Current Events & Trends: Turkey joins fight against ISIS but targets Kurds
ISIS continues its devastating march across the Middle East, and the list of nations picking up the fight against its brand of Islamic extremism is growing.
Turkey’s government, led by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is among those which have pledged to help in the fight against ISIS.
However, the actual result of Turkish military intervention hasn’t been exactly what its Western partners expected. While Turkey did assist the United States in conducting airstrikes against key ISIS strongholds in Syria, it’s also begun an airstrike campaign against Kurdish forces in the region. While the Turks and Kurds have no love lost in their nearly centuries-old, on and off conflict, this is quite problematic as the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) has become an ally in the global effort against ISIS.
The PKK continues to be both an asset and a liability for anti-ISIS forces, as the Kurdish militants are simultaneously considered terrorists by America and the European Union as well as acting as an effective buffer against continuing ISIS expansion.
The Wall Street Journal reported on the fallout from the recent Turkish-Kurdish violence: “After endorsing the strikes on the PKK in Iraq, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said . . . that it was impossible to continue peace talks with the group . . .
“As lawmakers gathered in Ankara to discuss the deepening crisis, a blast hit the Kirkuk-Ceyhan oil pipeline near Turkey’s border with Iraq, the Energy Ministry said” (Dion Nissenbaum and Yeliz Candemir, “Turkey Hits Kurdish Militants in Iraq in Largest Airstrike Yet,” July 29, 2015).
Violence and confusion are the hallmarks of human efforts to engineer peace in the world. God knows the human heart, and He knows what the way of man produces in the world. That’s why He inspired the prophet Isaiah to speak out about the confused ways of the nations: “The way of peace they have not known, and there is no justice in their ways; they have made themselves crooked paths; whoever takes that way shall not know peace” (Isaiah 59:8). To find true peace, we must look to God’s ultimate solutions, not man’s vain striving. (Source: The Wall Street Journal.)
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Rudolph Rangel III
Rudy Rangel attends the Cincinnati East, Ohio congregation along with his wife Judy and two children.
Tom Robinson
Tom is an elder in the United Church of God who works from his home near St. Louis, Missouri as managing editor and senior writer for Beyond Today magazine, church study guides and the UCG Bible Commentary. He is a visiting instructor at Ambassador Bible College. And he serves as chairman of the church's Prophecy Advisory Committee and a member of the Fundamental Beliefs Amendment Committee.
Tom began attending God's Church at the age of 16 in 1985 and was baptized a year later. He attended Ambassador College in both Texas and California and served for a year as a history teacher at the college's overseas project in Sri Lanka. He graduated from the Texas campus in 1992 with a Bachelor of Arts in theology along with minors in English and mass communications. Since 1994, he has been employed as an editor and writer for church publications and has served in local congregations through regular preaching of sermons.
Tom was ordained to the ministry in 2012 and attends the Columbia-Fulton, Missouri congregation with his wife Donna and their two teen children.
