Ariz Kader

TSK admitting population transfer with Arabs from Qalamoun being settled in a camp in recently depopulated Kurdish Mahmoudiyah. It is hard to make an argument, considering the documented demographic make-up of Afrin, that this isn't demographic engineering.https://twitter.com/TSKGnkur/status/989139738874523648 …

One of the major issues with Iraqi ethnic politics at the moment is that neither side is actually speakign to the other side to communicate their opinions and thoughts. Posters in Kurdish in Kurdistan would have been the most basic move to remedy this in my opinion.

In either case, regardless of how well electioneering in Kurdish would have been at attracting Kurdish votes, Abadi not having any presence in Kurdish even now is just another missed opportunity.

I have met plenty of people in Slemani that have told me they might be persuaded to vote for Abadi. However, curiously, very few of these people were particularly good at Arabic or in fact knew more than a few words.

For Dohuk, I understand. There are many IDPs from Nineveh in the province and the posters hung there generally apply to these Arabic-knowledgable voters. Slemani, however, is a different story and makes little sense.

Defacing or intervening in campaigning for political parties in Iraq is considered a crime and those doing so should rethink what they are actually achieving. Other than that I find it very strange that the Nasr list didn't translate their posters into Kurdish for Slemani.https://twitter.com/BaxtiyarGoran/status/989094064984379398 …

As stated, because of a lack of commitment long-term, this is very unlikely to succeed. Erdogan may have scored a short victory for himself for early elections, but he also created another ethnic battle on Turkey's door step which will create further instability.

It obviously chose the latter but without the long-term commitment to fully ethnically cleanse the local population. We are now left with something in between where Turkey has some Kurdish proxies, but is simultaneously demographically engineering the area.

Turkey had two choices at the begining of this campaign: 1) Expell the PYD and install Kurdish proxies (ENKS etc) and try to govern well to avoid long-term conflict. 2) Integrate Afrin with ES and demographically engineer a more friendly populace.

One only needs to imagine what would happen if Israel left the West Bank unprotected for a month. How many Israelis would you imagine would be able to stay? And this is after 40 years of occupation.

Settlers (without a military occupation) are very likely to be expelled by people returning to their homes after this war and locals (and settlers) will not forget who was the cause of this attrition.

There is very little likelihood (because Turkey is unlikely to annex Afrin long-term) that its current proxies in Afrin maintain dominance and this means engineering an Arab majority is unlikely.

Just as the Baath in Iraq created long-term chaos with Arabization in Kirkuk and the Baath in Syria created a needlessly complex conflict in Hasakah with the Arab belt, Afrin will almost certainly have boomerang effects on Turkey.

Even if they manage to settle short term political goals in Afrin (barring the PYD from reentering) conducting this ethnic cleansing campaign in Afrin will undoubtedly create lasting headaches for Turkey itself.