Friday, October 11, 2019

Erdogan, Syria, and the Grip on the Germans

To make sense of this Turkey and Syria business.....you need to understand how Erdogan (head of the Turkish government) works.

With the US out of the northern region of Syria, Erdogan made the logical decision....he doesn't want the Kurds in any way threatening Turkey, and this little 'attack' (it's not an invasion in way or shape)....is meant to send a message (mostly to the Kurds, but to the members of the EU as well).

So in a normal situation....Macron and Merkel would stand up and make all this negative talk over Turkey.  But Erdogan went to the step of saying.....any sort of real criticism here, and he'd let the 3-million Syrian refugees take off to the Greek isles, and this massive mess would start up.

I would imagine that various political folks in Germany have quietly met over the past 48 hours, and discussed the matter til they were 'blue in the face'.

You naturally have to ask....if 3-million Syrians started to show up in Greece....could they handle it? The answer is no.  In fact, if just 40,000 showed up in one single week....it'd trigger a massive problem. 

Could the EU step in?  Normally, they would....but it's virtually impossible for them to absorb even half-a-million in such a short period of time.

The logical step for Merkel?  She has to go over to Trump and ask him to pursue a economic blocking action on Turkey.  The EU leadership?  They basically have insulted Trump enough that their value in this action is pretty marginal.  For Trump, it's a win-win situation because Merkel has to clean up her criticism of him, and various journalists in Germany will have to soften their anti-Trump rhetoric. 

The Kurds?  More or less stuck in some scenario without much gain. 

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