Wednesday, 16 October 2019

Erdogan needs to be

locked into a padded cell with no chance whatsoever of communicating with the outside world.
I had a brief email from one of the two aid workers forced to leave Syria. They had arrived in Ankara and were waiting to fly out from there. All they had with them was what they could carry. What little medical equipment they had available had to be left behind.
Would they have stayed? They have been in dangerous situations before and stayed. The situation there was dangerous and they stayed.
But this time it is extreme. Unless cooler heads prevail this could lead to a major conflict. Everyone knows that.
The President of the United States is saying he is doing it to save the lives of US soldiers.
The President of Turkey is saying he is doing it to stop terrorists and build a safe zone for refugees.
Neither of them are addressing the immensely complex problems that exist and will go on existing. Neither of them has considered that, because of their actions, more people are going to get killed.
Erdogan's actions are popular in Turkey. He is appealing to nationalism. Trump's actions are much less popular but still popular enough - especially when he takes the simplistic route of slapping sanctions on Turkey.
A mess? Yes.
And then there are yet more calls to bring home the women and children caught in the camps. I have said elsewhere that this is not as simple as it sounds. Despite the appalling conditions there - and this seems unbelievable - some of the women still support their claimed "jihad".  Bring them out? Bring them back here? Bring them back to what? Leave them free in the community to spread their message of hate? Imprison them and turn them into "martyrs"?
What do you do with their children?
There were three small children, all from the same family, who had lost their parents and some siblings in the fighting. The girl they interviewed was struggling with her emotions, her thoughts and the English language itself. She wanted nothing more than to go "home" to where her grandmother was in England, to visit her and play in the park. It was journalism designed to tug at the heart strings. She couldn't remember her grandmother's name.
They have actually managed to remove those children. They will, sooner or later be in England and will, if their grandmother is still alive, presumably be reunited with her. 
Those three may not represent any danger to England but what of those who have been taught to hate, to believe that only the jihadis right? Can that really be changed?
That's the question - the question we don't know how to answer.

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