Turkey Prefers Islamic State to Kurdish State

by Uzay Bulut • July 5, 2015 at 5:00 am

ISIS terrorists have been attacking Kurds in an attempt to rape their women, sell them on slave markets and annihilate them. This is what happens when Kurds get caught unprepared or cannot fight back. And this is why the demands that the West arm the Kurds directly, and recognize Kurdish self-rule within secure and defensible boundaries, are a matter of life and death.
It would be much better if the states ruling over the Kurds would willingly recognize Kurdish rights without shedding any blood, but that is not how the states in this region operate.

Kurdish women make up a large proportion of the YPG militia fighters who are battling ISIS on the front lines in Syrian Kurdistan. (Image source: Mirava News video screenshot)

On June 16, Kurdish fighters in Syrian Kurdistan captured the town of Tel Abyad from the Islamic State (ISIS). The Kurdish victory in Tel Abyad prevents ISIS from having a direct route for importing fighters and supplies, and puts serious pressure on Raqqa, the de facto "capital" of the Islamic State.

As Rami Abdulrahman, the head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group, noted, the capture of Tel Abyad was "the biggest setback to ISIS since it announced its caliphate one year ago."

Although this success by the Kurds must have been welcomed by people horrified at such a genocidal terrorist group, Turkey's President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed to prevent the establishment of a Kurdish state in the region. "I am addressing the whole world," he said: "We will never allow a state to be formed in northern Syria, south of our border."