The
Turkish military has shelled and bombarded Syrian Kurdish positions
in northern Syria for a fifth day, as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan
threatened
to extend the offensive east of the city of Manbij.
Turkey on Saturday launched the operation in the Afrin region to
clear it of US-backed Kurdish fighters, seen by Ankara as a threat to
its security.
Despite
that ISIS has been almost eliminated in the Middle East, Erdogan
continues his own agenda with the primary target to crush Kurdish
resistance and destroy the US plans for an autonomous Kurdish state.
An
internal Stratfor document - through
WikiLeaks - from the beginning of 2011, gives
significant details for the Turkish Hezbollah to the point that it
could be considered Erdogan's proxy army in the Middle East. As
described:
Senior
members of Turkish Hezbollah were released on Jan. 5 after
spending ten years in jail. Their release came as a result of an
amendment to the Turkish penal code made by the Turkish government in
2005, but delayed until now, which allows release of culprits, whose
trials last more than ten years. Though their trials will
continue, release of Hezbollah's top-brass is likely to revitalize
the group in mostly Kurdish populated southeastern Turkey. Whether
the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) amended the law
specifically to this end is unknown, but a reinforced Hezbollah fits
perfectly into AKP's strategy to handle the Kurdish issue ahead of
parliamentary elections slated for June 2011.
Not to
be confused with the radical Lebanese Shia Islamist movement, the
Turkish Hezbollah, a Sunni group, has been active in the
Kurdish-populated regions of Turkey especially in 1990s. The Turkish
State has allegedly provided covert support to Hezbollah against the
Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in an attempt to undermine PKK's
military capability against the Turkish army. Ideological difference
between the two groups - Hezbollah as a militant Islamist group and
PKK, a secular socialist-rooted separatist movement - contributed to
the struggle between the two. This balance of power between the
two armed groups worked well in the Turkish state's interest until
PKK's leader Abdullah Ocalan was imprisoned in 1999 and a temporary
ceasefire was declared, when the need for Hezbollah was gradually
decreased. Hezbollah's leader Huseyin Velioglu was killed in 2000 and
its senior members were jailed amid a media campaign showing killings
committed by Hezbollah. Hezbollah has remained silent since then and
did not engage in any militant activity.
It is
still unknown whether Hezbollah will publicly align itself with AKP,
which may be risky for AKP to be aligning with a militant Islamist
group, especially when the governing party is working hard
domestically and internationally to distance itself from its Islamist
roots. But even if Hezbollah does not ally with AKP, there is no
doubt that it will counterweight PKK's armed pressure in the region
by reactivating its followers and will revitalize religious
sentiments among Kurds to ease the ethnic tension that Erdogan's
nationalist rhetoric creates. And this will work in AKP's interest.
Note
that members of Turkish Hezbollah were released on Jan. 5 of 2011,
that is, less than three months before the eruption of Syrian chaos.
Also as
stated in the document, Turkish Hezbollah should not be confused with
the Lebanese Hezbollah. In fact, Turkey wanted to get
rid of the Lebanese Hezbollah, as the group is
fighting on the side of Assad in Syria.
From
Wikipedia:
The
1993 report of Turkey's Parliamentary Investigation Commission
referred to information that Hezbollah had a camp in the Batman
region where they received political and military training and
assistance from the security forces. Former Minister Fikri Sağlar
said in an interview with the paper Siyah-Beyaz (Black-White) that
the army not only used Hezbollah, but actually founded and sponsored
the organization. He maintained that such a decision had been taken
in 1985 at the highest levels – the National Security Council. On
17 January 2011 Arif Doğan, a retired colonel in the Turkish army
who also claims to be a founder of JİTEM, while testifying in court
in the Ergenekon case, declared that he set up Hezbollah as a contra
group to force to fight and kill militants of the PKK. The
organization was originally to be called Hizbul-Kontr ("Party of
the Contras"). According to journalist Faik Bulut, some
Hizbollah members were caught in Istanbul with 40 kg of C-4 explosive
and valid Turkish National Intelligence Organization identity cards.
Recall
that the US, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and others have been accused that
they were assisting directly, or indirectly, various extremist groups
during the Syrian war to fulfill their agendas. There is evidence
that these proxies are connected with ISIS and Al-Qaeda, or, even
that they are branches of these militant Sunni Islamist
organizations.
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