Turkey's buffer bluster

Erdogan threatens Syrians for NATO points, and other news

Turkey has the second-largest army in NATO (that’s right—larger than Britain, France, or Germany) and its economy is the fastest-growing among G20 countries. Yet this week President Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatens to go to war against a stateless minority group—the Kurds—occupying an area inside Syria’s northeast pocket.

Already the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces that control the region have faced onslaughts from Turkey, as well as the Islamic State and al-Qaeda-linked terror groups. Yet with U.S. backing, they successfully fought to free the region from terrorist control, culminating in the final battle to defeat ISIS in 2019. Erdogan claims the area harbors terrorists and is again threatening—as he did in 2019—a wholesale invasion.

Turkey threatens again to attack northeast Syria as it did here in 2019

Welcome to Globe Trot this June 10. Here bad news doesn’t triumph. Threats of harm are temporary setbacks. In the words of N.T. Wright, the gospel “means instantly that all people…