Month: March 2018

Current and former U.S. and British intelligence officers say the West’s collective banishment this week of 115 Russian “diplomats” will be far less damaging to Russian espionage operations than British Prime Minister Theresa May and American officials have argued.

And they warn tit-for-tat expulsions the Kremlin is expected to order shortly will have much greater impact on Western intelligence missions in Russia.

They say the Cold War-era picture drawn by author John le Carré in “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,” with Russian espionage in the West depending mainly on spies based out of embassies under diplomatic cover, is anachronistic.

“Western expulsions will have only a very marginal impact on ongoing Russian operations, given the fact the SVR [Russian foreign espionage] and the GRU [Russian military intelligence] run their best sources very well, and they will have back-up communications arrangements for their assets,” a retired senior intelligence officer told VOA.

The officer, a 30-year CIA veteran in counter-espionage who was a member of the team that unmasked CIA employee Aldrich Ames as a KGB mole in 1994, says in the Internet era, with hard-to-breach encrypted communications, “human contact is less crucial than in the past, adding “they will easily be able to use traveling ‘illegals’ to make human contact, anyway” when needed.

Uncertain effect

Speaking in the House of Commons Monday about the wave of expulsions being announced across Europe and by the United States, which ordered 60 diplomats — most of them presumed to be spies — to pack up, Britain’s Theresa May said the mass ejections, along with the 23 expulsions Britain announced last week, would in effect “dismantle” Russia’s spy network in the West.

She hailed the mass expulsions — a collective reprisal for what the British government claims was a Kremlin-approved effort on March 4 to poison on British soil the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his 33-year-old daughter Yulia. She added the banishments amounted to “the largest collective expulsion of Russian intelligence officers in history” — and May vowed never to allow Russian leader Vladimir Putin to rebuild an espionage machine in the West.

“Western expulsions have never crippled Russian intelligence collection,” says John Sipher, who retired in 2014 after a 28-year career in the CIA’s National Clandestine Service, which included a stint in Moscow and running the CIA’s Russia operations.

Sipher told VOA: “The British expulsion of intelligence officers under Maggie Thatcher came the closest to hurting Russian espionage operations. The large number of Russian spies in the United States and Western countries has insured that losing a few doesn’t really do serious damage. If you have 150-200 intelligence officers in-country, losing 50 is painful, but hardly debilitating.”

The expulsions by Margaret Thatcher in 1985 came at the height of the Cold War.

Angry at the revelations about the extent of Soviet espionage activities in Britain that were revealed by KGB defector Oleg Gordievsky, Britain’s Iron Lady ordered out more than 30 Russian diplomats in a wave of tit-for-tat expulsions that only ended when the then British ambassador to Moscow Bryan Cartledge pleaded with her to stop because of the damage it was doing to his embassy.

“Never engage in a pissing match with a skunk, he possesses important natural advantages,” Cartledge advised in a telegram to London.

Previous Western expulsions

Cartledge’s advice is echoed by retired and current intelligence officers. Sipher says he doubts the West’s mass expulsions will alter Putin’s policies. “I’m not aware that previous diplomatic expulsions changed behavior,” he said.

Sipher worries the West will come off worse when it comes to the impact on intelligence gathering and espionage, saying that is how it has worked with like-for-like expulsions in the past.

“I don’t think expulsions are as important as in the past but I do think they hurt the West more than Russia. The Russians are consistent and tough, and quickly toss out as many U.S. diplomats and intelligence officers. Since our numbers are much smaller, it has a disproportionately bigger impact on us. We in the CIA often argued that it made no sense to throw out 50 [for example] Russian diplomats since it would impact a small percentage of their capability, but would devastate our collection ability,” he says.

Russia’s SVR and GRU have great strength in depth outside Russian embassies, Western intelligence officers say, running far more sleeper agents and other spies under non-official cover than Western agencies, and using them to establish contacts with academics, industrialists, and policymakers to gain access to sensitive and classified information. They can also be used to run logistical errands for deep-cover moles.

“The Russian illegals program is meant to be a strategic reserve in case they lose capability in their ‘legal’ residencies. The Soviet Union created the illegals program when they were young and realized that countries could break diplomatic relations altogether. They wanted to maintain their espionage networks even if the embassies closed,” Sipher says.

In 2010, the FBI broke up an illegals program in the United States of 10 Russian agents, among them Anna Chapman, whose flame-haired good looks immediately attracted intense Western media interest. The 10 sleepers were swapped by the U.S. for Sergei Skripal and three other Russian nationals, who had been spying for the West.

“The 2010 arrest of illegals in the United States was probably a blow to the SVR. I don’t know how successful they have been in rebuilding the capability,” says Sipher. If the Russians haven’t, then the “recent expulsions from the U.S. may be digging into bone” a bit, he adds.

A serving FBI counter-espionage officer recently told VOA there are concerns about Russian sleeper agents and “illegals” buried in the computer and contracting firms known as “Beltway Bandits” in the Washington DC area, mostly in northern Virginia, which have large government contracts.

Many covers

Another edge the Russian espionage agencies have over their Western rivals, especially when it comes to their rivals in the United States, is they have less restrictions placed on them when it comes to using traveling businessmen, academics, non-profit workers and journalists for spying activities and intelligence collection, say Western intelligence professionals.

Britain and France, which expelled four Russian “diplomats” are exceptions to this general rule — famously British intelligence secured a job easily at the Observer newspaper for double-agent Kim Philby in the 1950s when his MI6 bosses were trying to work out finally whether he had been working for the KGB all along.

“Given the minuscule numbers of U.S. intelligence officers in Russia compared to their presence in the United States, we always lose disproportionately in tit-for-tat,” said the CIA veteran who worked on the Aldrich Ames case. He believes, though, that the 60 expulsions announced by Washington Monday in the short term “should have some impact on the Russians’ developmental operations as there simply will be fewer of them out there hustling Americans.”

 
…

France is holding a ceremony Wednesday to honor a police officer who was killed last week after offering to take the place of a hostage during an attack on a supermarket.

President Emmanuel Macron is addressing the ceremony in Paris for Lt. Col. Arnaud Beltrame. The president has said Beltrame died as a hero.

Earlier Wednesday, police stations across France paused for a minute of silence. That followed an observation of silence Tuesday by lawmakers in the National Assembly.

The gunmen in Friday’s attack killed three other people. Authorities identified him as 25-year-old French-Moroccan Radouane Lakdim, and the Islamic State militant group claimed responsibility for the assault.

The attacker first hijacked a car Friday morning near Carcassonne, killing the passenger and wounding the driver. He then drove off in the car and shot into a group of police officers who had been jogging, wounding one of them. 

Next, in Trebes, near Carcassonne, Lakdim walked into the Super U supermarket and killed two people. He held several hostages in the supermarket, where Beltrame volunteered to swap himself for the hostages. 

The gunman agreed and Beltrame kept an open line on his phone so his fellow officers could hear what was going on. When the officers heard more gunshots, they stormed the market, killing the gunman.
…

NATO has joined the ranks of  at least 25 countries expelling several Russian diplomats as part of a “broad, strong and coordinated” international response to the nerve agent attack on a former Russian double agent and his daughter in Britain. Russia denies responsibility for the poisoning, and has promised tough retaliation within a week. As VOA’s Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports from the State Department.
…

Calls are growing to reinstate France’s state of emergency and crack down further against suspected Muslim extremists after last week’s terror attack that left four dead in southern France — and as the country prepares to bury the victims.

President Emmanuel Macron will be presiding over a national ceremony Wednesday in Paris to honor Arnaud Beltram — the policeman killed after trading places with a hostage during last week’s terrorist attack in southern France.

The nation will come together again on Thursday to mark the burial of Beltram and the three others gunned down by 25-year-old French-Moroccan radical Redouane Lakdim during a shooting spree last Friday.

The political fallout is growing as center and far-right politicians call for restoring a state of emergency in France, which ended last November.

During a National Assembly debate Tuesday, the parliament’s center-right Les Republicains party head Christian Jacob said the state of emergency, put in place after the 2015 Bataclan attacks, should never have been lifted. It was time, he said, to lock up those radicalized and tracked under France’s so-called ‘S’ file of potentially dangerous suspects. He said those of foreign origin should be expelled.

That would have included Moroccan-born Lakdim, whom police shot dead, ending a hostage-taking standoff at a southern French supermarket. Lakdim’s18-year-old girlfriend is being detained, and the Paris prosecutor has requested she be placed under formal investigation.

France has been hit by 20 terrorist attacks that have killed 245 people since 2014. Some opposition politicians accuse the Macron government of being naive and soft on terrorism. On the other side, rights groups have lambasted the government’s anti-terrorism legislation that replaced the state of emergency.

At the National Assembly, French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe rejected calls for restoring the state of emergency and banning the ultra-conservative Salafi branch of Islam. He said France needs to fight terrorism with laws, and you cannot deprive people of their liberties based on suspicion.

Meanwhile, judges handed a former leftist parliamentary candidate a suspended prison sentence for appearing to celebrate policeman Beltram’s death in a tweet.
…

The families of those who died in a massive shopping mall blaze Sunday in the Siberian city of Kemerovo are criticizing President Vladimir Putin for failing to meet with them when he visited the scene of the fire that left at least 64 dead — 41 of them children.

While Putin visited some injured survivors in the hospital, that failed to placate critics. Commentators are branding his visit “cynical,” saying he repeated his mistakes of 18 years ago when he was slow to meet families of sailors who drowned in 2000 when the nuclear submarine the Kursk sank.

“The children are dead already, we can’t bring them back. But we need clear justice,” said a traumatized father of a child who died in the massive fire that’s shocked Russia.

He was speaking to hundreds of protesters, who 48 hours after the blaze had come to mourn their dead collectively — and to call angrily for the city’s mayor and regional leaders to resign.Kemerovo sits in a hardscrabble coal-mining region and is no stranger to unexpected tragedy and loss. This time, though, with many children dead there is no sense of acceptance — tempers are flaring with anger mounting as details emerge about how the emergency exits were blocked or locked, preventing quick flight and obstructing rescue efforts.

The alarm system failed to work, as did the facility’s PA system, possibly switched off for reasons unknown by a security guard, say investigators. Mall workers fled as the fire swept through the upper floors of the Winter Cherry shopping mall, leaving behind many children trapped in the center’s cinema complex.

President Putin, fresh from re-election, clearly tried get out ahead of the outrage.

On Tuesday, he arrived in Kemerovo, laid flowers at a makeshift memorial, met with with regional authorities and vowed to get to the bottom of what happened. He denounced carelessness and criminal negligence.

But the Russian leader’s avoidance of the bereaved families and protesters complaining about building code violations and shoddy construction angered locals. One woman told the crowd: “We’re asking for the governor, we’re asking for Putin. Why are we being lied to?” She added, according to a local news site: “We give the government their mandate. Let them resign.”

Neither President Putin nor Kemerovo’s regional governor, Aman Tuleyev, addressed the crowd.

Some analysts compared Putin’s visit to Kemerovo with British Prime Minister Theresa May’s first trip to the scene last year of the Grenfell apartment-block fire in London.

Seventy-one people died in that blaze, which has been blamed on the building’s cladding, and May was faulted by the media and lawmakers for avoiding angry family members demanding answers and for spending most of her time with officials and first responders.

She went back to the scene several days later in order to placate the families.

As with May, so with Putin.  

“Why are the queen and king safe and sound? Let them come here, get up and answer us,” a protester demanded outside Kemerovo’s regional administration, joining others accusing authorities of obscuring the true scale of the disaster, the deadliest fire in the country since the Soviet era.

When Kemerovo’s mayor, Ilya Serduk, appeared there were cries of with cries of “Resign!” and “Murderer!”

Additional riot police and National Guardsmen troops were deployed as the protest developed. Locals have also questioned the official death toll announced by local authorities and they claim that more than 400 people may have died in the fire. “How many people actually died, why are you lying to us?” Interfax agency quoted one protester as shouting.

As he laid flowers in a tribute to the dead, Putin asked: “How could this possibly happen? What’s the reason? People, children came to relax. We are talking about demography and are losing so many people because of what? Because of criminal negligence, sloppiness.”

“He laid flowers in a spot cleared of people,” said Olga Bychkova, a presenter for radio station Echo of Moscow. “He met with the heads of the region, he met with some activists or public representatives, but there is a huge crowd standing there in Kemerovo and it seems to me still standing, waiting for an answer from the local authorities. Putin did not approach these people.”

Bychkova told VOA there is a sense of deja vu with the visit.

In 2000, Putin remained vacationing at his residence in the Back Sea resort of Sochi as the Kursk drama unfolded. The submarine sank in the Barents Sea on the 97th day of his first term in office with 118 seamen on board and he left for his holiday after being assured by navy chiefs a rescue operation was underway and everything was under control.

He eventually met the relatives as a media storm erupted — and the meeting did not go well as relatives accused him of inaction and the military of incompetence. Some analysts pinpoint the storm over the Kursk as triggering Putin’s decision to bring the media to heel and to orchestrate a crackdown on independent television channels.

Bychkova says Putin’s visit to Kemerovo suggests he didn’t fully learn lessons from the sinking of the Kursk. “No, I do not think so. It does not look like that. To start with, he went to Kemerovo more than 24 hours late. Nearly two days have passed since the time all that happened. That is actually a long time! Because already on Sunday night, Moscow time it became clear that something very serious and very scary had happened,” she said.

 
…

U.S.-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) has strongly criticized Turkey for “large numbers” of detentions for social media postings criticizing the Turkish-led military operation into Syria against a Kurdish militia.

The report claimed the “crackdown violates the right to peaceful expression.” Ankara is facing mounting diplomatic pressure over the country’s wider human rights record.

Since January when Ankara launched the Operation Olive Branch military offensive into the Syrian Afrin enclave, critics claim dissent over the offensive has been crushed.

Citing figures from the Interior Ministry, HRW said 648 people were detained between Jan. 20 and Feb. 26 for social media postings criticizing the operation and expressing support for people holding street protests against the offensive.

The Rights group said the Interior Ministry confirmed that further detentions have continued into March.

“Detaining and prosecuting people for tweets calling for peace is a new low for Turkey’s government,” said Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Turkish authorities should respect people’s right to peacefully criticize any aspect of government policy, including military operations, and drop these absurd cases.”

The report highlighted that many of the detainees included prominent figures of Turkish civil society, four members of Turkey’s pro-Kurdish HDP, as well as academics.

HRW cited as one of most egregious cases the detention of 11 senior members of Turkish Medical Association (TTB), including its chairman, Rasit Tukel, for social media postings expressing concern for the humanitarian situation caused by the Turkish operation in Syria.

Turkish ministers have routinely dismissed concerns over Operation Olive Branch as “terrorist propaganda,” insisting not a single civilian had been killed or injured by its forces.

The 11 doctors were subsequently released after an international outcry. In fact, HRW acknowledged that in most cases, those detained were subsequently released, subject to ongoing investigations.

But the rights group suggested the detentions, which usually occur late at night or in early morning hours, are being used as a means of intimidation.

“I was visible from the outside [to the police]. I was watching TV at the time,” said Nurcan Baysal, a journalist and human rights activist. “They tried to break in the door without ringing the doorbell. About 20 policemen entered my house wearing masks, and trained their automatic rifles on me.”

Baysal’s was one of five cases cited by HRW for being detained for social media postings. The manner of her detention follows a similar pattern, according to the rights group, which accuses authorities of intimidating critics.

“After examining the cases, Human Rights Watch believes that some of the police raids and criminal investigations are being used as a form of punishment rather than out of genuine belief that criminal behavior has occurred,” the HRW report said.

HRW claims its investigations revealed that in all the cases it studied, the social media postings were nonviolent and fell within international standards of freedom of expression. Ankara has so far failed to comment on the report, but has frequently dismissed such criticism as “terrorist propaganda.”

The publication of the report comes as Ankara is under growing pressure from its western allies. At a European Union summit on Monday between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, EU head commissioner Jean Claude Juncker, and European Council president Donald Tusk, human rights concerns spoiled the gathering, which was intended to reset relations.

 

 “What I can say is that I raised all our concerns,” Tusk said.  “As you know, it was a long list, including the rule of law and press freedom in Turkey, and Turkey’s bilateral relations with member states. Also the situation in Syria.”

Tusk added: “My position is clear — only progress on these issues will allow us to improve EU-Turkey relations, including the accession process.”

To underline such concerns, police on Monday raided the dormitories of Istanbul’s Bosphorus University and arrested a number of students. This was the second consecutive day of raids at Bosphorus University, one of Turkey’s top schools as police searched for students who protested against the Turkish-led offensive into Syria.

The detentions followed Erdogan’s condemnation of anti-war protests, calling  the students “communist, traitor youths,” at a political rally. Observers point out that when Erdogan publicly targets an opponent, arrests invariably follow. The government disputes such accusations, insisting the judiciary is independent.

The student arrests have again prompted international criticism.

“Anti-war protesters labelled ‘terrorists’ by President Erdogan,” tweeted Kati Piri, the European Parliament’s Turkey rapporteur. “Critical thinking dangerous endeavour in ‘new’ Turkey.”

 
…

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday voiced hope that a difficult period in relations between Turkey and the European Union is now in the past.

 

Erdogan spoke after talks with European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker, European Council President Donald Tusk and Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov in the Bulgarian Black Sea resort of Varna.

 

“I hope that we have left a tough period in the relations between Turkey and Europe behind us,” Erdogan said and voiced hope that “a first step was taken here toward restoring trust with Europe.”

 

He also said that EU membership was a “strategic goal.”

 

Tusk said that the summit’s purpose was to “continue the dialogue in really difficult circumstances.”

 

“Our meeting today demonstrated that while our relationship is going through difficult times, in areas where we do cooperate, we cooperate well,” he said.

 

Tusk acknowledged that no concrete compromise or solution had been achieved at the summit, but expressed hope that such would be possible in the future.

 

“Only progress on these issues will allow us to improve the EU-Turkey relations, including the accession process,” he added.

 

“We reconfirm our readiness to keep up the dialogue and conversation and work together to overcome current difficulties with a view to unleashing the potential of our partnership,” Tusk said.

 

On migration and support for refugees, Tusk said that the EU and Turkey remain very close partners.

 

“I would like to express our appreciation for the impressive work Turkey has been doing, and to sincerely thank Turkey and the Turkish people for hosting more than 3 million Syrian refugees these past years,” he said.

 

“The EU has lent substantial support to improve the livelihood of these refugees, and this evening we reaffirmed the European Union’s unwavering commitment to continue this support,” Tusk said.

 

He also said that while the EU understands Turkey’s need to deal effectively with its security, it is concerned that some of the methods used, undermine fundamental freedoms and the rule of law in Turkey.

 

“It would be a mistake for a Europe that claims to be a global power to keep Turkey outside of expansion policies,” Erdogan said.

 

Borissov said that “I think that before the end of our EU presidency (the end of June) another EU-Turkey summit will be held.”

 

In response to European criticism of its cross-border operation to drive out Syrian Kurdish militia from the northwestern Syrian border enclave of Afrin, Erdogan said Turkey expected European backing. He added that Turkey intended to continue with its operations as long as necessary.

 

“Our operations against terrorism do not just contribute to our and the Syrians’ security, but to Europe’s security as well,” Erdogan said. “On sensitive issues such as the struggle against terrorism, we don’t expect unnecessary criticism but strong support.”

 

On Cyprus, Erdogan reiterated the Turkish Cypriot community’s rights to Cyprus’ resources and said the EU had “nothing to contribute” to the dispute as long as it does not maintain a “fair” approach.

 

The summit was held amid an array of issues that have strained ties, including a dispute between Turkey and EU member Cyprus over energy exploration in the Mediterranean.

 

Turkish warships have prevented a drillship from carrying out exploratory drilling on behalf of Italian company Eni southeast of Cyprus, in a move that the EU criticized.

 

Turkey objects to “unilateral” gas searches by ethnically divided Cyprus’ Greek Cypriot-run government without the direct involvement of breakaway Turkish Cypriots. The Cyprus government says a gas search is its sovereign right and will benefit all citizens.

 

Erdogan pressed his European leaders to grant Turkish citizens visa liberalization to allow them to travel to certain European countries without visa restrictions.

 

“We told the EU side, that it needs to complete its work on this issue… This should not be turned into a political issue, it should not become an issue that shakes the trust of our people,” he said.
…

A reshuffled Slovak government led by Peter Pellegrini won a parliamentary confidence vote Monday, a month after the murder of an investigative journalist sparked mass protests and forced long-serving leader Robert Fico to resign.

The new government won 81 votes in the 150-member parliament.

Fico, prime minister for 10 of the last 12 years, bowed out this month amid protests and calls for an early election, handing the three-party ruling coalition to Pellegrini, a long-time senior member of the ruling Smer party.

The new cabinet has adopted its predecessor’s agenda, including plans to reach a balanced budget by 2020. It underwent six personnel changes but only added two people who have not previously held any government post.

Pellegrini has pledged to keep Slovakia on a pro-European and pro-NATO path.

Fico had sought to position Slovakia — a country of 5.4 million that is a European Union member since 2004 and part of the eurozone monetary club — as a pro-EU bastion in a euroskeptic region.

The protests in the last month, the biggest since the end of Communist rule in 1989, have been a blow to Fico although he remains Smer party chairman and has vowed to stay in politics.

Kuciak, 27, and his fiancee Martina Kusnirova, 27, were killed last month at their home outside Bratislava. A prosecutor said on Monday the murder was likely to have been a contract killing. No one has been charged in the case.

Their killings and Kuciak’s last report, which investigated suspected mafia links to Italian businessman in the central European country, swelled public anger over alleged corruption.

In his final report, published posthumously, Kuciak said one of the Italians had past business links with two Slovaks who later worked in Fico’s office.

The Italian was briefly detained in the investigation with six others. He was taken into custody March 13 in an unrelated case of suspected drug trafficking.

Both of Fico’s aides have resigned but deny connections to the murder. Their Italian former business partner has denied having connections with the mafia and the murder.

Pellegrini’s government, which includes the ethnic Hungarian centrist Most-Hid party and center-right Slovak National Party, has already faced public protests though their numbers have fallen. Hundreds protested outside parliament before the vote.

Protesters regard the cabinet shuffle, in which former health minister Tomas Drucker replaced unpopular interior minister Robert Kalinak, as insufficient to safeguard a fair investigation of Kuciak’s murder. Smer was often a target of the reporter’s journalism.
…

French President Emmanuel Macron has set his sights on artificial intelligence as the next technological frontier France cannot afford to miss, and will launch a major “offensive” this week, officials said Monday.

Macron, the 40-year-old who swept to power last May promising to transform France into a “startup nation,” wants to avoid seeing France and Europe fall behind Chinese and U.S. giants such as Alphabet’s Google, Microsoft and Alibaba in this area.

“France missed the boat of all the latest technological revolutions: robotics, the internet. We have no giants in these fields,” a presidential adviser said. “We will do what it takes to move to pole position.”

The officials, who were speaking on condition of anonymity, declined to give more details on the announcements expected Thursday, when Macron will speak at the elite College de France research center.

They said France would invest funds “commensurate with what is at stake”: “This is a technology whose control will give a clear economic advantage to the top ones,” the adviser said, describing the global context as an accelerating “arms race.”

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the field of computer science that focuses on the creation of machines able to perceive their environment and make logical decisions.

Booming market

France will seek to leverage its traditional strength in mathematics. It is the world’s second recipient of Fields Medals, the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in mathematics, but has seen many of its top mathematicians recruited by American-based digital giants, sometimes known in France by the acronym GAFA.

“The French have a card to play because if you look at the heads of AI in the GAFAs, they’re often French,” the adviser said.

Yann Lecun, Facebook’s chief AI scientist, is often cited as an example.

So is Luc Julia, vice president for innovation at Samsung Electronics and co-author of Apple’s personal assistant, Siri.

Macron’s plan will follow most of the recommendations of a report led by Cedric Villani, 44, who won the Fields Medal in 2010 and is a member of the president’s majority party in the National Assembly, advisers said.

China has already pledged to become the world leader in AI by 2025.

Venture investors poured more than $10.8 billion into AI and machine learning companies globally in 2017, according to the Pitchbook database.

The research company IDC predicted this month that spending on cognitive and AI systems will reach $19.1 billion in 2018, up 54 percent from last year.
…

Turkey has declared complete control of the northern Syrian area of Afrin after a two-month-long offensive to oust a Kurdish militia. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced Sunday that the next target is the nearby town of Tal Rifaat. Erdogan has vowed to remove Kurds from power in all areas of Syria and Iraq where they took control after defeating Islamic State militants. As VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports.
…