Trump greenlighting ethnic cleansing of Kurds in northern Syria?

Reese Erlich writes about the Trump Administration's announcement of a new policy on Turkey and the Syrian Kurds in Foreign Correspondent: Turkey Plans Attack On Syrian Kurds 10/06/2019. As with every announcement of the Trump Administration, it may change within a couple of tweets or so. But this sounds really bad.

Last week, Turkish President Recep Tayep Erdogan announced his intention to settle up to two million refugees now living in Turkey into northern Syria. “We aim to accelerate the return of Syrian refugees to their homes,” says Erdogan.

Turkey hopes to transfer Syrian Arabs to an area inhabited for centuries by Kurds. It plans to create a militarily controlled “safe zone,” which would stretch along 300 miles of the Turkish-Syrian border and eighteen miles deep into northern Syria.

Turkey claims such a massive population transfer will lead to the defeat of the Kurdish militia, People’s Protection Units, which it falsely labels as a terrorist group.

According to Sezgin Tanrikulu, a human rights lawyer and member of the Turkish parliament from the opposition Republican People’s Party, the government is embarking on an “Arabization” program similar to what Syria tried to do in the 1950s and 60s, to displace the Kurds.

But Trump is giving some reassurance: "Donald Trump has threatened to 'totally destroy and obliterate' Turkey's economy if the country does anything that he does not like in Syria, amid criticism from Republicans over new US policy allowing the Turkish military to take over in the war-torn country." (Clark Mindock, Trump threatens to 'obliterate' Turkish economy after criticism over his green light to invade Syria The Independent 10/07/2019)

Turkey, BTW, is a NATO ally.

Here is the, uh, memorable tweet:

In case you missed it, the President wrote, "I, in my great and unmatched wisdom ..."

John C. Calhoun and Robert E. Lee are laughing their asses off in Hell.

This is the White House statement (07/10/2019):

Yes, Trump has business interests in Turkey, why do you ask?

As Russ Chomas reports (Reminder: Trump Has a Massive Conflict of Interest in Turkey Mother Jones 07/10/2019):

Whatever else it may be, Trump’s policy toward Turkey is also a significant conflict of interest, as Trump himself has admitted. In 2015, while running for president, Trump gave an interview to Stephen Bannon, not yet his campaign manager, in which he talked about Turkey. Right away, he admitted that his business interests in the country would make it difficult for him to deal with Turkey with a clear mind.

“I have a little conflict of interest ’cause I have a major, major building in Istanbul,” Trump told Bannon during a Breitbart radio show. “It’s a tremendously successful job. It’s called Trump Towers—two towers, instead of one, not the usual one, it’s two.”

Those Trump Towers are a pair of glass buildings in Istanbul that have borne Trump’s name since 2012. Trump doesn’t own the buildings—the situation might be less complicated if he did. Instead, Trump licenses his brand to the building’s actual owner, Turkish business magnate Aydin Dogan, who has been described as the single largest payer of taxes in Turkey. He’s a one-time antagonist of Erdogan who is now in step with the strongman.

The conflict of interest and the way it could affect Trump’s position on important issues—or at least the perception of how it could affect his position—quickly became obvious after Trump made this comment. In June 2016, after Trump said he supported a ban on immigration by people from countries he said were associated with Islamic terrorism — he called them “terror countries” — Erdogan objected, and so did Dogan, and both threatened to remove Trump’s name from the buildings.

Trump Towers Istanbul:

This would be a mess, even for a competent Administration in the White House. Which we don't have obviously. Though we do have Trump's "great and unmatched wisdom."