can set up, you know, our own definitions of multilevel security. i don't care if the toaster's unencrypted. i just want it to toast the dam bread. but, you know, i do want my e-mail to be encrypted. i do want my online banking to be encrypted. so, you know, having these kinds of -- i think that, you know, the market will sort out -- and now you have to give the consumer more tools to be able to empower them to sort out how they want that multilevel security to work. so, yeah, the ten-cent thing -- but, you know, at the end of the day, you know, as much as i love dystopia, you know, we're not necessarily moving to sky net, you know. we still have to control the machines. right? because they will decide we're a virus. but i want to encrypt my information so the machines don't know where i am all the time. >> if i could add something. the underlying question of what is what is happening with data,

the size and scope of the data sets and how they're being used is something this administration has taken very seriously. most recently john podesta, the counselor to the president, it's about as high as you can go to ask the question, produce the big data report, and it presented a very balanced view of, well, look, there are serious benefits that are derived from encrypting things. so, for example, whether it's the internet of things and rising energy efficiency, how the grid is allocating energy across sectors, incredibly important. forit's health data. you're able to detect and respond to an epidemic more quickly than you would otherwise or for law enforcement, mechanisms by which you can use data in order to produce something that produces a public good and makes us all better and happier. you have to balance that with the fact that data can be used for good things and bad things.

what are those bad things and what can we do about the use of that bad thing? the fact that someone doesn't care the information is districted about their toaster but they care about their e-mail or finances is directly related to harm. distribution of information act how i toast bread leads to very little harm over any extended period of time. distribution of information on how i use my finances, the degree to which i make financial or family or health decisions, those are very serious, very private, very sensitive aspects of information. that can be used to harm you. i would commend the big data report, not just the big data report but the fact that this administration, the department of commerce and the green paper, the ftc and the white paper did this. when this administration came back into office after many years of not having produced documents like this, not calling for -- reengage that conversation.

so, again, at the end of the day, these are issues we're aware of as an administration. we're taking them extremely seriously and at the highest levels working towards asking the right questions and ensuring we don't inject unnecessary friction or do harm to what are very serious potential benefits while at the same time balancing -- >> mittsy has a question in the front row. >> any of you see the nova show last night? it was on data encryption and whatever.

it was pretty amazing. i wasn't sure i wanted to go through it. but i, too, am anxious about giving my credit card -- i mean, and i don't have a lot of money, but i just -- theed idea that this can make us so uneasy. they can stop the electric system going. we all have an enormous challenge.

so it's actually quite depressing to me to travel to other countries that were later modernizers this-in these areas because they've been able to leapfrog stages of development. so, for instance, the fact i have credit cards in my wallet now that are not chip and pinned is ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous. given the amount of losses that the credit card companies have to write off every year, it would be worth it for them to update the infrastructure so that we didn't have to, you know, have magnetic strip credit cards. but it's a legacy infrastructure. during the six-year sentence i did in los angeles, i remember pac bell coming out at one point and saying we're going rip all the copper out of the walls and go to fiber. some actuary down in b-5 ran the numbers and you never heard about it again because we had to replace so much legacy infrastructure. when i've traveled to countries that have had the fortunate advantage of basically going from dirt to wireless, you know,

it really highlights a lot of the issues we have in terms of structural investments, spending stimulus money on bridges but should have been spent on ipp-6 and things along these lines spop we're literally playing catch-up in many ways to some of the trends that we see in places where they didn't have those legacy problems. >> in the very back in the corner the gentleman with the question. >> i'm jim marks with politico. mr. mull vain, i hope you can expand on something you said earlier about the concerns about national encryption and chinese encryption standards being put into technology that's produced in china from other companies. what's wrong with that if the encryption itself is good? >> you can address that. >> sure. that's the issue. a good example -- let's go back just briefly over the history of

latvia, the chinese counterpart to the wireless security standard. when it was proposed by the industrials in beijing, they said if you want to produce equipment and have a single global production chain, you don't want to bill a china iphone tan rest of the world iphone and the rest of the world couldn't be built in china unless certified by the resident authority, you need to make your product compatible with this information technology standard in addition to wi-fi, okay, and here are the list of 30 companies we want you to partner with and in order to have that partnership you have to turn over your crypto source code so they can build the apis into the product. well, turning over your crypto source code to companies associated with an authoritarian government is not a global model that i advocate. when i talked about encryption, i talked about the transparency of it. well, you know, there's a great,

you know, encryption philosophy that says, you know, the algorithm shouldn't be secret. that's why i love photography. when the algorithm is secret it's insecure so, all you have to do is figure out the algorithm. if we're going to have a robust encryption system, it can't be when i call somebody and i say what's the wacky algorithm and i'm told by the state encryption manager commissioner in beijing that algorithms in that sequence can state secrets and cannot be disclosed, i don't regard that as any of the part of product i want in my belongings. >> do you want to jump in? >> i'm not -- >> he's looking to defend beijing. >> i'm not the expert on encryption or the legal, but from what i understand about the conversation, actually, i believe this particular case for iphone is not really because

iphone is manufactured in china but actually iphone want get into china because, you know, if you sell that phone in china you need comply with the local laws and regulations. the chinese government require that you have to support such kind of encryption or wi-fi standard. i think that's the key. as we're speaking, i have 56 divided groups in the united states. so what we need to do, we need to make sure every single phone we sell into the united states comply with the laws of the u.s. governme government, carrier partners and make sure you know that the privacy of the customers and -- from the carrier partners is implemented. so, for example, most -- i think all wi-fi chips particularly for the united states, we always have, you know, either broadcom

or qualcomm and any other u.s. companies. soy think that's where it's clear. so -- because, again, back to the original question about the challenges we are facing i think those are challenges we're facing as global technology companies, is no matter u.s. company or chinese company we're all facing the same challenges. that's why, you know, all the government need to come toget r together. i think the key things for us short term for us is we lose the economy of scale so we have to have different products for china or for u.s. we have to separate it. but ideal world we should have one size fits all but unfortunately we cannot do that today. >> i just want to address the general concept there, which is not specific to that particular chip and having two chips doing the same thing in a given product. it's the idea that it's the

chinese government making this determination and mandating the specific purchase from specific providers is a problem. because you can't have every market in the world e imposing that kind of nonvoluntary purchasing and production standard. it ruins opportunities for innovation and it doesn't comply with the idea that voluntary standards should be exposed to the market and the market actors should adopt them. no one forces you to buy anything from qualcomm or broadcom. that kind of forced purchasing is a problem and it's not fair. >> and you shouldn't have to include chips with standards that have already been rejected by the international standards organization, by ieee, by itf and are nonetheless forced upon you because of market access requirements and the way that this certification process takes place in the country in terms of getting your products certified for the domestic market. even though the standard itself has been rejected as technically inferior and we see this across

dozens of different i.t. standards in this particular case. >> the only reason china can do this is because of the size of the market. >> right. >> bahama couldn't. >> but it has other charms. >> this gentleman here has a question. >> i'm a fellow at the german marshall fund. i want to touch on something i think richard said about artificial rules about the infrastructure. i think that's part of the disconnect. a lot of these aren't artificial. these are the social norms, the social contract broken into all these different pieces. so the internet is designed at odds with the way human society is design. that's why you're seeing it fracturing into pieces. i wonder until you have a global social contract i don't see how you're going to fix -- these issues are going to keep coming up. differing norms on the freedom of speech and just the way you do things, the way you enforce

law, all these things. this is what the internet is confronting. it's much bigger than just these little pieces. what are tech companies do this to figure this out, understand it, and to engage and encourage these global debates so people do talk about how to converge norms, how to converge ways of doing things so we can all basically get along? >> i'll go against my irish heritage. the good news is these technologies are changing social norms. they've changed the way i interact with my children, my wife, with my friends, with my co-workers, literally changing the way our entire society is working with one another. the bad news is a lot of the prophesy hopes at the beginning that barlow, declaration of independence in cyberspace idealism has foundered on the fact that, in fact, these

technologies provide just as much interesting power to people seeking to control as they do to people seeking to liberate them. i remember 15 years ago people talking act how the internet or cyberspace was just going to wash over all these authoritarian regimes, that they were going -- they were so atavistic, so backward looking, they would never be able to deal with it, and yet we've been amazed as they've responded nimbly to wave after wave after wave of disruptive technologies, some with more success than others. you can compare arab spring to china or russia, but, you know, at the end of the day there is more of a push slr pu/pull, and and, you know, what's also embedded in your comment, though, is the unintended consequences. i mean, we're not on some linear trajectory towards absolutely good and peace and happiness. and so embedded within some of these technologies are unexpected things, again, as the father of teenage daughters i discover this every day when i go through all the logs of all

of their computer use and social media use and spend probably an hour of my day doing that now. and, you know, so you realize that these liberating technologies also have these sort of pernicious and unintended consequences. >> i want to address the basic underlying question, the internet is not breaking. at the end of the day, there is literally not a country that has chosen not to connect to the global internet. there is discussion by some politicians and some countries about constructing internet within their country and disassociating themselves from the global internet. but that is actually not happening. i think iran had taken some steps at creating an iran ran internet that their people would be able to use only in iran and would not be connected to the global internet. i don't think that actually ever took off. there was some discussion about it in russia but that, again, didn't take off. what i think we're talking about here really is the worldwide web, which is an application that rides over the internet and then services delivered over the

worldwide web that at times allow people to engage in behavior as human beings that is offensive to people in other jurisdictions. so take, for example -- i mean the most recent case was turkey, right, during the last election. there was a twitter situation in which people were tweeting out things about a candidate running for office and turkey shut down the entire service of twitter. now, that has since been worked out. twit strbak up and running in turkey. i think youtube and facebook and others have faced similar situations in different markets. so, for example, there are parts of the world where it's against the law to say something bad about the prophet muhammad. and people do it on facebook or twitter or whatever all the time. it's up to those service providers that are, again, simply a service on the larger internet, to work with those governments and where they can, if within the concerts of their ethics and terms of service,

work something out to ensure that there's a mutual respect of service delivery. but, again, i don't want to conflate that with the idea that there are islands of nonconnectedness in the world. technologically that's simply not happening. there is no armageddon in that sense. but that underlying question of how do you ensure that human behavior in your country, that you think is outside the scope of your particular laws and jurisdictions is addressed, that is one of the most challenging questions that we have. but those are questions that service providers work out with those specific countries. so, for example, like pandora is not accessible or netflix in parts of the world, soy think these are things that are being worked out in a wide variety of areas. but our goal and our underlying work is to retain the single global network which each

individual device can connect to any other individual device anywhere in the world. now, what people do with that connectivity is a separate ke of law and behavior. and we're working out how to manage that. i mean, at the end of the day, there's been a lot of talk about the conflicts and the degree to which some countries trust the international telecommunications union, which is a specialized agency of the united nations, versus how much they trust i cam, which is a nonprofit corporation incorporated in los angeles. icam is 15 years old. icu is 150 years old. so to some degree it's an evolution and a back and forth about what's necessary to make sure that you keep the underlying things that work extremely well about the internet and provide extreme public benefits, such as innovation and jobs and freedom of expression and freedom of access to information, while at the same time ensuring that you're respecting everyone and their governments who are involved in this connectivity of global communication.

>> not just a technology problem anymore pap lot bigger. >> there is an interesting countvailing problem that came up recently which is when you have a company that provides a social media service that has become a virtual monopoly in many markets like twitter who then unilaterally decides to shield its users from discussing videos of isis savages beheading people, which i didn't want to see and i didn't want my children to see either, but it is an interesting thing whether there is a role for government in the sense that yo who's to say that twitter got to decide that they were going to run software to go out and find those pictures and make sure the users couldn't get them? you can say the market will decide. switch to a different outlet. twitter has a monopoly on economies of scale. do i want them deciding the social norm or standard in other

areas. are they going to block the j-law pictures? what other things will they do not for legal or copyright reasons but because of the sense of what think think the social standard should be? >> i would disagree that twitter has a virtual economic monopoly. it simply does not. the barriers to entry into this particular market are nothing reflective of a monopoly situation and the fact you can access anything twitter puts on on facebook or any number of father not social media sites, coincidental information on the internet. there's ban lot of talk in europe and other places of the idea that google and facebook and other companies constitute virtual monopoly, it's just not accurate. >> in the same way you could say my space for a time had that monopoly. clearly, i won't use the word monopoly -- it had a preponderance in the market that went away very quickly. twitter tomorrow could vanish

off the face of the earth as have many ter social media services because they became passe. my children will never put a facebook account up because they're like me. they have no interest in it whatsoever. facebook will recede into history. but the community that's been created on twitter has, you know, a quantity and quality all its own. so to defect from twitter and say because i disagree with their enforcement of a particular social standard means i'm not going to use twitter means i've now voluntarily cut myself off from an economy of scale that actually was beneficial to me. because i could use the crowd source and everything else. yes, i have the market option of not using twitter. but there are costs to not doing that, because i disagree, and there were not alternatives of a similar social scale. so, yes, the illegal term monopoly may not be correct, but in terms of the actual performance and use of that service i think that the same

idea is still in effect. >> it's debatable concept. >> okay. i think we have time for one more question. gentleman with his hand up. >> thank you to all the i'm anthony and i'm with a cyber security firm. i have a question mainly particularly for the ambassador and christine bliss. you had mentioned sort of that everyone, all these -- that everyone is an equal participant in the web, in the internet, mentioned the education taking place sort of to realize that the localization laws are actually not beneficial as well as mentioning the different aspects of negotiations that are being put in place to improve

information data flow and trade. but i'm wondering what the u.s. is actually doing to improve trust, because i think trust takes longer to build than it does to be lost. and in the wake of the snow den revelations, i think a lot of trust in the u.s. as a quote, unquote, equal participant in the internet has been lost. i'd be curious if either of you could speak to that. >> that's a great closing question. professor, christine? >> sure. i think in terms of the question what are we doing to restore trust, you have to break that down into trust between whom, trust between users of the internet around the world and the american government, trust between governments themselves, or trust between users and commercial entities. right? the idea -- when we talk about equal participants on the

network, what we're talking about is a network that's open. we have as much capacity as anyone else to access that network and create and innovate on it. the fact we do so disproportionately well is true. but that does not mean our access is greater than others. we have made significant investments in net work, and europeans have produced robust networks. we're trying to encourage the development and deployment of much more robust networks around the world, particularly in latin america and asia. just due to the economies of scale, the addition of every additional user adds value for everyone else, and there's great social and economic returns to having greater connectivity. so in terms of how with do we restore in the first instance individual user trust relative to what the american government is doing in the wake of the snow den revelations, the president of the united states has spoken on this on multiple occasions. the president of the united states is committed to civil liberties.

that's where he comes from. he used to teach constitutional law at harvard university. he has exposed and had our intelligence practices submitted to the review of five independent expert, and that was subject to -- with hands off, they did their report, made their recommendations. the president accepted a significant number of those recommendations and is in the process of implementing them. what he has said is these programs and processes will respect the privacy of individuals. how do you implement that and ensure other people accept that as true? it's going to be a long process, but it's one we're engaged in. in terms of trust between governments, there are a number of governments that express extremely significant concerns and on which we have been working on a bilateral manner to address concerns to the best of our ability between intelligence experts, in between their operators, their intelligence practices and ours. germany and brazil are two obviously -- an we continue to

do that work on a bilateral basis on a regular basis. the other thing we do is go out to the world, to the freedom online coalition, to the freedom of rights council, any number of different venues in which people are welcome, they're welcome to challenge the practices of the united states. again, this is an evolutionary process. last year there was a human rights council proposal adopted unanimously propoetzed by germany and brazil. i'm sure they will be coming back with additional proposals. we're going to continue work ought what is appropriate. >> and i would just add to that that, you know, as trade negotiators, being able to build and maintain credibility is one of the most basic things we have to be able to do to do our jobs nap's a continual challenge we face and considered to be very, very important. so i think, you know, across the

board an the negotiations we're engaged in we're trying to do that and continue to build on the relationships that we've created. the other thing i want to say is that i think part of our job is also education and i just wanted to say as we wrap up here, too, a lot of what certainly has informed the work that we do is i think in the last i would say two, three years in particular, there's been some excellent studies that have really i think helped explicate just exactly how digital trade is really transforming our economy and the degree to which our gdp, our employment, our wages are being impacted by the growth in digital trade. it's really quite amazing when you work at the figures. if you look at the two ipc studies that have been done just in the last year on digital trade, u.s. gdp has grown from 3.5 to 4.8% based on 2011

figures. u.s. wages have increased by as much as 5%. so there are real concrete benefits. again, that's u.s. centric. but there are other studies like the mckenzie study on digital trade that created what we found to be very interesting, that connectivity index. and if you look at that, what they found was that the more connected a country was, the greater the benefit it enjoyed from increases to gdp to employment across the board by 40%. and so again, i think that's part of what we're trying to do and communicate, a sense that we're in this together, that, yes, we as the u.s. enjoy benefit bus so does the rest of the world. >> okay. we will make that the final word, but i do want to thank daniel, christine, lexon,

richard, and james for sharing their thoughts with us. and thank you very much for coming out. [ applause ]

a white house official says attorney general eric holder is resigning. he's been attorney general since the start of president barack obama's first term. holder is the first black attorney general and has been the fourth longest person to hold the job. he plans to remain at the justice department until his successor is in place. the president's expected to make an official announcement this afternoon at 4:30 p.m. it will be live on c-span. tonight at 9:00 p.m. eastern, lee terry and brad ashford debate. here's a look at some of the campaign ads airing in that race.

at one point in time our homeless veterans signed a contract with the united states government that we would go to battle and give our life if it's necessary. when you talk about homeless veterans, talk about the va hospital, when you talk about the veteran cemetery, you hear lee terry's name. you don't hear any other senator or congressman's name. lee terry, thank you for caring about our veterans and giving us an opportunity to serve them. >> i'm lee terry, and i approve this message. >> my dad flew a b-26 bomber on "d" day. my disagreements with congressman terry wnt personal but his votes against veterans sure are. congressman terry shut down the government, defended his own pay while soldiers were on the battlefield and protected congressional perks like taxpayer paid health care for life while cutting veterans' care. i'm brad ashburn. our promises to veterans are crucial and why i approve this

message. >> lee terry is fighting to keep our neighborhoods safe and strong. he secured grants to strengthen community policing and he fought for the violence against women act, supported new laws to crack down on human trafficking, and zkl"ujv passed empowering a neighborhood ssed activist to start a new fm radio station, giving voice to a community working to stop street violence. lee terry, working hard to keep us safe. >> i'm lee terry and i approve this message. >> i'm not running for congress to represent a political party. i'm running to make a difference in nebraska. reducing partisanship in washington isn't one easy step. i'm going to work from day one to create a coalition of 25 members of congress who set aside partisanship and focus on solving problems. just like i've done for 16 years. i'm brad ashford and i approve this message.

>> the nebraska second house district candidates debate starting tonight at 9:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. on wednesday, georgetown university hosted a discussion on turkey's role in combatting isis. a day after u.s. launched air strikes against isis in khorasan in syria. this is just under two hours. good afternoon. welcome to the institute for turkish studies. i would like to well yom cow to a timely event. trying to build a coalition in its fight against the islamic state and turkey's expected to play an important role in there. and if you're following the

news, prime minister erdogan just yesterday signaled that turkey might become part of the military coalition. so now there's a huge debate on what exactly turkey will do. so we have a great panel today, and without further ado, i would like to turn it over the my colleague, the director of the institute for turkish studies at georgetown university. again, thank you all for coming and welcome. [ applause ] >> good afternoon, everybody. i won't be long either. i'm the director of the institute of turkish studies which is based here and once again thanks for making the time to attend this critical panel. ill like to say this is a continuity of an effort.

we've had a long and fruitful relationship of putting together what we think to be are very significant and worthwhile events to highlight some interesting developments within our immediate region but specifically the country of turkey. so today we have what we think to be a very poignant title refer to turkey, isis, and the middle east. it is a timely top wick the spread of the isis threat. i think some of the questions we'll explore from the panel today will try and shed light son om of the most urgent questions that have been asked in capitals of europe but more specifically the capital of the united states, washington, d.c., here. i think each person is very qualified to speak from a very different perspective, hence why we are very grateful for having

them to them for making their time. what i will briefly do is briefly read the bio of each speaker as they come up to speak as opposed to rushing them up all at the same time. first up we're privileged to host dr. denise napoli from the institute of steej ix studies at the national defense ministry. she's researched extensively in iraq, turkey, and syria. the kurdish quasistate in post gulf war iraq. and the kurds and state. each speaker will have approximately 12 minutes after which time we'll give you ample time to address questions to the panel. thank you very much. dr. napoli.

>> i'd like to thank the middle east institute and the turkish studies association here at georgetown. just a disclaimer. anything i say is my own views and not that of the u.s. government, the department of defense, or the national defense university. as we look at -- what i want to look at here or what i was asked to take a peek at is what or how can we interpret some of these shift eight lionss that are emerging from this isis insurgency, if you will, between turkey, the kurds in iraq, and the pkk and the syrian kurds. what has happened since the takeover of mosul on june 2014 has been a realigning at least

what appears to be a realigning of some of these rival kurdish groups such as the regional government and the pkk, and i say slash pyd, which is the syrian arm of this group. into some type of kurdish alliance to fight isis. should we be concerned about this? is this something significant that is going to challenge the turkish relationship with the krg? what does this mean in terms of regional stability? is this going to enhance the pkk or the pyd's influence in the region? i don't think so, and i'm actually pretty skeptical even ant how far this so-called alliance, if you want to even call it that, between the krg, the kurds of iraq, and the pkk can go. nonetheless, let's look at what has happened even before june, because it was something more subtle than just isis taking over mosul.

you have very strong turkey, kurdish, iraqi relations that have evolved more significantly since 2008, grounded in energy sector, religiouses, commercial ties, and security issues. one of the key components of this -- and this was also personal a personal relationship. it was a barzani/president erdogan tie, and barzani would be the envoy for erdogan not only in checking the pkk but in subduing the syrian kurds, pushing barzani influence, and it would help barzani be the king of all the kurds, which is one of thiz dreams. that was one part of it. the other part of it was the turkey pkk relations and barzani was enrolled as well helping this taes process, which still seems to be stymied. the third part is the whole curd stan regional government, the krg i'll call it, and the pkk. as we all know or some of us may

know, these two trends have been at each other insurgent forms between cooperation, tacit agreement, leaving the pkk in the mountains in northern iraq, and also in direct competition with each other. and that competition still exists today. that is to say the two main nationalist trends within the kurdish movement across all are those led by the pkk and massoud barzani. the extent to which this competition for leadership of the kurds and to direct the nature of the kurdish nationals should be taken into account because that did not change after june 10th, 2014, and it continues today. so when you're looking at the changing relationship, look at this, as well, as when it's these internal power struggles, between the kurds, they are existing today. because the curd stan regional government does need to be broken down into barzani's curd stan democratic party and the talibani patriotic union of curd

stan. they are very divided today. and each one of them are trying to play off each other between turkey, iran, and the pkk. so what has happened? what did the onslaught of the islamic state do for the kurds? it created a shared existential threat to this idea of a kurdish nation, to the idea of kurdish nationalism so, that ojalon is now calling all kurds to fight isis and when the islamic state came into mosul and the iraqi, kurdish, peshmerga under barzani fled, who saved the day? the py doshgs and the pkk. even symbolically this has played very well into the pkk's hands, particularly among the aditis who are now blaming the barzanis and the krg for run eight way and pkk is now considered the savior in mount sinjar who effectively continued

to fight. so this whole image of the pkk coming into northern iraq and the curd stan region remains in the minds of many kurds today. that is something that has changed. secondly, even if you look at some of the discourse, they're actually competing for each other, competing against each other regarding who is making claims to saving more people. this is not a strategic alliance. it's a tactical one. each one continues to vie for the support of kurdish population for either barzani's group or the other group for gaining influence. that has not changed but the pkk has capitalized on this moment. what else has not changed? the curd stan legions of barzani turkey alliance.

you've heard, i don't know why, the iraqi kurds, some are disappointed with turkey for not having come to the iraqi kurds' defense military. you know, nonetheless, the regional government doesn't have much choice. it remains essential not only commercially but politically. some of those same limitations that existed before the mosul intervention continue today. i don't think sbarz going to sacrifice his relationship with president erdogan for the pkk.b to sacrifice his relationship with president erdogan for the pkk. that goes in terms of energy interests and the survivability of the kurds quasistate. there's also a limitation again between even if some of the kurds and the pkk are coordinating in the fighting with the iraqi kurds. there's still an influence again of this power struggle. barzani still wants to influence the syrian kurds.

and any alliance that barzani maintains with turkey is going to work against him, particularly since yesterday when there was a successful release of the turkish hostages, how were the kurds in syria interpreting this? erdogan cut a deal with isis and that's why they came in, and barzani is directly impli lly i as long as he has the agreement with turkey. in the minds of kurds on the ground as long as this kurdish problem in turkey is not resolved and as long as barzani's in the heart of the turkish alliance, there really are important limitations between these two groups. and i see that that's going to stay. and finally, there are deep internal power struggles going on inside the kyrgyzstan region right now. they existed before, but since the isil you had puk working and the iranians are have provided

necessary weapons to the kurds. both have agreed, barzani thanked the iranians, but nonetheless you have that division. and i don't want to make it so clean cut, but it was the barzani, turkey division and then the puk, pyd, pkk iran division and that is playing off each other. this intervention is giving these groups the opportunities certainly to come together in this authenticating kurdish national im, but it's also reinforcing some of those divisions that are going to keep, in my view, these groups apart at least strategically but on a tactical level to use each other particularly as the americans engage and the coalition engages to assist iraqi kurds in month providing weapons and military assistance. i think i'm going to close there. so, again, think of this alliance -- don't be worried. i don't think that there's -- you know, worrying there's going to be an independent kyrgyzstan

last month, and that wasn't going to happen. this is not a strategic alliance. it cannot be sustained as long as iraqi kurlds need regional support and as long as regional states reinforce their commitment to the territorial boundaries of iraq, which i don't see changing anytime in the near or long term. thank you. [ applause ] >> thank you for that, dr. napoli. next up, the research director at the setta foundation of washington, d.c. also sefshs as assistant editor of inside turkey, an academic journal. he holds a ph.d. in middle eastern, south asian, studies from columbian university and a mast eer degree. his research interests include

civil military associations, u.s. circulations and policy. >> good afternoon. thank you to the institute of turkish studies and the middle eastern institute. thank you very much for inviting me here. i was asked to talk about isis, how turkey's isis policy, how turkey approaches this challenge. in some ways the answer is simple. turkey considers isis a terrorist organization and that is that. when you look at the broader context and how we got here, the civil war and the iraqi situation over the past several

years, the iraqi political situation, things get much fuzzier, how to resolve this problem, that question becomes a much more difficult one. and just right off the bat i can say that the current campaign is not clear about this either. there is no actual political goal, political strategy defined at least what we can see publicly by the u.s. that will resolve the issues on the ground and lead to a stable situation in syria or iraq. how we got here. how we've come here is very quickly, the so-called arab spring, arab revolutions, and then counterrevolutions and then civil war. and actually aspects of all these three are right now at

play in both syria and iraq. the u.s. and allies including turkey have failed to find the common strategy, common front to support the syrian opposition and create a credible alternative to assad's regime and the chaos and vacuum created by the civil war over the past several years has created breeding ground for terrorist organizations. assad regime is culpable in all this as well. they've used divide and rule tactics against the opposition. they have kind of allowed kurds in the north to have their own space. you don't touch me, i don't touch you kind of arrangement. and kurds focused on protecting their own territory.

and the regime is culpable in also allowing isis to have space for itself. but the dynamics on the ground may be two years ago, a year and a half ago, you could still talk about the regime versus opposition dynamic. but today, that's not there. and because the international community hasn't been able to take care of this, not that the u.s. and allies could possibly put everything back to normal. that's not possible. that wasn't probably going to be possible. but we've missed many opportunities to prevent the events that have unfolded over the past year, year and a half. the vacuum created in the syrian

civil war is eclipsed by another vacuum next door in iraq. the alienation and disenchantment of the sunni populations and the maliki governments exclusive -- exclusionary policies toward that population has created ample opportunity for isil to capitalize on. a lot of political discontent and disenchantment is underly g underlying -- is very strong now and has been strong for a while in iraq. so that has basically created a situation where in the north you have the kurds there as the doctor mentioned. a month ago or a couple months ago, they were talking about they might declare independence. and then back that government who is kind of supporting assad's regime and sort of

conducting sectarian policies against the sunnis and aligning with iran and trying to play off iran against u.s. and then russia, et cetera. so you have in both countries aanouns announced failed states. how are we going to put all this back together? i don't think we are going to put it all back together by striking isis. that's a counterterrorism measure, and it's going to help roll back isil perhaps militarily. it might create some semblance of security. i'm even scared to suggest that because the situation is so complicated. but those kind of gains would

have to be translated into political stability. which won't happen unless you can address the syrian civil war and iraqi/sunni disenchantment. among many other political challenges. but we do know a political road map. the current attacks actually might lead to emergence of splinter groups. it might even increase, you know, internal cohesion of isil and their broad appeal, appeal abroad. so there are lots of unforeseen circumstances that can come up. unfortunately, the current -- president obama's strategy, announced strategy does not seem to address the -- from my point of view, the political aspects of this issue.

in syria, there has to be a broader political plan for a transitional government. and, i mean, after all, assad regime's refusal to lead the country into unity into sort of somewhat stable situation is at the heart of it root cause of isil's strength in syria. and similarly, that has to be a plan to address the sunni discontent in iraq. iraq -- iraqi government has pledged to be inclusive in the near term, there could be an opportunity now, maliki's out, but there's going to be a long way to go because sunnis are -- they've done this before. they've done the awakening and i'm not sure how much they're going to trust the baghdad government after all this.

what is turkey's approach? turkey has been affected by both situations in significant ways. you can talk about perhaps marginal gains like they were able to deepen the ties with krg. but broadly, i think both syria's and iraq's stability and those countries remaining united is in the best interest of turkey in the medium term, on long-term. turkey has been affected in terms of security, security fallout from the syrian crisis. it has been affected, it's hosting now 1.5 million refugees. there are more coming. and -- and among many other,

turkey has supported opposition in syria. it has called for the end of the regime as it has now. asked the u.s. to create no-fly zone. it has asked. it was ready to work with obama when assad crossed the red line. so turkey has been asking the international community, the u.s. and allies to actually contain this civil war and help build a coalition to lead toward a transitional government. political transition in syria. and that hasn't happened. and it probably won't happen any time soon. but that's the harder task we have to accomplish. that's harder than, you know, bombing and then thinking about it later in a couple of months. there's just -- i don't want to

create another, you know, name for this. but maybe bomb and walk away syndrome. something like that. if you see that happening, won't see any stability semblance of stability in the middle east any time soon. al qaeda activities inside syria, inside turkey and across the border is a serious concern for turkey, as well. and it has struggled to keep the border secure. it's very hard when you're also supporting the opposition groups. and while trying to secure the border, you're trying to take care of the refugee problem, but you're also involved in trying to find a way to, you know, convince groups like kurds and others to unite as around a

common front against assad's regime. which turkey sees at the core of, at the heart of the current instability. i don't want to run out of my time. very recently turkey talked, again, about a no fly zone idea, and that would have to be introduced by the united states security council. i don't see it happening any time soon and the u.s. won't be willing to do it on its own, obviously. and turkey doesn't quite have the capacity it can support an effort like that. but it can't do it on its own. so turkey's legislation allows it to -- they passed a legislation months ago to conduct cross border operations in syria and iraq.

and just the other day they broadened that legislation. we might see sort of turkey taking part in a larger capacity in the current -- after the release of the hostages. we can see maybe turkey taking a larger role, even military or otherwise. but i think turkey will maintain a defensive posture for the time being. and unless they see a plan as i talked about broader longer term plan in syria, i don't think they'll be part of a military operation. thank you. >> thank you. i think we'll get a chance to ask a lot more questions to all of the panelists at the end of each speaker's time.

and for the present time, the last speaker we have. kurdish affairs analyst focusing on syria and turkey. he has closely been monitoring the protection union, the ypg against isis and other jihadist groups. his publications appear in various media outlets including the bbc, cnn. he daily writes. frequently interviewed by tv channels in turkey, iraqi, kurdistan, as well as other channels, as well. >> thank you. i will -- hello. welcome all of you. i'll try -- before i just -- i get some call from within syria.

i would like to start with that. in syria, kurds welcome them positively. but unfortunately, so far, that has -- there hasn't been any positive impact on the situation. i'm not sure if you're familiar with the -- what called -- it has been under fierce isis attacks for over a week now. isis with all the power, all u.s. weapons they seize from mosul now has been attacking to seize the city and there are serious fears that local officials are very, very concerned that they are planning to do manslaughter, like massacre. even larger scale than what happened in sinjar. so what the people i spoke today are telling me, military people

are telling me that isis predicted the attacks are coming. so they most of their manpower where it's been targeted right now. so what is being targeted at the moment are buildings, concrete buildings. really not damaging a lot on the ground wise. practical wise. so the negative impact is, of course, all those fighters are left -- are moving towards. so the pressure over the city has increased. after these attacks. so this -- this increases the possibility of city falling into isis or massacre -- even more. this is one of the things i need to share with you. the demand from the local officials is that if u.s. is willing to destroy isis, they

should focus on some targets around, too. the city's being attacked from three directions. the west, east and south. the north is turkey. the turkish border. so all three possible directi s directions, the city's under attack. despite the fact that kurds have been fighting or resisting with very, very modest weapons which are not a match to isis' weapons, but it's getting worse. isis has been using humvees, sophisticated tanks, whereas the kurds and rpgs. so what's happening is right now in -- kurds have been resorting to fighters have been resorting to use their bodies to stop the tanks. so to explode these tanks because they don't have weapons. so, this is the -- what happened on the ground. it's likely that a very serious

massacre might take place in maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow, maybe in two days. this is what i have thought, exactly their own words, the people. so i hope that president obama, planning this operation take this into consideration and urgently address this issue. i interviewed the democratic union leader yesterday to get his reaction about attacks. he says it's very positive, but kurds as the main power fighting isis for over 1 1/2 years, almost 2 years. they're the most experienced power that no isis techniques, better experience. today, he says they want to be a partner within this operation if, really, the purpose is destroying isis. so the expectation among the kurds in syria is that the

immediate term, isis targets will be attacked. and in upcoming days, the underground aspect of the operation, of fighting with isis will include kurds, especially the ypg. now everybody agrees is that is the most effective force fighting isis. this is the moment i can tell you. in regards to what turkey, turk turkey's role. and from turkey's perspective, there's a growing disappointment towards turkey within the syrian/kurdish population and population in turkey, as well. this is being raised in the highest level, various kurdish representatives, politicians, or military people.

that so far, the general perception was that turkey's turning a blind eye to isis. so indirectly alarming jihadists to support jihadists in syrian hospitals. but this perception has changed that now many people think turkey took this support one step further. no longer turning blind eye. and really helping isis. this is the perceptions among the syrian kurds. it's being raised by many people. turkey, too. hdp. raising this two days ago. one of the leading members. he also mentioned that we were stabbed from the back, referring to the government. government chose to support isis instead of the kurds who have invested their hopes in the peace process. so right now, the future of

peace process is in vain. there are serious concerns it may not really continue. point of view now many people looking forward to hear what is going to be said about this. now, i had the pleasure to talk to him today. i think the situation is taking an important place in his agenda with the u.s. officials and the other organizations. so although turkish media reports something from him. i asked him, he has not set one week. supposedly he had given one week. but he's going to do a statement tomorrow. but he's also -- they're not happy, certainly very disappointed the way government

handles the issue of isis versus syrian kurds. so this is -- this is growing -- this conduct towards turkey. as far as what is on the ground concerned. recently ypg and the syrian army had some kind of agreement on the ground, and they are right now some groups are fighting alongside ypg against isis around the river. this is maybe -- in regards to freeing 49 hostages, among the kurds, the perception is there was a real deal. there was a deal that has been done between the government, turkish government and the isis, the deal is that there are some ideas or allegations that turkish officials provided a lot

of weaponry before this attack happened. i talked to the head of the local government. he was saying that our videos and, i think, this video is now also published in cnn's site, if i'm not mistaken, there are videos the train stops and gives weapons to isis-controlled village. these are very serious issues being raised by the highest officia officials. they're very concerned that this is a -- i can tell you that there is a big fear, a big concern and that the peace process thf is be come to an end

jeopardized. as an individual, grave concern for me. so hopefully this will be addressed effective ly and the way to do that listening to them. occurs not only in syria but also in iraq. all the way all the kurds are fighting with isis. they get support in regards to weapon, in regards to recognition. but kurds of syria who are the main power of fighting, weakening, not allowing isis to expand. they are the main power and this

needs to be acknowledged and this needs to be seen. had it not been for the ypg, they will much more situation. but thanks to the relative stability that provided tanks to ypg, those communities are living in competitively better situation than the rest of syria. this has to be seen. the expectation on the ground is that u.s. and the partners will see that and will acknowledge and provide them a weapon immediately and protect the people. i want to emphasize this one more time. the people some 100,000 people are under great, great danger. everyone knows isis does not hesitate to use any means shed tears as you know. also kurds, but another sinjar

event very likely to happen. it's the duty of international community to seriously address this concern. >> i would like to conclude, i'm sure if you have any questions, i would glad -- thank you. >> we have plenty of time for questions and answers. and start the ball rolling by asking each of the panelists one targeted question, each. and if they'd like to address one another's pieces, that would be appropriate, too. and what we would have is have two microphones on the side of the aisle. if you'd like to ask a question after the panelists have done answering their initial questions. if you could please introduce yourself briefly and ask a

question with the minimum amount of comments so as to allow everyone in the room as much questions as we can field. i'd like to start with dr. natali, and i'd like to thank all the panelists. we know that recently the congress has passed a spending bi bill. what is assumed by the u.s. government in your interpretation of the term moderate? what do we understand by this? and related to that, what is expected of the -- by the united states of turkey in the continuity of this campaign? my question to you now that the 49 or 46. i'm getting confused with the number of hostages released. it's 49 in total.

conflicting figures. but anyhow, the 49 hostages that have now been freed growing expectation on some level that turkey should now be playing a greater role in the coalition being built against isis. constrain -- likely to constrain or facilitate turkey's role in the combat against isis? what do you think in terms of now branching out against isis? and finally, my question goes to you. well, it's two parts. and they're kind of unrelated. it is assumed that on some level that air strikes may have a limited impact against isis. is there any indication from what you've heard from your contacts in your interviews that boots on the ground in any sort of capacity may be considered?

and at what point if air strikes are seen to be ineffective at the end? and what is the expectation of syrian kurds of turkey? given what you've said? so i would think three or four minutes each per panelist and we'll have plenty of time for questions from the floor. thank you. >> can we answer? >> yes, i think you can answer. >> so i, again, i'm speaking on my own behalf here. what does congress mean when we talk about a moderate opposition? this was one of the problems. this is not the first time we're visiting the syrian crisis. this happened a couple of years ago or a year ago, should we, you know, should we fund and train a syrian opposition? what does it mean? moving back and forth from the fsa, free syrian army. it's been difficult to target what would be a moderate opposition. nonetheless, there is the term you probably heard vetted, right? there will be a vetted opposition in the sense that

arms aren't just going to go willy nilly to anybody with their hands out. that there would be those moderate groups vetted within and, you know, coordinated with the syrian national coalition, which is the group that the united states recognizes as one official -- as the official group or official group. the opposition group is syria. so who are those names? i don't know. but this is not a perfect situation. actually, they're all only bad choices. so you have to pick, you know, what i see as the least bad choice. and there is awareness that one of the big concerns is will these weapons being provided to a vetted, moderate opposition fall in the hands of unsavory types, right? will they make their way to isis? just months ago, you probably couldn't even tell who was with isis and who was not in isis. will they be used against assad? because there's a different mission in syria for isis than

there is. those members of isis than there is in iraq, which is one of them, still overthrowing the assad regime. that's a concern. there's another anomaly. the very group as indicated,- t has been fighting islamic states since day one, which is the pyd is obviously not on a list in which the united states could fund or support. and here i go to whatever policy is provided. don't forget the underlying principles of u.s. policy. turkey remains a key essential ally. so what do we expect of turkey? certainly, there's been a lot of attention to turkey should be doing more, close the borders, we've heard the story. and there is a lot of, you know, credibility to that. but since these hostages have been released, you've already seen i would say efforts being

made at the border to capture the smugglers of oil. there's a large and significant revenue stream being used to support the isis in iraq and syria. and i think some of these efforts are starting to be made on the turkish side. secondly, i don't imagine every coalition partner and doesn't include turkey, also our partners in the gulf, are not going to be participating exactly the same. that does not mean that turkey would not be engaged and will m an important role. so there has been, again, it should be more nuanced. i don't see how any of this could happen without turkey. and whether we want to say -- turned a blind eye or he's complicit in it. i think we will likely see a turning and more engagement. but in the way that turkey can. my last point is, we're far from the region. those of you who have lived in a region for a really long time know that we can lead, but

turkey and all of the other players, they've got to deal with these actors on their borders for a long time. so that's where i -- where i leave my answer. thank you. >> well, that answers -- that gives the part of my answer, too. did that border -- is a long border. it's a flat land. it's very easy to move in and out. turkey has a highly centralized strong government and its internal security's strong. it has traditionally strong. but it doesn't mean that it can protect the border just think of the mexican border. but that creates a lot -- that has created a lot of problems for turkey. at some point, if you look in the news reports, this was a long time, maybe a year, year and a half ago. there was a band of smugglers

with their horses and arms and everything. they were going through the border. and the turkish military had to intervene. the problem is not easily solvable in that way, too, in terms of securing that border. turkey has been doing a lot more. but will it be ever enough? all sorts of group will take advantage of that. taken advantage of it for decades. but i don't see this strategic gain that turkey would get from supporting isis. they adamantly deny having ever supported isis. it's a terrorist organization since 2013. and listed in the terror list in turkey, et cetera. what is the strategic value for turkey to support isis whereas on the other hand, those who fight isis are much more

familiar to turkey, actually. the kurdish, i mean, the pyd, these are -- these are guys turkey knows. has known for a long time. if you were turkey, would you rather cooperate with them? work with them or that you're at the table negotiating with them for the resolution of the kurdish issue at home? or would you go ahead and support isis for what strategic benefit, exactly? it's not clear to me. and if you're talking about the arms, isis has u.s. arms. does that mean that u.s. gave isis arms? so it's -- let's be more nuanced about that, as well, there have been many reports of arm smuggling through turkey into -- into syria. but what i know from turkey's

perspective, the groups that are willing to unite and fight against assad regime will be kind of -- will be supported. that's the kind of line for turkey. are you going to be engaging in terrorist activity and holding ground for yourself? holding space for yourself? or are you going to go ahead and work to bring down this regime? you may like or not turkey remains committed. which the u.s. technically also is committed to. and it is doing what is necessary to realize that. of course, that may not be possible at this point or it may not be possible any time soon. but from that perspective, you don't a serious reason to

support isis unless you're thinking that turkey is going to want kurds being killed just because they're kurds. and i don't think that's turkey's perspective with regards to syria. you mentioned it, actually, vetting process to the opposition. that can all collapse if you don't support the opposition and other areas. if you don't allow them to manage the humanitarian crisis, you're not going to get -- they're not going to be liked by the population. the population will have to succumb to the groups who are able to provide help to them. if you can vet and arm the syrian opposition, that's only going to be the beginning of the story.

you have to support it financially, et cetera. and make it a credible alternative to assad regime. i think turkey and the u.s. are on the same page about that need. but the current strategy does not seem to include that. you can vet and arm a group and they can lose. so you -- you -- we need a medium and longer term strategy. thanks. >> just to continue. okay. i agree with him that the border of turkey with syria is pretty hard to control. it's 910 kilometers. it's very, very hard to control. but i think turkey could have done much better in terms of controlling the jihadist pulling into syria. because most of these people have legally. the passports carry visas, the

stamps. easily these people traveled turkey. much more could have been done to prevent these people coming all over the world from china. chinese isis members wereñi killed, so china, afghanistan, all over the world, albania. they're flying into turkey. so this is the first. a very nice point, why would isis choose turkey? how come turkey chooses isis over us? the perception, again, whoever you speak -- supporting these

groups that's fighting against them. i don't know why, maybe the phobia, the kurdish phobia. maybe, i have no idea. but i would also ask the same question. i would assume turkey should support kurds. a kurdish population and the syrian kurds are direct relatives, of kurds from turkey. i have relatives end up being in syria. i have my own relatives. kurdish perspective, although i am turkish officially, we still consider ourselves relatives. one family. so the expectation from the very beginning was the other side, syrian national council, sknc, good relations with turkey.

the embargo, the turkish borders are -- very limited passage. kurds are suffering, too. there's no goods coming into syria and the syrian kurdish region by allowing people to go back and forth to -- the turkish companies could have made lots of money. i'm seeing this based on -- i talked to kurdish syria daily. i interview, i write. this is what they say. for example, a city, is a town, actually, but it's really a city. the population even doubled, tripled after the internal, arrival of internal idps.

they say we are close to an industrial hub. we p want turkish companies to come here. rather than we pay 200%, 300% commission. we want turkish companies to come and do business here. we want to have a good relationship. we have money, but we cannot spend. we would love to see that. so there were really many possibilities that turkey could improve the relations. but this did not happen. turkey first, this was a turkish policy. later on, turkey acted like only syrian kurdish national council. another kurdish group, but the group has been supporting, which pretty marginalized recently. then, it didn't work as well. turkey tried to seem like acknowledging -- but the relations stayed there. unfortunately, not improve. so maybe one reason many people

believe is that turkey makes -- benefits from making isis and ypg fight. so getting rid of two evils with one stone, i think, this is, many people believe that. so let them fight. but even though this is the case, still favoring isis. so this is, you can, you can read international media. the town across in the turkish part of the border. so they all say, whoever is interviewed, they're all convinced that turkey is in this war against them. so this is -- this needs to be seen. this is not without any ground. i think what has been done so far. accumulated and made people bring that -- running out, carrying out negative towards them. in regards to impact, like i said, the target are not the kurdish regions.

not the kurdish towns, especially not the critical station. it's raqqa, these kind of places. because it's not directly kurds fighting with isis, it doesn't have any impact. so if the targets around are hit, this might slow down the isis advance. this might -- highly sophisticated weapons, this might leave some room for better protecting themselves for the ypg, but this is not happening. so the impact is only in moral respect. that, oh, okay. isis, maybe isis feel more pressure, under pressure, that attacks are coming, and the fighters on the ground might feel more high morale that isis is being attacked and now may be very likely the targets, the positions that isis are attacking are also going to be targeted. this is the impact. and people, the idps, refugees in turkey, they are starting to

return homing that the station is going to normalize with the attacks. militarily, there's no positive impact, rather negative. because isis sending all the fighters, those are not sent already. the ones in the city and other places, to get there and make it press this issue. >> very quickly. turkey has been talking to europe for more than a year now. and europeans said you shouldn't allow these foreign fighters to come in. and turkey asked them for lists. and when they provided, turkey deported more than 1,000 people. but if you're a european. if you have a european passport and you have a beard or whatever, you come to the

airport, are we to assume you're going to join isis and stop? that's a difficult thing to do. but turkey hasn't refused to deport people. it has deported a lot of people. and pyd is still technically a terrorist organization for turkey. so you're saying that turkey needs to cross the border into syria, risk getting into war with assad regime, basically. it has the authority to do conduct cross-border operations for its own security. but you're saying that turkey should come in and help pyd, which is an arm of -- which is still technically a terrorist organization and save the kurds from isis. this doesn't quite work that way. isis is a terrorist organization for turkey and pyd is similar. so you're asking turkey to go into a different country and basically help the kurds.

helping the kurds on the humanitarian side is a priority for turkey. turkey hasn't closed the borders. it's taken more than 130,000 refugees. more are coming. but helping turkey, helping kurds in what way, exactly? it's not clear. so you're saying turkish army should come in and help pyd defeat isis? i don't want to make this too long. but also, in terms of the embargo, again, it's the same thing, it's pyd controlled area. how do you expect turkish businesses to do trade with what is considered a terrorist organization in turkey? >> can i jump in? >> we'll open it up to the floor. >> can i make a couple of comments and try to mediate. we said, you know, there's a statement made, well, we naturally, turkey should be

working with the pkk, pyd because they know them. my argument is it would exactly right. it's because turkey knows the pyd and pkk that they have no interest in seeing this group armed. and secondly, we need to look at this as an evolving policy. i hardly think, and i have initially been critical of what this seemed to be order door, open border policy. but you know, what was perceived as the free syrian army. this evolved over time. so i hardly think that turkey or anybody else in the syrian coalition that was starting this in istanbulm÷ two years ago sai hey, let's bring them in because we know they're going to be isis. even six months ago, you didn't imagine this is going to turn out the way it is. there's 100,000 refugees in istanbul, sleeper cells in istanbul. this is not just about the border now. this is in the heart of turkey. i really don't think this was something that started out.

was it a miscalculation? i would possibly say so. but so -- it would be important to look at this as even the iraqi kurds. look, on june 10th, when mosul was taken over by isil, what were the iraqi/kurds saying? we're not getting involved. they knew about this. and even they said two weeks later, we had no idea that it was going to turn out to be this way. and i think that's the case with turkey, too. secondly, i just don't see the pkk/pyd's agenda has been one of whether it's challenging the territorial integrity, even if it's changed, why would turkey now want to see arms possibly getting to the hands of the pkk? so this is a very difficult political situation that i don't think it's so clear cut in saying either you choose the pyd or you choose isis. there's two different challenges right now, neither one of which,

you know, lessens the significance of the other. >> first of all, the jihadist fighters. i understand, europeans or americans, they can travel nobody should be stopped because they have -- that's certainly, i agree with you. the bulk of the fighters are noneurope or nonwestern people. tunisia -- and internationally, i don't want to spend any more time. steps to prevent. so this is already established by the international community that turkey did not do enough. second point pyd by their own official statement based on what, for example, you call it pkk. the leader of pkk and pkk

aligned organizations. syrian or kurdish organizations. they say -- but it's a syrian/kurdish organization. plus, all my speech. i'm talking about syrian kurds. the government, of course, established autonomy. there are more than -- although it is the main power. i acknowledge that everybody knows that. there are other parties, as well. i talk about syrian kurds some 3 million people that who are suffering because of the embargo. it's not the issue of pyd. it's a matter of syrian kurds. these people have kurds suffered, very badly, or not. do they deserve some studies or not. these are the questions. and turkey hosting some 20 million kurds, even more kurdish. why not welcome them?

why not make them feel that they're valued. why treat them, negative attitude. so nobody tells turkish army to syria and fight. syrian kurds are not only pyd. the strongest political party. but the ypg is composed of many people who are not -- political opponents and there are other people. turkey could have done better. we have better relations with turkey. so turkey should see this perspective, brother and sister of my own citizens who are suffering, not a political party. and if that is the case, why -- the pkk's leader. how come there's a peace process

or brotherhood process. there is a contradiction here. >> okay. we have plenty of time for questions. again, if i could remind you. if you're called upon, try to get to all of you because we have plenty of time. please introduce yourself briefly, what you're affiliated with, who you're affiliated with, your name and who you are directing the question at. as many minimal comments as possible, please. if we could have ambassador holmes take the question. and the lady at the back there. >> thank you. two brief questions. >> microphone's right next to you. >> two brief questions. the first one, what is the topography of a place like kobani that makes air strikes more or less peaceful? what is the lay of the land? secondly for kadir.

whose voice matters in the terms of policy formation for turkey with respect to the situation in both iraq and syria on the kurds. is it only one voice now as is popular perceived that there's only one voice that matters in turkey? or is there a multitude of voices that are formulating this policy? is m.i.t. formulated in policy? where's the best touch point with respect to understanding policy formation on this issue in turkey? >> if we could also get her question. >> my question is in terms of the thinking about what happens in a few year's time. because, i mean, secretary hagel and other people had said we'll count isil. maybe not now, maybe in two or three year's time. a number of coalition partners

have said we're going to be arming and training kurds. and some of them are already supplying such arms. so what happens once isis or isil is counted with all of these people who have military training and lots of weapons. and i'm basically directing my question to kadir. >> thank you.ñiçó >> so if we could have kadir first? >> okay. >> so if i didn't misunderstand, you're asking about the decision making mechanism in turkey. >> policy formulation. >> policy formulation. okay. there's obviously -- the government ministers and et cetera. there's national security council, which includes the president and military leaders. all those mechanisms.

the undersecretary. and the president, these are always in close collaboration. >> excuse me. >> yes. >> i fully understand. >> microphone, please. >> yeah. excuse me. i fully understand the formal mechanisms that -- what i'm asking for is your insight into where does the policy come from now with respect to these issues? is it really generated through these formal organizations? or is this smoke and mirrors and there's only one voice that matters on this? >> one voice of -- >> two voices? >> very respectfully, i think this is a bit of a simplification.

i think -- there is -- you have the intelligence, the political government, the political aspects, et cetera. but when the situation like syria happens right now, it's heavily seculartized. yes, a lot more involvement and feedback about what to do in syria. and that will probably make turkey adopt a more sort of securitized and defensive posture in this time. but when the arab spring came up, right? there was no civil wars. there were some emergence of conflicts. but you had the more diplomatic political side being dominant. so i see, i would say it's really depends on the issue.

but with respect to foreign policy, overall foreign policy formulation, has been very, v y very, you know, central to this effort. who makes the final decision? that's, you know, obviously hard to say. but there's a prime minister that makes that -- that's the head of the executive. that's why i'm saying there are formal mechanisms. he will make the final decision. but these figures are in constant collaboration and cooperation about how to formulate policy. but i would say if the situation -- we have to look at the kurdish thing, for instance, the evolution of kurdish peace process is a good example of this. until recently, it was the deputy prime minister who was responsible under the government. the previous government. he was sort of responsible for

that folder. but now it's been elevated to prime minister level. and there are four deputy prime ministers and there are other ministers including economy minister and others who are meeting every two weeks to discuss the kurdish peace process. so you see, it's becoming much more secretive and more focused on security aspects and now it's being broadened towards the political. and reverse happened with syria. so i don't know if this is satisfactory as an answer, but this is how i kind of see. of course, it's very central to turkish politics now. there's no question about that. armed groups. as i said, haphazard arming the groups, vetting of them, arming

them, that's not going to solve this problem. and it will create further problems in the medium and long run. and the president's examples were not very good examples, somalia and yemen as successful examples of counterterrorism. i understand he means sort of you were able to -- this is a counterterrorism strategy, which means you have to -- hate to say this -- but you have to kill a lot of people, basically. you're going after the terrorists and you're killing them. but what does that amount to politically? it's an open-ended question. and without that, arming xyz group won't solve the problem.

i was just -- >> do you have anything to chime into this? >> no, i wanted to add about the arming of whatever the foreign fighters. people are very much aware, there's not going to be an ideal situation here, okay. and even this weapon, in addition to what they're saying, not only what you should arm or not, if you're going to arm, what's going to be the nature of the weapons and how effective will they be? talking about heavy weapons or training a few thousand soldiers? how effective will it be? and who is -- and where the arms will end up, for what objective. we're still not sure because the objective in syria among several groups -- some of them we want to overthrow assad. while overthrowing assad for some groups is not the same objective as degrading isis in

and of itself. and i cannot ascertain. and i don't think anybody can that those weapons being used to push back or degrade isis are not going to be used by those groups against a larger mission. and this is where it's going to get really messy. not saying not to do it but it's going to be messy anyway. it's not the same among all the groups. >> your answer? >> the topography is pretty straight. it's not like iraqi/kurdistan region. even very few hills. so the majority of kurdish, with the exception -- pretty straight. it's quite soothing for air strikes. there's no one that could hide. everything is there, isis, power

isis vehicles are all visible. and the appeal was, not my appeal, but i convey it, the local officials, kurdish officials demanded air strikes. it was not my personal. i just conveyed what they told me when i spoke to them this morning. >> okay. let's have another round of questions. we have nick at the back there and the gentleman in front of him and we'll take one here from the front here. this lady here. two at the back there. >> hello. i'm in the history department here at georgetown. a question for anyone who thinks they have an answer. under what circumstances would the turkish government be willing to accept some kind of settlement in syria that left the assad regime with a degree of power? >> okay. let's have this lady at the front here and the gentleman in front of nick. >> hi. i'm also a graduate student here at georgetown and i want to thank everyone for their comments and insights. my question is for dr. natalie

regarding the krg and the prospects for independence at some point. i was wondering if you could comment on the energy situation, the oil exports exports, the pipeline that was built between turkey and the krg and the exports of oil. i know there's a lot of legal ramifications. but aside from that, i was wondering how you see that affecting politics in the region. >> my name is nick also. kind of building off that question, a lot of people are talking about turkey is hesitant to engage isis. do you think that that might change if the kurdish regional government in iraq comes under significant threat by isis, given the energy relation and just kind of -- i personally believe the pressure on the syrian kurds does not bode well for the iraqi kurds given that

the syrian kurds were sending a fair amount of support to them earlier, a couple months ago. >> denise? >> certainly. krg oil, kurdish oil, i want to put some -- separate fact from fiction. first, we heard the media, it has been hysterical. this so-called independent pipeline. there is a pipeline north coming out of iraq to jihan. this is the iraqi turkish line. it's between turkey and iraq in 1973 renewed indicating that all fluids inside the pipeline belong to the government of iraq and only the ministry of oil can ship it out. this is the basis of the legal issue. it has been renewed in 2010 for another 25 years, 15 years, ten-year renewal. now, this pipeline that the kurds build, we have to differentiate between what is a feeder pipeline.

it was a pipeline built inside the region. there's two -- this iraqi turkish -- there's two parts with a million 600,000 nameplate capacity. two different pipelines. okay? one runs part through the kurdish region, another runs through mosul, which is what al qaeda got its hands on. this has been bombed since 2003. nonetheless, the kurds confiscated the part in their side because the iraqi government no longer had reach, blocked it off so that no oil from -- could flow when it was controlled by the iraqi government and connected their own feeder line to this pipeline. so i have questioned how independent is the line, not only for legal purposes, because it is still part of the iraqi turkish pipeline agreement? this is the source of why the

iraqi government went to lodge the dispute. with that said, the iraqi state -- the iraqi government has lost a lot of control of the northern regions, not only since 2003, but particularly since this isil. the islamic state -- we can go back, al qaeda since 2003 has bombed that pipeline numerous times. this is business for al qaeda, isis. their business is pipelines put them out of business. the very complicated and complex smuggling of oil operations that is feeding and fuelling isis today is rooted in this smuggling network and bombing out the pipeline so that isis can get trucks and truck oil oil. isis lives on trucking oil and smuggling it out. iraqi kurds since -- there's been -- there have been legal issues. i hate to say this but the math just doesn't add up in terms of the kurds trying to ship it out

independently. after isil takeover, that pipeline and the pumping stations have been completely destroyed to the point where it's going to take a couple years to fix it. as of today, the only pipeline that's actually functioning to get any oil out of the north is the pipeline on the kurdish side. it still has the legal restrictions, however. secondly, the kurds have taken over parts of that area. where has that left the regiwrr? there's two key oil fields. most of the large oil companies have evacuated out. some of them came back that are not in the disputed territories. there's been an overall significant drop in investment. no new investment. those producing fields -- it's very small level, 120,000

barrels per day -- continue to come out of the two fields. that continues. that has not stopped. the problem, however -- there has been brinkmanship, the oil is going out and it's being put on tankers. i don't know if you are following it. there's the story of the many tankers out at sea. radar is on, off, off of texas, not off of texas. now they're going to china. the point is this. it doesn't matter if it's 10 million right now or 2 million, the goal of derisking -- how do you derisk kurdish crude so you can assure large scale oil export s exports? it's very opaque. this whole bit has not reassured investors. it has not reassured buyers. in fact, those buyers who once did buy kurdish crude said, we will never do it again because we didn't know.

there's a real pickle that the kurds are in right now and that is the hope of replacing the 95% of their budget from baghdad that totals $14 billion hasn't even come close. what has happened over the last six months since baghdad cut the budget, the kurds have borrowed at least $2 billion from turkey. they borrowed billions from other investors. there is now debt financing here. there's a very, very serious financial situation, with the new government, they are negotia negotiating. they -- here is the final point. this is not just between the kurds and maliki and the kurds and baghdad. whether or not the kurds are demanding to export all of their oil independently, there's 15 other provinces in iraq. the oil producing provinces in the south don't agree with this because they want the same good

deal that the kurds have. so i don't see any iraqi president -- it's not even the prime minister. if this is put to parliament, i don't see how any iraqi is going to allow the kurds to export independently if they're not contributing back to the iraqi government. this is the problem. >> with respect to the circumstances under which turkey would expect, you know -- would accept some other formula than assad regime leaving, i think that's not -- the fall of the assad regime is at this point neither realistic or imminent. and i don't -- i think turkey realizes that and when you look at turkey's approach, the evolution of it, the beginning, for a while they engaged assad regime and told them how to, you

know, lead the country to an election process. when conflict started, they said, okay, remove assad. have somebody else. bring in the opposition but still go to elections eventually. there has to be some sort of transition. that's the core point. it's not assad himself that's a problem for turkey. there has to be a meaningful transition that will end the civil war. it's not a matter of regime change for the sake of regime change. it's not an ideological thing for turkey. the way to get to stability and to end the civil war, you need a real transition in the country, in the political structure. that's neither imminent nor, you

know, probable any time soon. when also so many groups are -- including the assad regime, thinking that they are winning. when everybody is thinking they are winning, they are not going to come to the table. one formula is actually put real pressure by, you know, diplomatically, politically empowering the opposition to force the assad regime to come to the table. right now that's not really the focus of anybody. if you can bring them to the table and impose some sort of agreement and go to transitional government and go to elections, things won't still be settled, probably. we know that from iraq how things turned out. it's not going to be happy ending any time soon i'm afraid.

>> i just don't see the president or the prime minister accepting assad. they got pretty much what they want with maliki gone. there is a momentum here in syria if this continues. i mean, i don't see what turkey can do in terms of having assad overthrown. but this is personal. this is personal, the way it was in maliki. i think they will wait it out. i think time is on turkey's side. i'm not saying assad is going to go. i just don't see turkish leaders saying, golly, we really made a mistake, so let's try to deal with assad. i'm pretty skeptical about that.