OPINION:
Ali Cinar scales the heights of absurdity in trying to portray Turkey as a reliable American ally (“Turkey’s critical anti-terror role,” Web, Sept. 13). Turkey gave the Islamic State and the Nusra Front arms, free passage across the Syrian border, and even hospitals for their wounded. And now we’re supposed to believe they’re fighting the Islamic State?
Turkey has dropped 90 percent of its bombs not on the Islamic State, but on America’s only effective ally fighting it: Syrian Kurdish militias. But because Turkish President Erdogan is obsessed with preventing any Kurds from self-government anywhere (while he viciously represses his own Kurdish citizens), his troops invade Syria to attack the Kurds. Turkish troops never fought the Islamic State in Jerabulus; the terrorists just changed their uniforms and claimed they were now Free Syrian Army rebels.
Let’s not forget that the Iraqi insurgency that cost so many American lives was largely due to Turkey’s refusal to allow the Fourth Infantry Division to invade Iraq from the north (even after then President George W. Bush offered them a $20 billion bribe). Today Mr. Erdogan refuses to allow German parliamentarians to visit German pilots at Incirlik Air Base because the Bundestag had the temerity to recognize the Armenian genocide and Germany’s role in it. And this is a reliable ally?
DIKRAN M. KALIGIAN
Author, “Armenian Organization and Ideology under Ottoman Rule”
Watertown, Mass.
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