It Could Happen Here - Turkish Drone Strikes in North and East Syria

Episode Date: August 11, 2023

James, Robert, and Shereen discuss the Turkish drone campaign against the SDF, stuffed toy drones, and why Erdogan keeps trying to kill some of the people who defeated isis.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You should probably keep your lights on for

Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me, Danny Trails, and step into the flames of right. An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. What's foreign my policy? I don't know. I don't know, guys. i don't know i don't know guys i don't know i i got like trapped into

this like pattern of doing introductions a certain way and i don't really i don't like feel good about it but how do you how does one break their patterns speaking of patterns let's talk about syria beautiful that was awesome yeah i understood exactly what that meant Let's talk about Syria. Beautiful. That was awesome. Yeah, I understood exactly what that meant. I feel like one of the basketball guys when someone lays him up and then he just does a dunk. That's what I feel like.

Don't know enough about them. Green Bay Packers swish. Yep. Go Tom Brady. Okay. Okay. Sports talk aside, I'm wearing my Rwanda football shirt today.

We are gathered here today to talk about Turkish drone strikes on the SDF. Not funny, not funny. Yeah, the SDF, yeah. We're talking about like Turkish, the continued Turkish military operations across their border in northeast Syria, the area commonly known as Rojava,

and also in southern Turkey as well. Yeah. Yeah. So just to give some numbers around this to start off, right? In year of 2022, which there wasn't a territorial offensive, so you're not seeing like uh troops on the ground uh turkey carried out 130 drone strikes in the autonomous administration of northeast syria yeah that's a the place that is more commonly known as rojava and um the they

killed at least eight ypj members and sort of ypj would be the women's protection forces who are a unit within the syrian democratic forces which is the armed forces of the aanes autonomous area of north east syria um i will come at you really hard with acronyms in this i think if people haven't listened to robert's series women's war maybe the women's war uh that would be a good place to start because like we only have half an hour or 45 minutes or whatever and we can't explain an extremely complicated conflict which has been going on for 12 years in that time so i think some grounding in who is who and what is what you can find it there, I guess.

But is that a fair summary of who those people are, Robert? Yeah, basically. So you had kind of the gist of the story is that for a very long time, starting in southern Turkey, there's been a Kurdish militant group called the PKK. They were way back in the day, originally Maoist. They had a bunch of internal power struggles within their own organization and then wound up taking a pretty wide turn away from Maoism towards a kind of political theory

heavily influenced by the work of an American anarchist thinker named Murray Bookchin. This was largely due to the fact that their leader, a guy named adola ajalan uh got while he was in turkish prison kind of pilled on a lot of uh uh these this kind of like uh fringe american libertarian ish sort of um uh political philosophy yeah with with this basically the the the gist of it is this kind of synthesis of a lot of Bookchin's ideas with some of the stuff that Ajalod had been thinking about for years kind of culminated in a political philosophy called libertarian municipalism, which is more or less the governing philosophy that these different armed militant organizations kind of clustered around the PKK in northeast Syria, because the PKK for years was just kind

of like cross the border in the northeast Syria when they were fighting with the Turks and they had to get away. And they had a bunch of inroads with local Kurdish organizations in northeast Syria. And when the Assad regime pulled out of the area in the early stages of the Syrian civil war, a lot of these groups that were affiliated with the PKK were kind of the best organized organizations in the area. And so they took over a lot of civil administration and basing a lot of their plans

and functional activities around these ideas that Ajalon had been writing about for years and years. And so you kind of have this mix of all these armed organizations that are to some extent descended from the PKK, but are now much broader than just sort of a Kurdish liberatory organization. These are the folks who fought and defeated ISIS in Northeast Syria. Yeah, that's, I don't know. There's so much to get into, but I guess that's kind of the broad strokes. And all of these different, because there's a bunch of different militias. You know, there's militias that are kind of more traditionalist Arab militias.

There's Armenian militias in the area. There's obviously these Kurdish militias, the YPG and the YPJ, primarily Kurdish militias. There's Armenian militias in the area. There's obviously these Kurdish militias, the YPG and the YPJ, primarily Kurdish militias, but they all fight under the banner of the SDF. And to the Turks, they're all the PKK. Yes. I'm glad you mentioned all the different militias and stuff because it gets really confusing. I mean, I'm Syrian and I'm just like, I cannot keep up uh i talked to my parents about it too and they're just like that's it's it's it's complicated so i think you did a good job breaking that down i also want to mention they were the only people fighting isis in syria

so i think it's pretty notable to yeah yeah yeah i got a list of the founding groups of the sdf so this happens in 2015 right um sort of uh earlier in the fight against isis um and some of these groups are descended like shereen said not not from the ypj or the ypg and robert said this too that they come from the fsa the free syrian army like there's specifically the fsa around the kabbani area contributed elements there's a syriac military council so that's a distinct ethnic group um there is the uh jayash or althuar if i said that right uh no but i can say it if you want please do magical thank you uh jaysh means army or like uh yeah army yeah jayesh it's it's it's annoying because english is spelled jayesh but it's just jayesh yeah yeah the revolutionary army army of revolutionaries i guess more accurately who are another mixed ethnicity group they like robert said include turkmen armenians um all kinds of different ethnic groups. So at this point, the entity that is the SDF

is a majority Arab entity. It's not like an ethnic Kurdish thing. And the Autonomous Administration is not like a Kurdish ethno-state, which I think is something that people can sometimes either confuse or conflate. But that's not the case, right? That's not what this sort

of democratic federalism is about nor is it what's represented in terms of the composition of the people there so people doing the fighting right so um sometimes these groups will be referred to on mass as like quote unquote the kurds you should by how kind of messy my explanation was it is hard to walk people through this folks eyes tend to glaze over for one thing when you mention a certain number of acronyms. But this leads to a situation whereby the U.S. news is just like the Kurds defeated ISIS in northeast

Syria. No, there were a whole lot of other people who did a lot of dying to win that battle. And some Kurds who weren't involved. And some Kurds who were not involved. There's also just so much infighting, I think, that it gets, I don't know, it's a lot. It is a lot like saying the Americans defeated the Nazis and it's like, well, there were some other people

involved in that fight. They saved the world. Yeah. Well, yeah, I've seen some films, Robert, and let me tell you, yes, I think Robert is right. It collapses two things, right? Like the heterogeneity of of kurdish people right different kurdish areas different kurdish movements and the heterogeneity of the stf so uh yeah mainstream news sometimes yeah because shocking

it is also worth noting like kurds are not certainly not a like um a monolithic group for examining northeast syria is like flatlands low lands and there's a big difference between the mountain kurds and the kurds who live in these like lowlands and traditionally even like a lot of like bad blood and stuff between different groups because you know that's just the way human beings are like yeah yeah um for yeah it's really easy i think for when we're consuming news especially news about the part of the world that the uh the populace here hasn't been spectacularly well informed on to break things down into easy groups right like you'll see a

lot as well like sunni and shias like the two categories that can exist within uh like and then people get very confused when there are categories within that when when there are where there are sunni groups fighting each other um yeah and the same with like kurds or turkmen or whatever like none of these groups are homogenous um and and sometimes yeah if you're i get it if you're doing a five minute piece for tv that's what you do but here we are not doing a five minute piece for TV. So this is, this has not been like a Kurdish history 101. Please read some more books about that. I'll put some in the sources. But what I want to talk about today is some of these Bayraktar attacks on

specifically YPJ, right? So the YPJ would be the women's defense forces. So that's a women's militia within the SDF. As Robert said, it's based heavily, I guess, on the outlook of Abdullah Ocalan, who's sometimes called APO. So we might use that for brevity here. So in one attack in April 2022, three YPGA fighters were killed. Dila Haleb, who had participated in the resistance of the Sheikh Massoud district of Aleppo in 2012. She'd become a leading YPGA commander and participated in the fight against ISIS, playing a leading role in the liberation of the city of Mimbek.

Rouhani Kabbani. It's worth noting, I guess, sorry, I stop every 15 seconds to explain context, that you'll hear sometimes place names in people's names. That's because they're like nom de guerre, rather than that this is not their legal name necessarily, but it's standard practice for these people to take a movement name or a nom de guerre,

much like Robert and I explained in the episodes on Myanmar. A lot of people do this a lot of places. Is that fair, Robert? Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a lot of people do this a lot of places um is that fair robert yeah yeah yeah there's um um a lot of like oftentimes people just like take a name based on their city that they came from like kobani or whatever um but yeah it's pretty much the norm that most people most fighters will introduce themselves by some sort of nom de guerre yeah um even some of the i know people who are like british or american who have been over there who are over there and they also have these uh yeah and there's a there's a lot in that one thing

you have to keep in mind is that like a lot of these people who are revolutionaries who consider themselves revolutionaries have family in regime controlled parts of town or or parts of syria or in um you know in idlib which is largely controlled by these like more turkish backed uh uh islamist groups and so part of why you do this is like i don't want my family like getting caught up in in this shit like if they live somewhere else like i don't want to like bring that down on them it's just safer yeah just like when we did our miyama episodes right we had miauka and andy and sarah um another woman as i said rahani kabani joined the ypga in 2014 she fought against isis she was wounded she participated after recovering in the in the liberation of raka and she was the co-chair of

the defense committee in kabani um and then there was a youngest the youngest woman uh she just joined I guess or had joined at a young age and she was called Kobani um and she uh like she joined after the fight against ISIS she was very young there are pictures I'll include a report it's very sad to see someone yeah like so young they looked they look like there's a couple of them that look like babies like it's it's really devastating because it's, I don't know, their lives are taken from them and they join to, it's empowering and then it's devastating because it's just like they fought so hard

and then they were assassinated, literally they were murdered. Yeah, especially when you consider that so many of these like uh the women who fought against isis right like and i think we could all probably understand why women would would want to do that um like wanted to create a place where young girls could grow up and be who they wanted to be and do what they wanted to do and, and like not have to obviously like kowtows. It's extremely violent, misogynist organization like ISIS, but also not necessarily have to fight either.

And, you know, can, could be self-realized in whatever way they wanted to. And so to see these people having achieved their goal, largely of, of, I guess ISIS still exists,

right. And ISIS still continues to kill people. It killed 10 people yesterday. But that's the 8th of August because you won't hear this today. But to see these people who have like successfully at least liberated the territory

and then their young women are still dying. Yeah. But not fighting ISIS, but fighting Turkey. I can go on and give like, there are dozens of examples of this report. Another one I'll just give in July, 2022. There was a YPJ commander called Roj Kabur and a fighter called Barin Botan. So one of them had been, and then another one

called another YPJ commander called Jianian toll hidden toll hidden um so these two women have been involved in the fight against isis like from the beginning having uh like liberated cities liberated territory and then they were with this young woman who was 19 years old and had relatively recently joined the ypj right? And was killed by a drone strike. It's like, it's particularly galling, I think for me at least to, so that the YPJ information office is someone I communicate with like for work stuff.

And it's particularly galling to like wake up, right? And see that on your phone. It's like to get a message and look at a report, see a picture of a car like blown to pieces. At the same time as like the Bayraktar is a drone that Turkey has sold to Ukraine in large numbers, which has been hugely effective in destroying Russian armor. Earlier on, at least, was.

It seems to not really work. I mean, a lot of stuff has changed, obviously. New technology is extremely effective early on before there's countermeasures. Anyway, whatever. We don't need to get nerdy about this. Yeah.

Yeah. It's certainly like in the first months of their war, like the war in Ukraine became like a meme. You can, you can buy a stuffed by Raktar on Etsy or eBay, like, like a soft toy, like a teddy bear.

There are songs about it disturbing that is so it's not it's not great yeah it was and it was one of those things where like obviously i was happy to see effective tools being used by the ukrainians to like defend their home yes of course but uh i'm not ever going to get up and stand the uh the turkish defense industry or yeah defense yes like industry for the and for the record i feel the same way about like the people standing standing you know different u.s defense contractors making stuff like you know long-range missile systems like no i'm not i'm not really a fan of that like i get it sometimes you know when you're being invaded you use the tools available

but i that doesn't mean we need to celebrate that yeah exactly i think the tools are largely kind of agnostic um anyone who sort of is is making things to kill people purely for profit it's not necessarily a good a good thing to do with your life i guess uh and like it's just troubling to me to see people like cheering this on without like it highlights one like the way that people engage with conflict um especially online especially in the u.s which is fandom yeah it's not a computer game it's someone's 19 year old fucking daughter it's someone's mom or sister or brother or uncle or dad or non-binary relative the fact that you can buy like a stuffed fucking weapon like little drone thing on ebay it's it's just so disturbing i i really just don't like humans when i think about that yeah i understand why it

happens this way and i understand why if your country is being invaded and you can get more support from the international community by leaning into this shit you lean into this shit but i don't like the idea of like some i don't know fucking uh accountant in iowa uh watching hundreds of videos of like russian soldiers being killed and then like getting a fucking Lockheed Martin tattoo. Right. Like turning your support for people, you know, in a deadly military conflict into like fandom, treating it the way you treat like a Marvel movie or whatever, I find not great. Yeah, it's just not like, I understand why,

like I wouldn't blame anyone in ukraine for being super excited about having barakdars because it stops people burning their homes and killing their children yeah like i would want that too no just like if you're if you're like i have a friend who i went like we we were in fucking avdivka together like sheltering with people from russian shells and stuff who then went on to join the Ukrainian military and has been fighting since the expanded invasion. If he wants to share videos or watch videos of like, you know, dead Russian soldiers from Telegram, like that's war. It's unpleasant, but I get it. Like, again, if you're some dude in fucking Wisconsin doing the same

thing, I find that pretty unsettling. unsettling like yeah because you don't need to yeah no you don't need to you don't need to dehumanize those people so you can kill them because you're not killing them yeah but you seem to have engaged in that same dehumanization which is necessary for people fighting because i don't know maybe you think you're helping it's hard to shoot people otherwise like yeah there's a reason it's hard to fucking bayonet people right there's a reason that bayonet training is is one of these things that's particularly just kind of it has to be violent you have to be horrible you know like it's there's no nice way to stab someone um but the yeah it doesn't mean that you need to tweet about it um especially folks who maybe

aren't perhaps is on the ground familiar with what this looks like so um i wanted to maybe get into a little bit and there are as i said dozens of these drone attacks they really ramped up in early 2023 along with like a kind of a larger air offensive right they continue to happen uh like almost weekly um if people want to i guess keep tabs ypj info is the the ypj's kind of public facing uh press website uh roger information center is a good english language resource um both of those you can find on uh x uh or if you want to look somewhere else. You can also search for them and go to their website. Did we just say X?

No, we sure don't. We absolutely do not. Wink and a nudge. Okay, great. Thanks. X is not, in fact, going to give it to us. Only like a certain generation will understand that way that i like that yeah there's a narrow overlap there buddy yeah you shot the gap though yeah you know what is

gonna give it and by it i mean uh the money that pays our wages uh to us no what is it james it is this combination of products and services i oh man i love a good product me too i don't love services actually i'm very anti-service but you know we'll see It's a combination of products and services. Oh, man, I love a good product. Me too. I don't love services, actually. I'm very anti-service, but, you know, we'll see. Yeah, we'll see. It might change your opinion.

It might be something amazing. Unlikely. Probably gold. Let's hear from the advertisers. Hey, guys. I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together.

You know that rush of endorphins you feel after a great workout? Well, that's when the real magic happens. So if you love hearing real, inspiring stories from the people you know, follow, and admire? Join me every week for Post Run High. It's where we take the conversation beyond the run and get into the heart of it all. It's lighthearted, pretty crazy, and very fun. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome, I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora.

An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though.

I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if All right, we're back. We hope you enjoyed those adverts as much as we did. So I want to talk about, in the second half of the episode, why Turkey is using these drones to bomb people who, like we said, have fought and largely defeated the territorial caliphate of ISIS. I did want to bring up one more drone incident, actually, which is particularly bad. So one of the things that you'll often see the SDF and specifically the YPG and the YPJ kind of accused of is having child soldiers or having recruiting people who are under age to fight. Part of a program they've implemented to stop this with a consultation with

the United Nations is building education centers, right? I'm not going to comment morally on who should be fighting at what age, because I think it's not a judgment for us to make when like we didn't have ISIS in the fucking streets. Yeah. I, I look, i think there's

a degree to which people are being unreasonable about this i met a number of 17 year olds it's generally when people talk about child soldiers they are talking about 17 year olds i have friends who joined the u.s army when they were 17 years old like i have friends who were learning how to drive a tank for the u.s military at age. And quite frankly, if you look at where like wars in history, 16 to 20 years old, that's most of the people who have fought most of the wars in most of history. That's like the way that it is. That's not pleasant. But like when we are talking like I certainly I would be very supportive of laws put in place in our country to raise the age at which people can join the military so that they are not young and not getting taken advantage of to as much of a degree.

But we are not fighting in any conflicts for our survival. Yeah. I think people that point the finger and, like, talk about child soldiers, whatever the shit, and they are referencing like basic teens, they have the privilege of doing that. They don't have to even think about protecting themselves or their family or whatever. I think when you are raised and in like a situation of violence,

like Palestine's a great example of that. You see like boys like trying to defend their country. It's like the same situation where you don't have the privilege of waiting until you're fucking 21 or whatever it's just like you have to you have to like protect yourself yeah it's not the it's not a situation you are not being it's not like again it's not like it is often when we talk about child soldiers like in the liberian civil war, where you've got kids being pulled in, you know, for the advantage of some warlord. Nor is it like in the United States where you have 17 and 18 year olds being recruited in a predatory way often by military recruiters and sent overseas in conflicts that are not necessary. We are talking about like ISIS is five blocks away

and like God knows what they'll do to my mom and my sister if they take over. Like I'm going to pick up a fucking gun, you know? What else are you going to do? That's the world. Like they're living in a different set of realities than we are. Yeah. And anyone that places judgment on that is just ignorant

and not understanding of the reality of the world they're just like in their little bubble yeah so on august the 18th 2022 a turkish drone targeted one of these un-affiliated education centers right uh it was two kilometers from the u.s coalition base and uh targeted a group of teenage girls playing volleyball. It's very hard to see these education centers as like in any way a military target, right? They're literally designed to divert young people from becoming fighters and to, you know, to set up with the consultation of the United Nations with the, you know, like with as much oversight as one can expect

in an area which is still in the middle of a civil war and to to be drone striking schools is pretty callous and it's also worth noting that like a phrase that constantly gets thrown around a lot in discussion about the middle east right it's the only democracy in the middle east and it's it's let me tell you it's not normally referring to this part of the world uh it's referring to israel um and yeah a i don't think that's true israel it i mean it's factually yeah yeah it does it what fucking death well democracy is an extremely nebulous concept right yeah sure so like this is this is an area where people's votes have a substantive impact on how their lives are lives certainly more so than people

who are arabs in israel yeah arabs in israel kurds in southern turkey syrians in syria like yeah yep in syria yeah yeah yes exactly um people in parts of iran like in iraq like people in northern or in yes in the baghdad government controlled chunks of iraq for that matter yes yeah like all over right like um so this isn't just an attack on like individual women it's an attack on a state which is genuinely at least attempting to establish a new form of democracy right like like a more participatory more horizontally organized democracy uh it's an attack on a state in the middle east which is like anti-patriarchal which is something that we don't have here in the united states right like it's it's like we've we have still

failed to have a woman be president uh like it's it's an attack on these things which most decent human beings should be able to get behind uh these attacks also don't just affect the people who are killed right they continue to displace families they contribute to fuel shortages they create power cuts they suspend. They stop aid organizations working in the area because it's too high risk, or they perceive it to be too high risk. And they stop the SDF continuing their operations against ISIS, right? ISIS, as I said, continue to exist. They have sleeper cells uh there was an attempted prison break last year two of the women from the ypj who had fought to stop those isis prisoners breaking out of their prison were later killed in the drone strike uh it's very hard to see this as not helping that uh like that isis

insurgency that they're fighting and hindering their operations. And I'm not just saying this based on sources that are the Roger Information Center or people in the ANES, but this is the policy of the United States, right? Before we started this, I looked up some of the inspector general's reports from Operation Inherent Resolve, which is the United States operation to lead a coalition, which includes SDF against against ISIS and they were talking about how the SDF's operations are hindered because they keep getting shot by drones right um and that there's not much that they can do about it right uh unlike like Ukraine we're not sending a ton of uh surface to air missiles or like things that you could use to to yourself against drones, right? Not that it's very easy to defend yourself against a drone. So why is Turkey doing this?

I think firstly, because as Robert said, it sees the SDF and the PKK as the same thing, right? So the PKK mostly operates, like Robert said, in the mountains of Southeast Turkey, and it's been fighting this asymmetrical war against the Turkish state since 1984. So Erdogan is the president of Turkey, right? He entered office in 2003

and he's sort of pivoted on Turkish issues, on Kurdish issues. Sorry, he continues to be Turkish. But he was initially in favor of like a negotiated peace with the pkk in his early years included like proposals for linguistic autonomy the right to a kurdish press and uh even like the return of kurdish place names which is a big deal still yeah right yeah um you'll see like uh kamishlo or uh al-kamishli like one being arab the latter being arabic the form of being kurdish right yeah i mean it's just it's a huge deal because you're not just killing

like people you're killing a a culture that's like in like it's not what's the like a different word to say extinct like it's in danger of like not being there if it's not for the people protecting it right and i think it's uh like a classic tactic to stop people from using their language or customs or whatever to just like try to erase them and like make them turk or whatever they want them to be and so the proposal of that i think is significant but then obviously the follow-through is a different story yeah the follow-through is not there right. Yeah, the follow-through is not there, right? So after 2015, he's really pivoted and he's pursued like a really violent anti-Kurdish policy.

And it's worth noting, as you said, that for much of the 20th century, the Turkish state denied the existence of Kurdish people altogether. They called them mountain Turks. And even in March, 2021, the Turkish Ministry of Education released a book in the Kurdish majority.

It's a province called Diyarbakir. Diyarbakir? I guess it's Turkish. Which it doesn't mention Kurds. It's a Kurdish majority province. It doesn't mention the Kurdish language. It claims that it's a Turkish dialect that's spoken there. They changed the name in August 2021 of a 17th century mosque,

words translating from the Turkish to the Kurds mosque, and they called it the Turks mosque. In 2023, Turkey dropped its objection, and so subjection is an effective veto, right, to Finland and Sweden joining NATO, when the latter pledged to devote more attention to the PKK and effectively end its decades-old tradition of giving protection and asylum to Kurdish refugees. So if people aren't familiar, Sweden has been a country that's offered asylum to a lot of different groups of people. I have a lot of friends from various stories I've done all over the world who have ended up living in Sweden and Kurdish people are among those people right who have found a home and a safe place in Sweden so encouraging

Sweden to not do that gives people one less safe place to go right yeah and this was kind of Turkey's like cost of entry for those people into NATO now obviously there's a reason that Sweden and uh Finland want to join NATO, right? And that's that Russia is like right there and has been doing some invasion recently. And so they want that as kind of mutual aid, that mutual defense. And so they're being forced to give up

this very reasonable policy of offering people asylum. Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit

down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. You know that rush of endorphins you feel after a great workout? Well, that's when the real magic happens. So if you love hearing real, real magic happens. So if you love hearing real inspiring stories from the people you know, follow and admire, join me every week for post run high. It's where we take the conversation beyond the run and get into the heart of it all. It's lighthearted, pretty crazy and very fun. Listen to post run high on the I heart radio Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome, I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter?

Nocturno, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires.

From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse

and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. Hi, everyone. It's me, James, and I am back after what I hope was a fruitful and enjoyable advertising break for you. It is just me, and the reason for that is someone outside is

currently severing my telephone cable, judging by what I can hear and the reason for that is someone outside is currently severing my telephone cable judging by what I can hear and the fact that I no longer have the internet so the second part of this episode will be me reading my script by myself without the interesting and often entertaining input of my colleagues so sorry about that but you will just have to make do. Turkey's been involved in a Syrian civil war since the beginning. Initially, it armed and equipped the anti-Assad FSA, but in August 2016, it began a direct occupation of parts of northern Syria under Operation Euphrates Shield. In 2017, it facilitated the establishment of the Syrian National Army and the Syrian Interim Government,

which it finances. Turkey has accused the Syrian democratic forces, to which the YPG and YPJ belong, of, quote, seizing and ethnically cleansing territories which don't belong to Kurds. There isn't really any credible evidence for this, and the UN has refuted these claims. Some people have moved, right?

Like, as happens in many conflicts, but the estimate I saw was like 25 families erdogan has openly expressed the sentiment that kurdish people don't belong in north and east syria saying these areas are not suitable for the lifestyle of kurds because these areas are virtually desert deportations of syrians who have been uh who have sought refuge in turkey right so people from syria who fled the civil war, just over three and a half million people are living in Turkey, right?

Turkey has declared its intention to move 1 million of these people back to Syria. And it has already begun moving these people back to Northwest Syria in the areas it occupies, right? The US State Department in a press conference on the 4th of august denied that this constituted a demographic change but i think that that's very heavily disputed by people on the ground certainly the ypj and the ypg would dispute that right that that

the kurdish people who have been driven out of some of the areas that turkey occupies are being replaced by these people that are being moved back in by Turkey. Turkey was, of course, the entry point for much of the weaponry and many of the people who joined ISIS in Syria. Foreign Policy, the publication, has estimated that more than 30,000 people crossed Turkey along the so-called Jihadi Highway. Later, Turkey clamped down on this a bit, but certainly in my coverage of the smuggling of weapons and equipment to ISIS, they were going through Turkey. Turkey was also directly engaged with the defeat of ISIS, right? Turkey's troops fought ISIS in parts of northern Syria.

Meanwhile, Turkey has also enforced an economic blockade of the autonomous area of northeast Syria, and it's even restricted water flowing into the region. So at some point, weapons and humans have flowed through Turkey to ISIS, and at this point, water is not flowing in sufficient quantities through Turkey to the autonomous area of northeast Syria. In 2018, Turkey started what's called Operation Olive Branch. It's a military operation in which Turkish and Syrian National Army forces took control of the city of Afrin.

The assault included the alleged use of chemical gas, shelling of civilian areas, and shooting of fleeing refugees. Kurdish shrines, flags, cultural and historical sites were targeted and destroyed by Turkish military forces. A hospital was bombed. sites were targeted and destroyed by Turkish military forces. A hospital was bombed. Reporters without borders noted that reporting on the conflict had been hand-strung by the Turkish government, and more than 30,000 Kurdish people have been displaced and their homes have been taken by those relocated refugees who we spoke about. Olive farms in the area have been seized and then leased to fund the operation of the pro-Turkish Syrian National Army. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has documented these forces threatening to behead

Kurds, and The Independent, the newspaper, has noted that some of the people fighting alongside the SNA are themselves former cadres of ISIS. In its reporting, The Independent reported that, and I quote, video posted online shows three uniformed jihadis singing a song in praise of their past battles. And it says, quote, how we were steadfast in Grozny, that's in Chechnya, Dagestan, and we took the Tora Bora. The Tora Bora is a cave complex,

formerly the headquarters of Osama bin Laden. And now Afrin is calling to us. There's this song they were singing, right? Suggesting that they're sort of a fight. They're casting this in a long line of these battles that have been fought by these various, I guess, Islamist groups. Just to be super clear on Islamist versus Islamic, because I don't want people to confuse the two things. One is a political outlook, right? Being an Islamist is a political outlook. It focuses on, it uses an interpretation of Islam,

which is certainly not the mainstream one. It's not my place to say whether or not it's a correct one, but it's certainly not the one that most Muslims in the world agree with. And it's the interpretation of that faith that you'll have seen with groups like ISIS and Al-Qaeda, right? But that is not to say by any means that all Muslim people agree with this because they don't. There are Muslim people, many thousands, hundreds of thousands of them who have been targeted, killed by these people, right? I just wanted to be super clear on that distinction. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights

has also noted members of the Turkish fascist group, the Gray Walls, fighting alongside the SNA. So standing in the United States, it's easy to see this Turkish operation as a consequence of Trump's choice to abandon the SDF and the people who defeated ISIS. And to a large degree, it is, but it also represents a long-term goal of Erdogan's Turkey, which has tried without success

to get support for its plans to build a buffer zone 30 kilometers deep along its border with Syria, and to fill that buffer zone with Syrian refugees, who increasingly end up in Turkey. In particular, Turkey has objected to plans by the United States to train and equip a 30,000 person strong border force. This went through several different naming iterations, so it doesn't really matter. It's a border force, right? Before the attack, Russian military officials propose handing over a freeing to Assad as a compromise. So we haven't talked about Russia much. Robert talks about this in his series, but Russia is in Syria as an ally of the Assad regime. And it has sort of acted as a go-between between the SDF and the Assad regime. And it has proposed in this instance that the sdf withdraw from afrin which is the the area they that turkey invaded

in operation olive branch in 2018 and it said if you guys pull out and you hand us over to asad the turks won't invade they won't directly take on asad like that the sdf refused right the authorities are in a very tense relationship with damas, which is where Bashar al-Assad's government is based, right? They've both received aid from them and been attacked by them. After they were abandoned by the US and Russia, and they knew that Turkey... Russia was aware that Turkey had plans to invade, right? And obviously didn't do anything to stop it.

And so these SDF felt that they were abandoned by the US and Russia, with very good reason to feel that way. The ANES scrambled to find new allies to protect them, and they found one in the Assad government. This wasn't, like, I don't think, a choice that they wanted to make, but I think the rest of the world didn't leave them with many options.

So I'm quoting here from Mosluma Bedi, the SDF's commander-in-chief. He wrote an op-ed on foreign policy. It'll be linked in our sources at the end of the month. If we have to choose between compromise and genocide, we will choose our people, he said. Numerous fighters who fought ISIS and foreign volunteers have died in Afrin. So in that initial operation, right, when the SDF opposed Turkish invasion, numerous people died. One of them was a Briton named Anna Campbell.

She went by Helene Kerakogs. I might have fucked that pronunciation up, but it might tend to be disrespectful to what I have. She was killed by Turkish Michelle Nafrin. Her father, Dirk Campbell, has been campaigning ever since to have his She was killed by Turkish Michelle Nafrin. Her father, Dirk Campbell, has been campaigning ever since to have his daughter's remains returned. His case remains with the courts and has been entirely crowdfunded. He submitted a claim to the European Court of Human Rights after hearing nothing from the Turkish courts. And when he did that, the Turkish courts picked up the case that he'd submitted there. You can also find a link to this in the sources but it's crowdjustice.com slash case slash help hyphen bring hyphen anna hyphen home they've raised all the money they

need at the moment but doubtless they will need more in the future so where does all this leave the people of north and east syria right these are people who have been impacted by the territorial caliphate of the islamic state and all the horrific things that people will be aware happened there they're people who have successfully fought for and achieved their freedom only to be attacked by another state and they are people who have suffered the same earthquake that turkey suffered in febru this year, 2023. 4,000 people died in Afrin, which is a city which is now occupied by Turkish and SNA troops. Turkey pushed a little bit further east in Operation Peace Spring a year after Olive Branch.

And currently, Turkey is cutting water flow to pumping stations it controls that feed water to the area. This combines with the impact of the earthquake and the ongoing burden of controlling one of the largest prisons on earth, which is the Al-Hol prison, which holds the majority of the ISIS fighters and their families who were not either killed or returned to the states from which they came. We'll have more on the Al-Hol prison next week. returned to the states from which they came. We'll have more on the Al-Hol prison next week. There's infighting between militias in the Turkish areas, which obviously impact Turkish-controlled areas.

Obviously, that impacts civilians. There's arbitrary arrests. There's the increasing Turkification of areas like Afrin, including instruction in the Turkish language. Like Shirin said earlier, one of the things that's integral to maintaining national identity is education. In my experience studying Catalan identity, getting education in Catalan was vital to fermenting and continuing Catalan identity. Because identity is not national in the same way. The identity in the AANES, I guess, is not national, but this Turkification, right, the flying of Turkish flags above buildings

which are not military buildings, right, like above hospitals and that kind of thing, again, is a marginalization of the people who already live there and who have lived there for a long time. SDF guerrilla units like Wrath of Olives and Afrin Liberation Front are involved in fighting with the Syrian National Army, and that fighting kills civilians, right?

Throughout Afrin, there have been things like car bombs. The Afrin Liberation Front goes by HRE from the Kurdish initials, right? And they've carried out some attacks on SNA militias in the last few days. You can often see videos of those online if it's the sort of thing you like to see. There are still landmines that kill civilians in the area,

and there are still ISIS sleeper cells bombing and killing people. Last week, the autonomous administration of north and east Syria responded to Turkey's ongoing aggression by issuing a statement claiming Turkey's operations are forcing the SDF to divert personnel away from countering ISIS and threatening the stability of the area. Obviously, this is all after an earthquake which killed 4,000 people in Afrin. People that have access to as many hospitals there, for instance, still have to travel to Turkey to get cancer treatment, right?

So this leaves the people of North and East Syria in a very precarious situation, right? of North and East Syria in a very precarious situation, right? In which they're now left largely without the solidarity that they experienced when they were fighting ISIS, right? And it's very difficult, just like in so many cases, like I feel this way about Myanmar too, to see the US and Europe expressing solidarity and solidarity in the form of lethal aid, right? Solidarity in the form of surface-to-air missiles and tanks and rifles and bulletproof vests and medical aid and all the things that you need to sustain a fight to Ukraine.

And they should. They should do that. I'm not saying for a moment that they shouldn't, right? Ukraine has been invaded by a much bigger and more powerful military and it has every right to defend itself. And I'm glad that we're helping. powerful military and it has every right to defend itself. And I'm glad that we're helping, but I wish that we would help other people too, especially people who we have sort of made promises to that we've not kept or people who we've encouraged to believe in the case of Myanmar, right? That they have a right to a better life. And then when they decide to defend that, we don't stand behind them. So yeah, that's my episode. Sorry for the weird juxtaposition

of me doing the last part scripted, but somebody outside is drilling through my phone cable. So yeah, thank you for joining me. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening.

Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of right. An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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