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Comment by _xnmw | Hacker News Reader

Seems like a fair threat to me. Turkey has been bearing the burden of accommodating the majority of Syrian refugees. If Europe blocks its efforts to stabilize a part of Syria so it can repatriate Syrians, it seems logical to tell Europe "if you won't support our solution, you should share the cost of accommodating the refugees".

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1. Criticism is not blocking.

2. It's a military invasion. The precedent of Operation Olive Branch indicates that calling this an "effort to stabilize" is an abuse of semantics.

3. Do you have any source indicating that Kurdish control is contributing to the displacement of people?

4. More about "efforts to stabilize": "Criticism of Turkish alleged support for Jihadists, including ISIL, and of targeting Kurds" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_involvement_in_the_Syr...

> 2. It's a military invasion. The precedent of Operation Olive Branch indicates that calling this an "effort to stabilize" is an abuse of semantics.

Then what was America doing there?

I don't see your point. If I say a military invasion is not semantically equivalent to an "effort to stabilize," I leave open the possibility that some invasions do have a stabilizing effect, but that is never something evident but something that has to be argued for. I don't feel like digressing into drawing Venn Diagrams.

Fair enough, but I would argue that a military operation conducted by a neighbouring country dealing with the fallout of war (Turkey) is more justified and possibly stabilizing than any American or Russian incursion. Turkey has more of an incentive to "stabilize" its direct borders than America has in that region. What is America's interest in that region anyway?

> What is America's interest in that region anyway?

It starts with an O and rhymes with way some old timey new yorkers say "girl"

> Turkey has been bearing the burden of accommodating the majority of Syrian refugees.

Are you aware that this is wholly down to a deal between the EU and Turkey which includes, amongst others, payments of about 6bn EUR to Turkey?

I was aware. But the costs of accommodating refugees are more than just financial. The social cost is much bigger. I think it's fair that Turkey is looking for a longer-term solution for asylum seekers, not simply taking money and feeding them.

Invasion might not be the best way though. I think we will find.

Turkey has spent more than $30 billion on refugees and was already host to 2 million refugees in 2015 (i.e. before the deal) [1]. So, no, that deal hasn't brought any meaningful change.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/jun/19/gaziantep-tur...

Dude, EU already coughed up 9 Billion EUR when Erdogan threatened to let them through.

EU politicians were too afraid of the xenophobic shitstorm on the one hand, and the media catastrophe of thousands of boat-people drowning at sea.

So they complied. You never comply to a blackmail, there's no end to the demands.

> If Europe blocks its efforts to stabilize a part of Syria

It's not trying to do that, though that's the pretext. As with Turkey’s previous interventions in Syria and Iraq (and its ongoing internal campaigns), it's trying suppress the Kurds. If it's trying to create a pacified area, it's to avoid having a safe space for Kurds, not to repatriate Syrian refugees (except perhaps to repatriate non-Kurdish Syrian refugees to displace the Kurds, which is certainly a plausible Turkish strategic aim.)

Yeah cause more wars isn't going to create more refugees...

This is not the first operation that Turkey has been doing. I believe this should be 3rd or 4th one. In previous ones, there weren't a refugee strike through borders.

"Turkish guards at the border with Syria are indiscriminately shooting at and summarily returning asylum seekers attempting to cross into Turkey, Human Rights Watch said." https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-mideast-crisis-syria-turke... This occurred during Operation Olive Branch.

From what I’ve read in mainstream US news sources, Europe, NATO, and the US have no faith in Turkey’s ability to execute its plan. And setting up a mini-state isn’t something you can really mess up without having catastrophic humanitarian consequences.

And quite frankly, I don’t see any reason why Turkey would succeed. Just look how much trouble the (presumably better resourced and more experienced) US has had in setting up stable governments in Iraq and Afghanistan which (in my admittedly nonexpert opinion) seem to be the best historical parallels for attempting to create stable societies out of a legal vacuum with little-to-no useful institutions and peoples with minimal experience/exposure to operating in such a society.

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