I’m guessing that they might mean international support for a Turkish-occupied buffer zone in northern Syria, where Turkey can train, supply and stage anti-Assad forces as well as move/hold refugees without worrying about having to host all that mess inside their own borders. Just a guess, though.
Yeah, but still: Those very same Sunni states did, after all, join the American anti-IS coalition, lending their weaponry (not very important) and their prestige (much more important).
Quite honestly, though… I don’t fully understand why they did. One would assume their long-term anti-Shi’ite stance - their fear of the “Shi’a Crescent,” as you point out - would take priority over their short-term anti-IS stance. (Maybe the Americans are giving them some truly awesome concessions under the table?)
Also, nitpick: Syria’s government is Alawite, not Shi’ite.
Ah! Yeah, that might be it.
… And after reading the links provided by Malthus, I’m beginning to think that maybe, just maybe, the reason the Americans don’t want to give in to Turkey’s seemingly reasonable demands is due to Israeli pressure.
Jesus fucking Christ, reading about the Middle East makes you fucking paranoid!
Since we’re spitballing some far-fetched ideas, I’ve also gotta wonder, with their recent (relatively) warming relations with the Kurds, if their long-game with that is about seeing the writing on the wall and carving out some more space for a future, independent Kurdistan. The more room carved out of Syria, and the less out of Turkey, the better. Basically, a repeat of the results of Iraq’s northern no-fly zone.
Except they’ve always claimed they don’t want nukes and are refining uranium for civilian electrical production. The American government claims they want nukes as a pretext for action against them.
Assad is already in a fight to the death with ISIS, which he is losing. ISIS is not fighting the FSA. The FSA barely even exist as a fighting force, they are an irrelevance, and ISIS is currently focusing on the Kurds because they are pro-Assad. There previous operations were against Assad positions in Raqqa province. The FSA and ISIS are allies, there leadership meet, their men switch between the two groups as convenience dictates and the hostages ISIS executed were purchased from their original captors, the FSA. The FSA are a cut-out through which weapons are passed to ISIS.
There are two sides in the civil war in Syria, the government and ISIS and its auxiliaries. There are no moderate, pro-Western, popular, combat-effective moderates we can help, there are no airstrike pixies who will retake ground if we just drop enough bombs on mortar pits and ISIS’ Hilux division.
The government is actually secular, and is no more Alawite than the government of America is Protestant. It is disproportionately made up of people close to Assad, who happens to be an Alawite.
Also, Alawites are a type of Shi’ite.
Dang, you’re right! Ignorance fought, cheerio.
Yeah, that’s like saying: He’s Lutheran, not Protestant.
And saying it’s “secular” is neither here nor there. Saddam Hussein was “secular” but he still oppressed the Shi’a majority, and Assad is aligned with Shi’a governments, not Sunni.
There’s a whole lot of various shades of grey under what you just painted over in black and white.
What’s not to get? ISIS isn’t crossing their border. They’re fighting Kurds and Turkey doesn’t give a flying frack about Kurds. Why make yourself a target? Why help Kurdish nationalism.
Turkey knows how to deal with terrorism in their borders.
They want Assad gone and have no reason to do anything without getting what they want.
Besides:
Iraq army 250k troops.
Kurdish forces - anything from 80k to 240k, depending.
That ISIS has any traction at all in Iraq is purely down to the gutless incompetence of its defenders.
I’d leave them to sort it out or not sort it out. With those odds it should be pretty one -sided. Assuming just for the sake of argument the Iraqi Army could find it within itself not to run screaming like girls from the first sign of trouble while abandoning all it’s equipment and ammunition stores (again). You cannot defend a country that won’t defend itself.
And in Syria I certainly would not be trying to convince myself there’s any ‘moderate’ opposition to arm and train. You might as well just give the arms directly to ISIS.
Rearm what we laughingly refer to as the Iraqi ‘Army’, arm the Kurds and tell them to sort it if they want it sorted. They’re facing a small insurgent army of human beings not Terminators.
Turkey has thousands of kilometres of shared border with Syria. Most of it in remote and poorly protected and supervised regions. Most of it controlled by ISIS on the Syrian side. ISIS has a lot of support inside Turkey, and also controls regions in Iraq where they can withdraw to and regroup.
If I were Turkey I’d think twice before entering into a boots on the ground scenario in Syria which could well last a decade or more and is unlikely to make them any friends, neither among Arabs nor Kurds. But lots of suicide bombs in Ankara and Istanbul and various holiday destinations on the Mediterranean coast.
Erdogan’s big error was that he – much like the USA – supported rebel groups that turned out to be vicious Islamists, and now is settled with some kind of responsibility.
Yeah, some 1.3% of the Turks “sympathize” with IS. In a country with some eighty million people, that’s more than a million IS sympathizers. I don’t know how many of them actively help out, though - volunteering, sending money or equipment, that kind of thing.
The issue is not their current size, but their potential for future troublemaking.
This sounds sorta like I would imagine a discussion between two Byzantine officials in Syria circa mid-7th century: ‘seems to be some sort of ruckus among the Arab tribes - oh well, let them sort it out. Can’t possibly be any threat to us.’ 
Thre concern is that, for whatever reason - fanaticism, inherent appeal to Sunni pride, whatever - IS seems to be punching far above its weight, consistently routing much larger opponents and expanding rapidly. Will it stay at 10-50K fighters?
Remember those Danish Mohammed cartoons?
There was an attempt on the cartoonist’s life back in 2013; his would-be assassin did, until recently, rot in a Turkish prison.
This morning, Danish media reported that he has been released - and that this might (I repeat: might) have been part of a Turkish-IS deal, with Turkey releasing European jihadis in exchange for IS’ 49 Turkish hostages. (Similar reports came out in the U.K. about a week ago.)
No clue if it’s true or not, but I suppose it could be: As cynical Realpolitik, it just might make sense, from a Turkish perspective.
I dunno. Maybe some of the 400k-500k Iraq/kurdish fighters with all their western air support should start punching at their weight.
No one can defend Iraq but Iraqi’s and if they won’t we can’t. What the hell happened? We spent years training and arming them and all that happened was they gave their arms to ISIS, ran away and now stand around bleating for us to come fight so they don’t have to.
The borders are all being redrawn so maybe another hostile state occupying parts of what were once Syria and Iraq is going to be part of the price paid for our meddling.
In lots of ways the Turks would rather have ISIS on their (kurdish dominated) border than a new and expanding Kurdistan. ISIS is no external threat to them.
Emphasis added
We know the reason. They recruit disaffected Sunni Arabs living in Shi’a dominated countries. Fortunately, that means ISIL is not going to get much traction in countries with Sunni majorities and a Sunni government.
Which is why there are at least 3000 Tunisians fighting with ISIL.
Which reminds me: What are the odds of this thing spreading to Lebanon?
Back in August, a battle was fought in Arsal, a small city in northeast Lebanon, between IS and the Lebanese army.
Now, Lebanese media is reporting that:
Some Lebanese soldiers have heard the call, joining either IS or, as here, The Nusra Front. These defections are, of as yet, few and far between - but what are the odds of this thing getting out of hand? How stable is the Lebanese state, and, crucially, the balance between the country’s Sunnis and its Shi’ites?
I doubt their calculus is that simple. ISIS may not be an external threat to Turkey, but they obviously see the Kurds as an internal threat. Even before the ISIS-driven exodus of Kurds to Turkey, Kurds made up roughly 25% of Turkey’s population. If ISIS ended up controlling the Syrian and Iraqi borders with Turkey, how many more restless, homeless Kurds would end up in Turkey?
But not in Tunisia. Yes, there are lots of Sunni Arabs living in Sunni run states that want to help their brethren living in Shi’a states.