NATO held an emergency meeting in Brussels yesterday to support Turkey’s military campaign, nominally against the IS, but in fact against the Kurds and against Syria’s President Assad.
Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg announced that the 28-member North Atlantic Council had gathered under Article 4 of the NATO provisions. Article 4 reads: ‘The Parties will consult together whenever, in the opinion of any of them, the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the Parties is threatened.’
Before the meeting ‘threatened’ Turkey, which has the biggest army in Europe and the Middle East, together with the United States, agreed on a plan to create what officials are calling an Islamic State-free zone, which the Turks say must be a ‘no fly zone’, that is a zone from which the Syrian air force is barred.
This zone also has the full support of the UK and Prime Minister Cameron and will be established in northern Syria regardless of the wishes of the Syrian government, as an act of war against Syria, without the permission of the UK parliament. Turkey has in fact been plunged into crisis after IS, which the Turkish regime has been working with for over a year, killed 32 mainly Kurdish youth in the Turkish town of Suruc, just as the Kurdish youth were about to leave to help rebuild the city of Kobayn, in northern Syria which has been liberated from the IS.
There was a massive and revolutionary reaction throughout Turkey by millions of Turkish and Kurdish workers workers against the Suruc massacre, which many workers consider their government allowed to happen. There is not the slightest doubt that Turkey’s drive to invade northern Syria is not to battle IS but to fight the Kurds and plan a march on Damascus by US and UK trained forces.
Before the NATO meeting, Turkey and the United States agreed in general terms on a plan that envisions American and UK warplanes, Syrian insurgents and Turkish forces working together to turn a 60-mile-long strip of northern Syria along the Turkish border, into a secure no-fly zone.
The response of the Turkish government to the IS atrocity in Suruc was to round up hundreds of Kurds and bomb northern Syria and the PKK in northern Iraq.
Overnight on Monday, the YPG Kurdish armed force in Syria said that Turkish tanks hit its positions in a village in Syria’s Aleppo province, wounding fighters and villagers. Turkey has for a long time worked with the IS, as part of its drive to overthrow the Syrian government of President Assad and to crush the Kurds in northern Syria and Northern Iraq who have been fighting the IS movement. Their principal ally is the UK’s Cameron, who has just announced that he is ready to bomb Libya and Syria to fight the IS movement.
Again, the British government has a record of allowing hundreds of British youth to go to Syria to fight alongside the IS or to become its suicide bombers. Cameron’s real target remains Assad! Cameron supports the establishment of a no-fly zone in northern Syria from which to train and organise the anti-Assad forces. Turkey will be in control on the ground with Britain supplying trainers, no doubt British volunteers, while Saudi Arabia and Qatar finance the project. Turkey’s prime minister said he expects his country’s allies to show solidarity and support for its campaign.
Once again, Turkey’s opposition to IS is in fact a front for attacking the Kurds in northern Syria who are allies of the Assad regime and for attacking the PKK in northern Iraq. In fact, Turkey still claims Mosul in northern Iraq as part of its territory! Millions of Turkish workers and youth will rise up against Erdogan’s attacks on the Syrian people and the Syrian Kurds.
Millions of British workers must rise up to stop any British military intervention into Syria and Libya.
There must be an emergency resolution put down at September’s TUC Congress that any British military attack on Libya or Syria will be met with a general strike to bring down the Tories and bring in a workers government.
