The Duran Podcast - Erdogan warns Kurds, pressure mounts on Turkey in Syria

Episode Date: December 28, 2024

Erdogan warns Kurds, pressure mounts on Turkey in Syria

All right, Alexander, let's talk about the situation in Syria. We had an alarming warning from Erdogan the other day to the Kurdish forces, to the Kurdish presence in Syria. Lay down your arms or you will be destroyed? It's pretty much Erdogan's warning to the Kurds's message to the Kurds. things appear to be spiraling out of control in Syria. We also have a lot of cases, I believe we could say documented cases of HTS,

so I'll booster, whatever you want to call them. In Damascus, the authorities in Damascus going after Christians in Syria and Aloit's in Syria, a lot of, from what I've seen, I can't confirm this. I mean, I can't confirm the videos that I've seen as being 100% legitimate. They look real, but you're getting some very horrific and graphic images of deaths and executions of Christians and Al-O-Wites. At least that's what I'm seeing on social media. Once again, I can't confirm this 100%.

I have to say that disclaimer. But it does look like the situation is starting to unravel in Syria. What are your thoughts? I agree. I absolutely agree. And of course, it's what we said would happen. But, I mean, I've seen these same videos. Obviously, I too cannot vouch for their accuracy.

The point is it's not really ultimately important what you and I think about these videos. It's what people in Syria think about these videos. What Allah, whites, and Christians think about these videos. And they are becoming increasingly frightened and angry about them. And there are reports. And remember, this is a country where people are very heavily armed. Everybody carries weapons in Syria. And the Alawites have a reputation as very tough fighters.

Christians perhaps less so, but they probably feel themselves under pressure. There's stories that there's been attacks on their churches. And there have already been protests by Christians against the attacks on their churches. And there's already reports of attack by, well, the new regime, if I can call it that, claims Assad loyalists, but it looks like al-a-white fighters on HTS people in Ithagia region. And, well, we don't quite know where all this is going, but it does give increasingly the impression that conflicts between the communities are starting. to crank up. This is all a problem and it's a further sign of disintegration, but it's what Erdogan and his people are saying,

because I get the sense that Erdogan, at some level, senses that he's hugely overreached in Syria. He's now faced with the situation where he's up against the Kurds directly. He's got a crisis beginning to develop in the area of Syria, which he's proxies, HTS controls. And there's little sign at the moment that anybody who has left Syria over the last couple of years, the last 13 years of the war, the refugees in Turkey or the refugees in Europe, but especially for Erdogan, the people who matter are the refugees in Turkey. There's a little sign that any of these people at the moment are all keen to go back.

So, what does Erdogan do? He always responds in the same way when he is under pressure, which is that he becomes more grandiose. And he's now talking about Aleppo, Damascus, Hammer, as all having once been cities under the Ottoman empire. Rallies are starting to be staged in Istanbul, I believe, which say, you know, we got Ayasovia back. That's the great cathedral built by Justinian, reconverted back into a mosque from a museum, which is what it would be. We did programs about it. They're now saying, we got that back. We got the Omayad Mosque. That's the big mosque in Damascus, one of the great mosques of Islam built in the early days of the Islamic Caliphate. We've got that one back to.

The next place we need to take back is Jerusalem. So we have all of that rhetoric. And of course, we have increasingly fiery rhetoric about the Kurds. Erdogan making comments like the one you've just made about the Kurds. Reports that HTS has agreed. with Turkey, that there should be joint operations against the Kurds, which is a fiction. Because as we said already, HTS is a fiction. It has no military forces to speak on. So what this is basically is giving Erdogan a passport so that he could send his army into eastern Syria to fright the Kurds then. And the whole thing is starting to break down, but in a way which,

brings Erdogan and Turkey potentially onto a collision course with Israel and with the United States. Now, to be clear, I don't think that is what he wants. I don't think that's ever been his intention. But we could see how the events in Syria, the gradual collapse of Syria, not gradual, the rapid collapse of Syria into chaos, is sucking him in in exactly the way that we said. And of course, I'm sure he doesn't want a conflict with the Americans. I'm sure he doesn't want a conflict with the Israelis. But it's going to take all his skills to be able to avoid one, even as he struggles to find some answer to what to do about the rest of Syria itself, which he now controls. I wonder how much of Erdogan's threats or words his rhetoric can be believed.

Well, none of it. Yeah. He doesn't, he doesn't. I mean, this is the key thing to say. The rhetoric is not a sign that Erdogan really wants to take on the Americans or he's really a planning, a march on Jerusalem. it's a sign that he's under pressure, that everything in Syria is starting to go wrong. And the problem with rhetoric like that is, of course, some people will believe it and take it seriously. Maybe some of the many fighters who are there in Syria might start to take it seriously.

And if he does send his army to fight the Kurds in eastern Syria, well, you know, what does he do? Because the Americans are there. And both the Israel and the United States treat the Kurds as an recession. strategic asset and maybe very, very unwilling to let go. So he's got his problems in Syria are mounting. And I think he's just starting to understand that. I think that his original plan, I still think, I know people are saying otherwise that, you know, that there was a plan to march on Damascus and all of that.

And quite probably there were all kinds of people who were suggesting. different things, the British might have wanted it, the Israelis might have wanted it, the Americans might have wanted it. But I think Erdogan's preference was not to capture a leper or do any of those things. I think his intention, his original intention, I still believe, was to do a deal with Assad when Assad was president. He was offering meeting up to meeting, after meeting with Assad, stabilize Syria, expand Turkish influence into Syria, That, by the way, involved opening up Syria to the various construction companies in Turkey, which are critical backers of Erdogan.

And, you know, I see backers, there are some who claim more than that. But anyway, he wanted to open up Syria to operations by those people. He wanted that deal to be done with Assad. He didn't expect that the entire regime would implode in the way that he did. He wanted to put pressure on Assad to come to speak to him. And of course, what's now happened is that he is massively overreached. How does he get out of this? Or does he get out of this?

But also, the Kurds are, at least as defined by Erdogan, they are a threat to him and to Turkey. I mean, he has defined the Kurdish presence in the region as existential. Yes, absolutely. So whatever happens with the United States or with Israel or whatever goes on in Damascus with HTS, the Kurds is something that Erdogan has said many times over many years that he would like to take on and to annihilate. Yes. And by the way, this is rhetoric that there are people in Turkey will take very seriously. I mean, one shouldn't underestimate the fact that there are other people in Turkey

who see the Kurds as an existential threat to Turkish unity. You remember back in 2016 when there was the coup against Erdogan, one of the counts that was going to be brought against him if the coup had succeeded and he'd been prosecuted in a court is that he made too many concessions to the Kurds. So this is an important... issue within Turkey itself. So he is committed to doing something about the Kurds, and he is committed also to getting the refugees back into Syria. If neither of those things happens, then I mean,

he's going to leave a lot of people in Turkey itself very angry and very disappointed. So I don't know how he gets out of this. And it might be that he can't get out of this. This is a bigger problem than anyone that he's faced up to now. Up to this point, Erdogan has been incredibly skilled in playing things up to a certain point and then stopping and pulling back. He's always known when to stop. Perhaps this time he's so deep in that it's going to be all but impossible to get out again. I don't know.

I don't know how this plays out. That one thing I wouldn't be surprised. I'm not going to say it's going to happen. I wouldn't be surprised if he tries to do one of two things. Either he tries to agree some kind of overarching deal with the Americans with Trump. Erdogan has some respect for Trump. He loathed by the Biden. He didn't terribly get on terribly well with Trump,

but perhaps he can get on better with Trump than he did with Biden. Biden. Perhaps he's going to be able to find some way of doing some kind of deal with Biden, as with Trump, rather, to try and find some route out bringing the Kurds under some tighter American control, doing something about the YPG, which is the Kurdish militia, which is linked to the PKK, all of that. So I think that might be one line that he chooses to take. And if that fails, then it's so impossible that he'll go back to his perennial rival and friend, his frenemy who's Vladimir Putin. See whether Putin can come up with some ideas to help him out to Syria, though White Putin would want to pick up the pieces for Erdogan. In Syria, I really

can't see. But who knows? All right, we will end the video there at the durand.orgs.com. We are on Rumble Odyssey, bitch, you, telegram, rock, fit, and X. Go to the Duran Shop, pick up some merch like what we are wearing in this video update today. The link to the Duran Shop is in the description box down below. Take care.