Turkey in uproar over McGurk
The Turkish media's outlandish attacks on US envoy Brett McGurk hint at the anxiety in Ankara over US relations with Syrian Kurds.
Turkey’s scapegoating of US special envoy Brett McGurk over the military partnership between the United States and the Syrian Kurds grew crazier today, with one pro-government newspaper labeling him a murderer.
“US envoy murders 46,000 civilians in Iraq, Syria,” blared the front page of the conservative Yeni Safak. “The coalition forces, led by … McGurk … who has recently come to light with his anti-Turkish statements, slaughtered 46,000 civilians in operations in Iraq’s Homs and Syria’s Raqqa provinces.” The destruction of Mosul, the flattening of Raqqa, famine, lack of medicine … These and other calamities befalling Syria and Iraq are all apparently the doings of McGurk, the US envoy for the global coalition against the Islamic State (IS).
Another pro-government mouthpiece, the Star, unveiled the sinister US plan to establish a Kurdish state in northern Syria, replete with detailed maps. This would involve dispatching with Turkish-led Operation Euphrates Shield forces wedged between the Syrian Kurdish enclave of Afrin and the Kurdish-controlled chunk of territory running from the town of Manbij to the Iraqi Kurdistan border.
Other papers carried images of US military equipment being delivered to the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), ostensibly to be used for the ongoing campaign to liberate Raqqa. “Its raining Kalashnikovs,” read the front-page headline of the mass circulation daily Hurriyet. Turkiye reported on an eight-member team of “special US advisers” to be deployed across the Kurdish-controlled region to work on “public order” and public administration,” all allegedly part of the effort to create a new Kurdish state.
