slave.
Russia made it clear that it will keep most of Syria for the Syrians, and obviously thinks giving up 10% of Syria was better for both Russia and Syria than war with NATO. I heard Bolton on TV today saying it is the duty of the US to liberate all of Syria and let it be ruled by the peaceful, pro-democracy Syrians (who call themselves al-Qaeda and IS-Levant and who are supported by US and Israeli airstrikes and drone-strikes, but he didn’t recognise that obvious fact when it was pointed out to him, but blamed Obama’s pullout from Iraq as causing ISIS, when it was in the Washington Post that most of ISIS started when Bush, Jr built Camp Bucca and imprisoned many Iraqis and subjected them to the same ‘enhanced interrogation’ used by the Chinese Mandarins and Torquemada, then they were liberated and given money and weapons in 2009 if they would swear on the Nobel Koran to go to Syria, overthrow the evil Assad regime, and never come back to Iraq (only they do not recognise Syria and Iraq as separate nations, both are just part of the Caliphate, and an oath not to cross a line drawn by the infidels Sykes and Picot was not binding).
Trump’s bombing of Syria is reminiscent of the Cuban Missile Crisis: Kennedy called Khrushchev and said, ‘I have to run for re-election and you don’t, so if you’ll SAY you gave me everything I wanted and got nothing in return, I’ll give YOU everything you wanted!’ So Kennedy drew all the US missiles out of Turkey (but kept the withdrawal Top Secret).
Then, in 2018, Trump and Putin agreed that Trump would have the Air Forces of the US/UK/France bomb an empty, deserted out-of-use building and no one got hurt.
MAD has limited war for the last 75 years, but the US misbelieves that MAD no longer exists, that the US now has the capability to destroy all their enemies and has nuke-proof anti-missile systems. So I figure those who think extinction of the human race remains a remote possibility are Pollyannas.
Oh I do not think the extinction of humans is a remote possibility. I just prefer not to live as a slave to the western empire. Better to die on your feet than live on your knees.