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Erdogan looks determined to fight any war in the hope that all will end with Turkish-Sunni dominance in the region. He is wrong.

Turkey’s “National Contract,” Misak-i Milli, also claimed the former Ottoman province of Mosul as a Turkish province. There is one complication, though. Mosul is not Turkish territory, as envisaged in Misak-i Milli, but Iraqi territory. And the Shiite-controlled Iraqi government does not want Turkish or Turkey-backed Sunni boots on the ground.

“Certain historians believe that the borders set by the National Contract include Cyprus, Aleppo, Mosul, Erbil, Kirkuk, Batumi, Thessaloniki, Kardzhali, Varna and the [Greek] islands of the Aegean.” — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Erdogan hopes to build a pro-Ottoman, Sunni region against Iranian dominance.

A few hundred Turkish soldiers in Iraq have been training Sunni militias to help retake Mosul from ISIS. Baghdad wants the Turkish troops out, but Turkey refuses to go.

Each time in recent history that Turkey’s pro-Sunni neo-Ottomans opted for assertive foreign policy in this turbulent part of the world, there were more casualties and no happy ending for any state- or non-state actor, including President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey. As multiple asymmetrical wars in the triangle of Turkey, Syria and Iraq turn more violent and complex, with the U.S.-led international campaign fighting jihadists — while Iran and Russia try to win proxy wars — Turkey keeps raising the stakes with the risky nonsensical wish to revive its imperial past. Erdogan looks determined to fight any war in the hope that all will end with Turkish-Sunni dominance in the region. He is wrong.

In his recent speeches Erdogan often revisited a long-forgotten Arabic phrase that is so dear to every Turk’s heart and mind: Misak-i Milli (“National Contract”).

On February 12, 1920, the last Ottoman parliament proclaimed a set of decisions which Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of modern Turkey, adopted as “the main principle of our independence.” Misak-i Milli, among other principles, set modern Turkey’s borders; it was a guideline to determine where the borders of the Turkish Republic would start and end. It would be used as the basis for the new Turkish Republic’s claims in the Treaty of Lausanne.

According to Misak-i Milli, “the future of the territories inhabited by an Arab majority at the time of the signing of the Armistice of Mudros shall be determined by a referendum.” On the other hand, the territories which were not occupied at that time and inhabited by a Turkish majority are the homeland of the Turkish nation. The status of Kars, Ardahan (Turkish provinces since then) and Batumi (a province in the Republic of Georgia) may be determined by a referendum. The status of Western Thrace (in Greece) will be determined by the votes of its inhabitants. Misak-i Milli also claimed that the former Ottoman province of Mosul should be a Turkish province. Instead, Mosul was first left to British control, then became an Iraqi province. Mosul is now Iraq’s second largest city, but tenuously under the control of the Islamic State (ISIS).

At a cabinet meeting this month, Erdogan reportedly told his ministers:

“Turkey can no longer stay the same at this point. The status quo will change somehow. We will either leap with moves forward or we will be bound to shrink. I am determined to make forward moves.”

In another speech, Erdogan said:

“Turkey is not just Turkey. Apart from its 79 million citizens, it is also responsible to the hundreds of millions of our brothers in the geographical area to which we are connected by historical and cultural ties … Certain historians believe that the borders set by the National Contract include Cyprus, Aleppo, Mosul, Erbil, Kirkuk, Batumi, Thessaloniki, Kardzhali, Varna and the [Greek] islands of the Aegean.”

Currently, the West is being confronted with foreboding challenges by Islamic States and Islamist groups of one kind or another, all of which view Western democracy and the Western way of life with abhorrence. Perversely, no matter how provocative and despicable the behavior and pronouncements of such entities, the general response of the prevailing Western intelligentsia and some of their governments ranges from sheer indifference and/or disbelief to a search for offenses committed by their own countries in “provoking” an anti-Western animus and, finally, to the actual proffering of assistance to the Jihadists.

While the majority of individual Muslims in the West are decent, law-abiding citizens, the nature of their communal structures and leadership gives rise to concerns that are briskly swept under the carpet. Many, if not most, mosques are officiated by imams trained abroad in madrasas that inculcate a belligerent attitude to Western values and lifestyles, which, in turn, gives rise to Islamic extremism. To the Muslim communities’ credit, Islamist groups have usually been small in size, drawing on only a limited number of active adherents. The Islamists do, however, pose serious security threats and are potentially capable of inflicting appreciable harm.

What compounds the problem is the fact that too few Muslim community leaders are genuinely utterly and unequivocally appalled by any manifestation of Islamic terrorism, no matter who the slain and injured happen to be. In the wake of the slaying on October 2, 2015, of a NSW police department employee by a young Muslim gunman, the Grand Mufti of Australia rationalized the incident as being due to “racism, Islamophobia, curtailing freedoms through securitization, duplicitous foreign policies and military intervention.”[1] Needless to say, the Grand Mufti made no reference to any features within his own Muslim community that could possible engender terrorism.

Such an analysis chimes in with the prevailing views of left-inclined intellectuals who assume that, in the West, Muslims are invariably victims of racism and Islamophobia. What deeply troubles the intellectual elite is that even the slightest disapprobation of any feature of Muslim society is taken as a breach of the spirit of multiculturalism, calling into question the notion that all cultures and societies are equally valid and are entitled to respect. Of all communities, the intellectual elite are particularly protective of and sensitive to the needs of the Muslim one, which they perceive to be especially exposed to wanton discrimination and harassment. One might add, that in virtually all advanced countries, the Muslim community is a strong supporter of left-wing parties and is ardently wooed by them.

The intellectuals’ fantasy of practically all Muslims in the West being hounded by hostile bigots is one that is widely shared but not well substantiated. In the United States the FBI disclosed that of the 1,149 anti-religious hate crimes committed in 2014, only 16.1% were directed against Muslims. By contrast, 56.8% of such offenses were inflicted on Jews without causing any disquiet whatsoever in left-wing or liberal circles.[2] In France all religious-based murders of Jews have been carried out by Muslims and in the wider Western community members of the general public have lost their lives in indiscriminate Islamist outrages perpetrated in New York, San Bernardino, London, Madrid, Paris, Brussels Orlando and Nice. If truth be told, within the West, it is mainly non-Muslims rather than Muslims, who have been encountering loss of life and limb as a result of hate crimes instigated by Islamist fanatics. However, whenever an act of Islamic terrorism occurs, Western political leaders regularly deny that such deeds are in anyway linked to Islam.

ARLINGTON, Va. — The commander of U.S. ground operations against ISIS in Iraq and Syria warned today that the offensive to take back Mosul could spark a large attack by the terror group elsewhere in reaction to their land losses.

There’s precedent in the global attacks — including on home soil — launched during the battle in which ISIS lost another key Iraqi city.

Maj. Gen. Gary Volesky, commander of Combined Joint Forces’ Land Component Command for Operation Inherent Resolve and commander of the 101st Airborne, told reporters via video from Baghdad on Wednesday that he couldn’t give a timeframe for when forces would be in Mosul as he’d rather “under-promise and over-deliver.”

“I would just say tomorrow we’ll be a lot closer to Mosul than we are today,” Volesky said. “My concern is making sure that they’ve got the combat power, they sustain that combat power, and don’t go so fast that they start to, you know, give opportunity to the enemy.”

Peshmerga Command tweeted that the Kurdish forces today began “a major advance from three fronts in North and North East of Mosul.”

“The objectives are to clear a number of nearby villages and secure strategic areas to restrict ISIL’s movements,” the Pesh continued. “This operation follows recent gains by Peshmerga forces in East Mosul and advances by ISF in South Mosul.”

Iraqi and Peshmerga forces are being advised to advance in a way so that they don’t “have to turn around and go back and fight an enemy that has gone to ground and stayed behind,” the general said.

“Because that’s what we expect the enemy is going to do. I mean, we’re seeing it already in the Euphrates River valley. The enemy knows they’re losing. I mean, Baghdadi has said as much, you know, ‘We’ll go back out to the desert where we’ve traditionally been and wait.’ Well, he’ll get the opportunity to do that here in the next period of time,” Volesky continued.

“But I expect that they’re going to go into an insurgency mode and they’ll try to do these high-profile, spectacular attacks to draw attention away from the losses that they’re suffering. I mean, we’ve seen them do that before. When they lose terrain in Iraq, there’s — they try to do a spectacular attack to tell everybody, you know, they’re still a relevant organization.”

During the battle to retake Ramadi from ISIS, which the Islamic State lost in February, terrorist attacks attributed to ISIS included the October 2015 downing of a Metrojet flying from Sharm El Sheikh to St. Petersburg, the November terror spree by an ISIS cell in Paris, the December attack in San Bernardino, and the January attacks on a Starbucks and police station in Jakarta.

Volesky said the coalition is “not doing any detainee operations” for any ISIS fighters taken into custody during the battle for Mosul, but instructions are understood to “treat people with dignity and respect or the fight becomes much, much harder.”

Iraq will be responsible for keeping any captured ISIS terrorists. CONTINUE AT SITE