Shades of the Soviets standing by as the Germans attacked Warsaw in World War II. / LUQMAN BARWARI + BARRY FISHER

MESOP : HUMAN DISASTERS ARE NOT RHEORICAL CONTESTS & KOBANI WAS NOT WARSAW / ERDOGAN IS NOT HITLER BUT

THE DIALOGUE PARTNER OF PKK/APO

Why Turkey Shrugs as ISIS Closes In on Kobani

By LUQMAN BARWARI And  BARRY A. FISHER – Updated Oct. 9, 2014 8:45 p.m. ET – The Wall Street Journal – The so-called Islamic State, aka ISIS, has recently turned its attention from fighting the Assad regime in Syria and the Shiite Iraq-Iran alliance in Iraq, and laid siege to the Syrian city of Kobani and other Kurdish towns along the Turkish-Syrian border. Turkey has accepted Kurdish refugees fleeing ISIS attacks, but Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has refused to intervene militarily or to allow Kurds from Turkey to cross the border to assist their brethren in Syria.To put it plainly, Turkey has given a free hand to ISIS in its attempt to wipe out Syrian Kurds. In so doing, Turkey borrows from Russia’s historical playbook vis-à-vis Poland. Consider:

Russia has long had designs on Poland, controlling it from the 18th century to World War I. Shortly after the 1917 Russian Revolution, Russia tried but failed to take Poland by force. On the eve of World War II, Russia—or, rather, the Soviet Union—and Germany agreed to divide Poland between them. Just before the Soviets entered the war, they massacred Polish intelligentsia and military leaders in the Katyn Forest to weaken Poland.

Late in the war, the Polish underground in Warsaw, fearing the city’s imminent destruction, erupted in the Warsaw Uprising. The Poles fought valiantly for days as the Soviet army watched from the other side of the Vistula River while the Germans destroyed the city. The Soviets eventually moved to control all of Poland, with no Polish military remaining to interfere.

Today, the Turkish military idly stands at the Syrian border, refusing aid to the Kurdish men, women and children trapped in Kobani. Turkey, a NATO member, and Russia are ostensibly on opposite sides of the war to unseat Syria’s Bashar Assad —ISIS opposes Assad, and Russia supports him. But now, with the U.S.-led coalition attacking ISIS, the ultimate effect is to serve the interests of the Assad regime and Moscow.

Turkey has so far not given material support to the military coalition against ISIS. The Turkish Parliament voted on Oct. 2 to extend an existing mandate permitting the army to operate in Iraq and Syria, but without specifically mentioning ISIS or any other potential targets.

Meanwhile, despite U.S. airstrikes, ISIS has reportedly been inching ever closer to taking over Kobani. Without urgent intervention, the city could fall, allowing ISIS to go door to door slaughtering Kurdish residents.

What is behind President Erdogan’s refusal to act? The history of the Kurds is instructive.

The unofficial region known as Kurdistan is a crossroads of civilizations, subject over the millennia to military, linguistic and cultural invasions—and sometimes genocide and ethnic cleansing—from all sides. The Kurds have somehow survived in their mountainous region, and preserved their culture and language.

Today’s Kurdistan is about the combined size of Germany and the U.K. The more than 30 million Kurds constitute one of the world’s largest ethnic groups without a country. The maps drawn by the victorious powers in World War I with little or no regard for ethnicities, religions, geography or logic, divvied up the Kurds among four countries: Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey.

This history lent itself to an accepting, inclusive Kurdish identity, not based on a single language or religion. Kurdistan encompasses many languages, including Sorani, Kurmanji, and Zazaki, and many religions, including Shiite and Sunni Islam, Yazidism, Chaldean and Assyrian Christianity, and Judaism.

The Kurds have political organizations in each of Kurdistan’s four parts. The autonomous Kurdish zone in Iraq has two main political parties, and is defended by its Peshmerga forces. Trade, including in oil, flows freely, and the zone is pro-Western, largely democratic, secular, and economically prosperous.

The Kurdish region of northwest Iran has a large population, but little political freedom.

Northeastern Turkey has several Kurdish parties active in Turkish politics. These include the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which for decades took up arms in pursuit of greater autonomy and was labeled a terrorist organization by Turkey and the U.S.

The Kurdish region of northeastern Syria has multiple political parties, of which the Democratic Union Party (PYD) is dominant. The PYD is also seen by Ankara as a potential threat—even as its lightly armed Kurdish fighters battle ISIS and struggle to preserve order—because of its perceived links to the PKK in Turkey.

So Turkey does nothing from its side of the border with Syrian Kurdistan, while ISIS advances on Kobani and other border towns, threatening extermination of the Kurds. In the past few days, Turkish Kurds in Istanbul and Ankara and elsewhere have begun to protest their government’s indifference to the fate of their fellow Kurds, battling police in what looks like a modern twist on the Warsaw Uprising.

Mr. Bawari is a past president of the Kurdish National Congress of North America (KNC-NA). Mr. Fisher is a human-rights lawyer and counsel to KNC-NA. http://online.wsj.com/articles/luqman-barwari-and-barry-fisher-why-turkey-shrugs-as-isis-closes-in-on-kobani-1412901826