airpower is not used to support
Kurdish militias. So Turkey is
sort of coming around, but not
really.
Ankara’s only long-term
solution to this conundrum is
peace with the Kurds. They
aren’t going anywhere. They
will want out of Turkey, out of
Syria, out of Iraq, and out of
Iran as long as those countries
treat them like second-class
citizens or worse.
The good news for Turkey—if
the Turks ever wise up enough
to figure this out—is that the
Kurds are the easiest people in
the entire Middle East to make
friends with. Americans have
managed to do so almost
effortlessly. So have the
Israelis. That’s saying
something in that part of the
world. The PKK may be
intransigent, but if reasonable
Kurdish grievances were
addressed—including Turkey’s
hostility toward besieged
Kurds in Syria—then support
for the PKK in Turkey would
likely evaporate.
Making friends with ISIS,
however, is impossible.
In their book ISIS: Inside the
Army of Terror, Michael Weiss
and Hassan Hassan make a
compelling case that “the army
of terror will be with us
indefinitely.” President Obama
agrees. The war against ISIS,
he said at the Pentagon in early
July, could take decades.
President George W. Bush said
more or less the same thing
about al-Qaeda, and ISIS is
simply al-Qaeda in Iraq under
new management.
Decades is an awfully long
time for a genocidal terrorist
state to exist anywhere, and
decades is an awfully long time
for a NATO ally to support it
even indirectly by refusing to
act. Turkey cannot continu H