I Think I Understand What Turkey is Doing

This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we'll be lucky to live through it.

Things in Syria are out of control, had have been since Turkey and Saudi Arabia founded ISIS to take down the Assad regime.

While silliness, like the brouhaha over a (hopefully soon to be court martialed and discharged) Russian soldier who brandished a rocket launcher while transiting the Bosporus, people are ignoring the fact that Turkey just invaded Iraq:

Turkey said on Monday it would not withdraw hundreds of soldiers who arrived last week at a base in northern Iraq, despite being ordered by Baghdad to pull them out within 48 hours.

The sudden arrival of such a large and heavily armed Turkish contingent in a camp near the frontline in northern Iraq has added yet another controversial deployment to a war against Islamic State fighters that has drawn in most of the world's major powers.

Ankara says the troops are there as part of an international mission to train and equip Iraqi forces to fight against Islamic State. The Iraqi government says it never invited such a force, and will take its case to the United Nations if they are not pulled out.

Washington, which is leading an international coalition against Islamic State that includes Turkey, Arab states and European powers like Britain and France, has told Ankara and Baghdad to resolve the standoff, and says it does not support deployments in Iraq without Baghdad's consent.

The Turkish troops' presence is an embarrassment for Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar Abadi, under strong pressure from powerful Iran-backed Shi'ite political groups to kick them out.

I have made the point numerous times that evidence indicates that Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is determined to remake Turkey, and Syria, into Islamic states.

This neglects some of his other behavior, where he has attempted to efface the memory of Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk) and to hearken back to the Ottoman Empire.

His attempts to recreate Ottoman buildings in Gezi Park, which led to massive protests, is one of the more prominent example of this.

I am now thinking that he is not just interested in Islamizing his neighborhood.  I think that he wants the return of something like an Ottoman Empire, or at least something very much like it using spheres of influence.

As a historical note, what is now Mosul was captured by the British after the armistice, and Turkey disputed its allocation to Iraq ferociously in the early 1900s.

I will note that my thesis is "Out there", and that other folks are suggesting that this is a way to sabotage the Kurds autonomy in Iraq (likely), or a way to extort a route for a Qatar Turkey natural gas pipeline to replace the now moribund plan to run such a pipeline through Syria.

In either case, this is getting really ugly really quickly.