Operation Featherweight: Month 14, Week 2, Day 6.

On Sunday (6/9/15) 16 Turkish soldiers were killed in Turkey's south-eastern Hakkari Province when their vehicle hit an explosive device. The Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK) almost immediately claimed responsibility. However as, at the time, the soldiers were working to clear landmines that the Turkish military had laid there remains some debate as to the truth of this claim.

The incident immediately triggered a sharp intake of breath as those who've been following the war against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) waited to see how Turkey would react. Specifically they were waiting to see whether Turkish President/Prime Minister/Emperor Recep Tayyip Erdogan had understood that his support for ISIL and in particular his military strikes against Kurdish positions in Iraq and Syria are completely unacceptable.

Apart from the continuing US support for those strikes a couple of things happened on Sunday and Monday (7/9/15) that could well have clouded Erdogan's judgement.

The first of these was an answer to journalists given by UK Finance Minister George Osborne at a meeting of G20 Finance Ministers which was being hosted by Turkey in the role of group President. Osborne said; You’ve got to deal with the [migration] problem at source, which is this evil Assad regime and the Isil terrorists, and you need a comprehensive plan for a more stable, peaceful Syria."

Erdogan may well have interpreted this as the UK giving it's full backing to his plan to invade Syria in order to assist ISIL in overthrowing the Syrian government. What Erdogan might be less aware of is that despite his close, personal friendship with the UK Prime Minister David Cameron elevating him to such a senior role in government George Osborne is widely considered to be an idiot.

Within two years of Osborne taking up the role former Finance Minister Ken Clarke was appointed as "Minister without portfolio" in order to supervise Osborne's work. A year after that Osborne was demoted to "the guy who reads out the opposition Labour Party's economic plan." The mere fact he was sent to Turkey could well have been considered an insult.

Yesterday (7/9/15) the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) announced that they were suspending meetings of the Executive Committee of Northern Ireland's power sharing National Assembly. Their excuse for doing this was recent claims that the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) "continue to exist but with a radically different purpose that no longer sees them involved in violence or terrorism." 

This of course means that people who were members of the PIRA have not all suddenly been executed and some of them continue to speak to each. The reason for the very dramatic wording of the statement which came on the same day as the Shoreham Air Disaster (22/8/15) was to highlight just how ridiculous it was for Erdogan to respond to an ISIL attack by re-starting a war with the PKK bringing to an end a 10 year peace-process that is very similar to the Northern Irish peace-process.

Unfortunately we seem to have underestimated Northern Ireland's Unionists capacity for the ridiculous. This ever present threat of the Unionists pulling out of the power sharing agreement stems from a perverse quirk in the agreement which means that if one side pulls out of the agreement the Northern Ireland reverts to being ruled by the UK government in Westminster.

At a time when all other UK regions such as Scotland, Wales and even the north of England are desperate for devolved rule away from Westminster Northern Ireland's Unionists continue to crave it in their bones as a symbol of their Britishness.

As a result the Unionists are always trying to collapse the power sharing agreement. Last year the excuse was cuts to public spending. The year before that it was the "letters of comfort" sent to both Unionist and Republican terrorists - the "On The Runs" - telling that due to the peace-process they wouldn't be prosecuted.

Personally I think nearly 20 years on it's time for that quirk to be removed from the Northern Ireland Assembly. There is little chance of that happening though with the current Conservative government of Cameron and Osborne. Although we often shorten it to just "Tory" the full name of the party is the "Conservative and Unionist Party." The DUP is simply their Northern Ireland branch.

Today it has been confirmed that for whatever reason Erdogan has clearly not got the message. Overnight Turkey again conducted six hours of air-strikes which saw 53 aircraft bomb Kurdish positions across the northern Iraq region of Dohuk. It has also been confirmed in the last few hours that Turkey has conducted a small scale invasion of Iraq. Turkey is claiming that this invasion will be short-term and rather then being planned in advance was the result of what is termed a "hot pursuit." However while I'm still checking details I did hear rumours of this happening before it supposedly happened.

With Erdogan now seeming to be completely deaf to the advice of Turkey's allies we have reached the point where someone is going to have to table a motion at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) condemning Turkey's frequent and repeated violations of the territorial integrity of it's neighbours.

This current crisis with Turkey that is threatening to undermine the entire war against ISIL is entirely the result of US President Barack Obama's decision to telephone Erdogan on July 22nd (22/7/15) and re-engage him in the Turkish political process. Prior to that the Turkish civil service was doing just fine without a government while coalition negotiations were taking place. In fact their efforts to reduce ISIL's freedom to operate within Turkey were dramatically improving provoking the bombing in Suruc on July 20th (20/7/15) which prompted Obama's phonecall.

When I commented on this situation originally I may have made it sound a lot more sinister then it actually was. In a Parliamentary system such as Turkey's the largest party in Parliament appoints a Prime Minister. That Prime Minister then appoints a number of MP's to run specific government departments as part of the Cabinet.

If no government or cabinet exists such as during a period of coalition negotiations then all of these government departments don't suddenly just stop. Instead the tax department will continue to collect tax, the finance department will continue to pay salaries and the security department will continue to stop security threats. In Turkey, unless there is a minister to tell them otherwise, this means that the security ministry takes action against ISIL.

Here in the UK we have just emerged from a very similar period with the UK Parliament's 7 week summer recess (21/7/15 - 7/9/15) ending yesterday. As a result anything you might have seen during that period such as the CarFest air crash or the Shoreham Air Disaster has not been the work of the UK Government but the work of Her Majesty's (HM) Civil Service or Her Majesty's (HM) Armed Forces. After all I'm sure the minister would be most annoyed if their holiday was interrupted with every minor detail.

Prime Minister Cameron has returned from his long, tax-payer funded holiday to something of a baptism of fire with the public announcement that he had ordered the killing of British citizen Reyaad Khan, 21 - who had joined ISIL - by a British drone strike in Raqqa, Syria on August 21st (21/8/15).

Repeating what I said yesterday under international law this was entirely lawful because the UNSC has passed Chapter 7 resolution 2170 (2014) authorising military force against any and all members or supporters of ISIL or Al Nusra Front (ANF) regardless of where they are in the World. "Using military force" is a polite way of saying; "Killing People." If you don't understand that perhaps you shouldn't be in such a rush to call for it.

Raising very serious questions about his competence as a leader Cameron does not seem aware of this watertight legal argument. Instead Cameron attempted to justify his actions under the concept of "Pre-emptive Self-Defence." I have since discovered that following the disaster of the 2003 invasion of Iraq the UK's official legal position is that it does not recognise Pre-emptive Self-Defence as a legitimate reason to undertake military action.

As I said yesterday even amongst nations that do recognise Pre-emptive Self-Defence in order for it to apply it must be demonstrated that the threat is imminent. I thought it almost without saying that in order for a threat to be imminent it must first be credible. After all if a threat isn't real then it's not going to happen in the next hour, day, week or even the next year.

Although Cameron has yet to put forward the details on the case that convinced him that Khan posed an imminent threat from the rumours and some odd sounding statements at the time suddenly making sense it seems that the decision to carry out this drone strike was not the result of work by either the UK military or any of it's intelligence services. In fact it is the product of some civilian journalists working for Sky News.

What the journalists did was pose as potential ISIL recruits on the Internet. This brought them into contact with Kahn, Junaid Hussain (AKA; Abu Hussain al-Britani) who was killed by a US drone on August 25th (25/8/15) and Hussain's wife Sally Jones (AKA Sakinah Hussain). In their attempts to recruit the undercover reporters these three - and others - made lots of big claims about how wonderful life was under ISIL and how ISIL had plenty of terror attacks planned in the UK including a plan to kill the Queen at the August 15th (15/8/15) VJ Day commemorations.

This was all widely reported at the time but I dismissed it out of hand as essentially just trolls talking sh*t on the Internet. The fact that Cameron viewed it as a credible threat - particularly 10 days after the attack was supposed to have happened - is deeply worrying, particularly in terms of freedom of speech and freedom of expression. After all if the UK government is going to kill every British citizen who tells a lie on the Internet then pretty soon there aren't going to be any British citizens left. Particularly not Conservative politicians.

Although Cameron is still sticking to his guns and refusing to apologise for this screw up it seems that the Crown is more then happy to point out his mistake to him.

Today a West Midlands police officer along with two other men has been arrested for giving false and misleading information relating alleged ISIL plan kidnap and behead a police officer in December 2014. This threat caused West Midlands police to take the dramatic step of recalling all their officers from patrol and police officers nationally to be warned not to travel to and from work in their uniforms.

It now turns out that this 'plot' was all just talk and not only wasn't there really a plan there was no-one with the means to carry out such a plan if it had existed. Apparently though David Cameron still wants to call in a drone strike.

Also today two Sussex police officers who attended the Shoreham Air Disaster have apparently got into trouble for sharing "inappropriate" jokes with each other via private SMS message about the crash. This strikes me as two people who spent several days combing through the charred remains of the crash victims engaging in that long standing British tradition of gallows humour by attempt to break the tension with some - what I hope were - extremely poor taste jokes.

What I think is telling is that although Sussex police went to the trouble of issuing a press release and holding a press conference they haven't felt the need to suspend either officer. Apparently though David Cameron still wants to call in a drone strike.

So I know we're only a few weeks into this five year Parliament but once again I feel I need to ask the British electorate;

"Are you sure you don't want a do-over?"


17:25 on 8/9/15 (UK date).