[Vanasalus]

What is your opinion on what is going on in Turkey between the Kurdish people and the Erdogan Turkish leader? What is their idea to survive?

Erdogan is in the nationalist bandwagon since 2015's summer for his political survival. Two strongest political inclinations among Turkish people are nationalism/patriotism (~30% of people identify themselves as such) and Kemalism (another ~30% of people identify themselves as such). Barely ~10% of the people identify themselves with Islamism. Another 10% of the people are Kurdish nationalists.

In the good old days between 2002-2012, thanks to economic performance of the country, Erdogan enjoyed the support from the moderate factions from all over political inclinations.

Since 2012, the country's economic performance is stagnant. Thus the support from moderate people to Erdogan is ebbing away.

Thus he found his salvation in hopping in nationalist bandwagon. He formed a coalition with nationalist MHP. Assumed a tougher stand against Kurdish HDP to appease his nationalist supporters.

As for the Kurds, they are trapped in a peculiar situation.

In one hand, there is HDP, which gathers the electoral vote of half of the Kurdish population of Turkey. But the HDP could not accomplish to break ties with PKK. And this association between them significantly reduces the perception of legitimacy of the party, hence inhibits its political influence which could have been utilized for the advancement of Kurdish rights.

In the other hand, there is the state/government, which brandishes the HDP=PKK equation, and trying convince Kurdish people that defeat of PKK and end of armed conflict is the key for economic and social progress in Kurdish southeast. It seems nationalist Kurds are not being convinced in large scale.

For my part, there is no end game within this paradigm.

Erodogan should jump out of nationalist bandwagon and start governing Turkey as he did in 2002-2012 period.

And HDP should cut its ties with PKK, and manifest itself as a pure political party without any ties to terrorism.

Then, we can see progress in a very quick manner.

And in your opinion @Vanasalus what do you think all the intervention by the European and American powers has wrought in the Middle East all this time? What is your opinion on all that?

I think similar to what many others do. It's most about the oil. More specifically, not the oil itself, but where the oil revenues are spent/invested elsewhere.

As for the Syria and Yemen... These countries do not have much oil. But they are at the center of western-inflamed Shia-Sunni schism, lead by oil rich countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia, UAE.

In my heart of hearts, I have no doubt that a big, bloody and utterly useless Shia-Sunni war across ME has been brewing. There are lots of billions, if not trillions, of dollars to be made by western military-industrial complex.

The victim mentality is your greatest problem because it prevents you from addressing the real issues. As long as that doesn't change, Muslim countries will forever remain impoverished underdeveloped tyrannies, and the only hope for Muslims to find peace and prosperity will be to migrate to the West. What a total failure!

Not victim mentality. Simple cause and effect.

On top, until the day of 9/11 attacks, I had no idea about the existence of al-Qaeda or bin-Laden. Until the day ISIS overrun Mosul and captured billions of dollars worth American military equipment, I had not heard ISIS or al-Baghdadi once. Till a few weeks ago, before the onset of Turkish operation in N. Syria, I did not know there were prison camps in N. Syria hosting 2,500 or 11,000 or 63,000 ISIS prisoners which can go loose if Turkey continues its operation.

I will not take a blame for things whose inception and fattening occurred not only without my consent or support but also without my detection.

Go and ask what western intelligence organizations partook in those processes.

Muslims are just salty because the West has been better at expansion during the last 5 centuries. Given half a chance, Muslims will resort to the most violent brutality to pursue their expansionist project. But as I said, historical crimes are water down the bridge. What matters is that you are stuck in a violent past and religious fundamentalism.

I don't know why I should feel salty.

Greeks, Serbs, Bulgarians etc remained under Turkish rule for over half a millennium and they are still Greeks, Serbs, Bulgarians etc and they are Christians.

In times Catholic and Protestant Christians were busy killing each other in millions, Muslims, Jews, Orthodox Christians, Catholics and Protestants were living side by side in peace in Ottoman realm.

Well, our understanding of "expansion" is different different from the western one, and it might be the reason why our "expansion" was "less successful" in your eyes. But it's your subjective view and not my problem.