Turkish president Recep Erdogan had demanded US president Trump to rescind America's support of Kurdish rebels. The statement came after the US started its rearmament of Syrian Kurds to fight ISIS and Assad forces in Syria and Iraq.
Turkey's patience has ended, Erdogan says
Turkey has long opposed allowing the Kurds to have power in Syria. The Kurds ar an ethnic group that lived in parts of Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey, which they call Kurdistan. They desire to carve out a Kurdish nation for centuries but that wasn't allowed to by Iran, Syria and Turkey.
Because of this, Kurds have long been the source of political unrest in the Middle East especially Turkey, which almost resulted in a whole scale civil war.
On 2013, Turkey managed to call a peace treaty with Kurd insurgents. However, just as peace was made, ISIS and Assad forces began to target the Kurdish people mainly due to the Sunni-Shia split, which is a religious war between two major factions of Islam that raged for centuries.
Why is the United States arming Kurdish fighters in Syria?
The Syrian problem is a complicated mess of diplomatic entanglements and religious divides. Assad's Syrian forces is allies with Russia and Iran and these are the people who are destroying Kurds. The United States, because of its adamant resolve of ridding ISIS off the face of the Earth, seeks regional forces that will fight ISIS in the Middle East.
The only group actively fighting the ISIS are the Kurds and because of this, the US military are supporting this group to bring the fight to ISIS. However, because of the bad relations of Turkey and its Kurdish neighbors, any support given to the Kurds is an affront to Turkey, which explains Erdogan's antagonistic reaction against US forces.
What is the future of the Kurdish forces in Syria?
At the moment, the United States military is heavily arming the Kurds for an attack of ISIS held territories in Iraq and parts of Syria. However, Turkey warns the US that if American support of Kurdish forces is not withdrawn, it will not hesitate to attack Kurdish positions even if there are US personnel in the area.
This causes concern in the military balance in the area as ISIS is continuously carving up a huge portion of Syria and Iraq. Because ISIS is predominantly Sunni practicing the Wahhabi faith, an extreme interpretation of Islam, Turkey and Syria. who are both Sunnis are not inclined to fight the Islamic state.
In the end, the main reason for the problems in the Middle East is the age old fight of religious beliefs. Unless Muslim states in the Middle East cooperate to resolve these divides that lasted for hundreds of years, peace in the area will not happen.
