A left criticism of Ilhan Omar over her Turkey policy

Djene Bajalan and Michael Brooks give their view from the left on the issue of Ilhan Omar's voting "present" on the resolution condemning the Armenia genocide that I talked about in my previous post, Ilhan Omar and the Turkey Question Jacobin 11/01/2019:

First, Omar might balk at the use of genocide recognition as a “cudgel.” However, given Turkey’s ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing and brutalization of the Kurds it is precisely the moment for such recognition. Indeed, Eroğan’s plan to “cleanse” Turkey of three to four million Syrian refugees by deporting them to a small strip of desert — a plan announced to the whole world at the United Nations in late September — also has ominous echoes of what the Ottomans did to the Armenians in 1915.

Second, it seems naive at best to believe that the debate on the Armenian genocide can be decoupled from politics, especially given the social and political taboo in Turkey against discussing the massacre. Worse still, the “leave it to the academic consensus” echoes Turkish talking points. There is no serious debate about whether the Armenian genocide was a genocide. Decades of scholarship have shown that the Committee of Union and Progress that governed the Ottoman Empire during the First World War sought to destroy its Armenian population. Most recently, Turkish scholar and dissident Taner Akçam has provided extensive documentation of the systematic nature of the assault visited upon the Anatolian Armenians. To draw an analogy, the debate about Armenian genocide is akin to the debate about whether Hitler sought to annihilate the Jewish people.

Finally, Omar’s demand that no recognition of the Armenian genocide take place until other historical crimes are acknowledged is a case of what-aboutism — one that is especially jarring because it comes from the mouth of such a committed advocate of solidarity and human rights. [my emphasis]

It's important to keep in mind that Turkey is a NATO ally. It was always one of the big risks in direct US military involvement in Syria is that in practice it put the US in opposition to a Turkish direct involvement. The Kurdish ethnic-cleansing operation against the Syrian Kurds is wrong and the US should be condemneing it (rather than greenlighting it!) and trying to arrange a peaceful solution. But for now, it looks like that ship has sailed.

The National Interest's Matthew Petti writes (U.S.-Led Coalition Blocks Russia in Syria While Allowing Turkey to Terrorize the Kurds 11/01/2019):

The Pentagon is using a well-known two-steps-to-the-right tactic to avoid becoming immersed in regional chaos. It is observing acts of war while not preventing them from happening in order to appease an ally that has more political clout than another partner—and a stockpile of U.S. nuclear weapons in its backyard. In fact, an official at the U.S.-led counter-ISIS coalition recently reiterated to the National Interest that “no U.S. forces will participate in operations related to the implementation of the ‘safe zone.’”

But he goes on to explain that this is more complicated that it might sound from that summary. For one thing, professional hawks have their own agenda on Syria that doesn't entirely align with the Administration's current policy. The US troops in the Deir ez-Zor to enforce Trump's take-the-oil policy are another complication. And Petti's report suggests that observed movements of US troops may not align with the current stated policy. And:

The Rojava Information Center, a collective of journalists based in northeast Syria, and Deirezzor24 both reported that coalition aircraft bombed pro-Assad forces in the eastern countryside of Deir ez-Zor on October 29. But a [US] coalition spokesman says that no such military action has occurred.

“The Coalition did not conduct airstrikes in Syria in recent days,” the spokesman told the National Interest. “The Coalition de-conflicts military operations with other forces operating in Syria through pre-existing communication channels and interlocutors.”

When dealing with particular issues with Turkey, I don't think the US should treat NATO as a sacred cow. But even if we want some kind of revision - we revised it by expanding the membership several times since 1989 - it would be reckless to do it by Presidential whim.

And here's a reminder from Juan Cole about the real situation in Syria (Syria’s Al-Assad: Trump, Openly Criminal, is the best US President we could Wish for Informed Comment 11/02/2019):

[Syrian President Bassar] Al-Assad branded [Turkis President Tayyip] Erdogan an American agent in his invasion of Syria. He warned that if Turkey continued on its present path, at some point the Syrian Army would have no choice but to go to war with the Turkish invasion force.

(This is just bluster. Al-Assad’s army is small, weak, and poorly equipped whereas Turkey is a member of NATO with a big new American arsenal. Turkey is four times as populous as Syria and would make mincemeat of it. Syria’s only advantage is its Russian patron, and it is Moscow that will get Turkey back out of Syria over time, by reassuring Ankara on its security concerns. Russian gendarmes are already patrolling part of the border). [my emphasis]