Turkey bombs Kurds inside their country reigniting a major conflict. Yahoo/Reuters

An airstike in Kobani across the border from Turkey. Yahoo/Reuters

Reports out of Turkey claim the country has resumed airstrikes against Kurdish fighters, who are furious at Turkey's reluctance to do anything about ISIS. Yahoo/Reuters. The strikes come in response to rioting throughout Turkey by Kurds demanding that Turkey save the Syrian town of Kobani, currently under siege by ISIS. The riots had killed at least 35 people. The strikes had been on a two year hiatus due to peace talks between Turkey and the Kurdish PKK party. Those talks are now in jeopardy. Should the talks derail completely it would be a major setback in ending the war, which had killed 40,000 people but had all but ended in 2012. 

My Comment:

The Kurds aren't innocent in this since they did attack an outpost near Iraq, but I still think Turkey is largely to blame for starting the conflict. It's obvious to everyone that they don't particularly care about what happens to the Kurds in Kobani. Indeed, I would not be surprised if they think letting as many fighters die there as possible is in their best interests. Although the Kurdish PKK is a different organization then the Syrian YPG, they are all Kurds. 

And Turkish interference in Kobani goes beyond not intervening. Of course they could very easily mobilize and take Kobani back from ISIS, but this goes far past non-intervention. They are actively preventing the YPG fighters to be resupplied and rearmed.  They are also harassing and imprisoning Kurdish fighters at the border and preventing people from reinforcing the fighters in the city. By doing this they are de facto allies of ISIS.

Now I am not saying that they support ISIS or aren't enemies of the Islamic State. I am saying that they think the "enemy of my enemy" is my friend. ISIS fights both of their major enemies in the region, the Kurds and the forces of Bashar Al-Assad. They could learn something from Assad though. He thought the same thing about ISIS when they were primarily occupied with killing the Free Syrian Army. Eventually though, ISIS ended up being a bigger threat to Assad then the FSA was. The same thing will probably happen to Turkey. It might not happen for a long time but sooner or later this will come back to haunt the Turks.