Pepe Escobar is a writer with a sharp perspective of Eurasian affairs that you won’t often read in the mainstream media.
In a piece entitled “How Russia is Smashing the Turkish Game in Syria” he makes it very clear why the shoot down of Russia’s Su-24 happened, and why Turkish and Russian interests in Syria are on a direct collision course, with the USA and its intelligence services playing some kind of complex double game in the region. Not surprisingly, much of it centres around oil.
The oil operation the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) runs to Turkey is virtually illegal; stolen state-owned oil as far as Baghdad is concerned.
Daesh stolen oil can’t flow through Damascus-controlled territory. Can’t flow though Shi’ite-dominated Iraq. Can’t go east to Iran. It’s Turkey or nothing. Turkey is the easternmost arm of NATO. The US and NATO “support” Turkey. So a case can be made that the US and NATO ultimately support Daesh.
What’s certain is that illegal Daesh oil and illegal KRG oil fit the same pattern; energy interests by the usual suspects playing a very long game.
That “very long game” is the eventual control of the oil fields of both Syria and Iraq, including the ones currently controlled by the Kurds.
And we are told that both Turkish and American intelligence interests need supply lines through the region of Turkmen Mountain – where Russia’s jet was shot down – to stay open.
The key reason why Washington always solemnly ignored Ankara’s array of shady deals in Syria, through its fifth column Turkmen jihadis, is because a key CIA “rat line” runs exactly through the region known as Turkmen Mountain.
These Turkmen supplied by Ankara’s “humanitarian” convoys got American TOW-2As for their role in preserving prime weaponizing/ smuggling routes. Their advisers, predictably, are Xe/Academi types, formerly Blackwater. Russia happened to identify the whole scam and started bombing the Turkmen. Thus the downing of the Su-24…
The advanced arm of the “4+1” alliance – Russia, Syria, Iran, Iraq, plus Hezbollah – is taking no prisoners trying to re-conquer these two key corridors.
And there is no way that Turkey will want to lose control of these areas because it means that the Kurds will be able to form a united contiguous Kurdish territory. The stakes are high for Turkey which explains the escalating rhetoric from Ankara. The synopsis of the situation:
So no matter which way we look, Turkey and Russia are on a serious collision course in Syria. Moscow will support Syrian Kurds no holds barred as they push to link the three major Kurdish cantons in northern Syria into a unified Rojava.
Meanwhile, the Iraqi Prime Minister has declared the decision to place American boots on the ground as an unfriendly and unwelcome act, just as Putin has declared that Russian action against those in Turkey responsible for killing its servicemen definitely won’t be limited to just sanctions on tomatoes and construction:
“But if anyone thinks that having committed this awful war crime, the murder of our people, that they are going to get away with some measures concerning their tomatoes or some limits on construction and other sectors, they are sorely mistaken.”
Turkey would have cause to regret its actions “more than once,” he said, promising Russia’s retaliatory actions would be neither hysterical nor dangerous…
“It appears that Allah decided to punish the ruling clique of Turkey by depriving them of wisdom and judgement,” he said.
And on top of all of this, both Germany and the UK are going to send their military forces into Syria. And UK Labour MPs are speaking glowingly of bombing places that they have little understanding of.
What could go wrong?
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