https://www.jns.org/opinion/when-the-dust-settles-in-syria/
The United States has left the Middle East numerous times under several American presidents. But it has consistently returned—for better or worse.
To speak about Kurds has suddenly become a cry in favor of human rights and self-determination by the Western press, and rightly so: The assault they are suffering is lethal and may become genocidal. More frightening is that it is being perpetrated by the Turks, who are already stained by the Armenian genocide and are led by a leader who considers himself an almighty sultan. And it’s really odd that Europe is only now discovering who he really is.
How can this be? Didn’t Europe know that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan during these last 16 years in power has been possessed by a vicious fundamentalist Islamic and imperialist dream, who has repeatedly displayed unprecedented arrogance (he has closed newspapers and thrown more than 150,000 dissidents in prison) and expressed extreme ideas that have systematically dismantled the precious Kemalist heritage that once made Turkey the hope of a bridge between the Islamic world and the West? Didn’t it see that he inundated the world with slogans and anti-Semitic standpoints corroborated by his friendship with Hamas, who supported former Egypt President Mohammad Morsi as leader of the Muslim Brotherhood—a man he praised being himself the greatest Muslim Brotherhood politician in office? Is it coincidence that Erdoğan allowed the passage from his country of thousands of Islamic fundamentalists in possession of whatever passport to boost ISIS, which many claim he supported through trade and furnished with weapons?