Shoulder Patches Spark A Diplomatic Flap Between Turkey And The U.S.

Turkey has tantrums all the time. Try publicly speaking or try to publish discussion about the Armenian Genocide. You go to jail even though it did happen in 1915 and hundreds of thousands died as a cultural genocide. Lately, they shut down opposition papers. From what I have read, the patches are to try to show esprit-de-corps with the allied unit its working with. Turkey wants to join the EU. It does not look good now! Turkey needs to get out of the corrupt crony Ottoman mindset and play seriously with Democracy. They should be a leader and show Muslim Countries that a non-secular Muslim country can be democratic and work with supporting the Kurds in Syria without having a panic worrying that helping certain Kurds will not bring further attacks to Turkey. Turkey is the King who does not wear clothes. It can't see the obvious. I realize there are Kurd groups that attack Turkey, on occasion, and when they do, the Turkish military strikes back and invades that area.

The Ottoman Empire was called the 'the sick man of Europe'. The Ottoman Empire became Turkey and again it is the sick man of Europe.

SGT (Join to see) Sgt Mike Sarris SGT Christopher Churilla
CPT Pedro Meza LTC (Join to see) MAJ (Join to see) @
MAJ David Potter MAJ Andrew Ready MAJ David Vermillion
SSG Roger Ayscue SSG(P) Christopher Erickson SSG James J. Palmer IV aka "JP4" CPT Mark Gonzalez CPT L S SrA Christopher Wright
CPT (Join to see) 1LT(P) Jake Ledgerwood 2LT (Join to see)

http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21694362-meanwhile-european-leaders-try-negotiate-country-stem-flow-migrants

I don't get it part of an ODA teams job is to mix in with locals and provide help and part of that is to win the harts and minds and show that they are unified with the locals and if wearing a patch does that they should do this.

In 2005-06 we did a Recovery mission and it turned into a civil humanitarian type mission (Harts and minds) in Pakistan. It was a small number of troops mainly medical, Qatar Masters and Army HELO Squadrons with Marines had Engineers doing the slings and SeaBees as the Engineer force and they had some SOF forces there with us a total of around 1000 troops running around North western frontier Province (Bad Lands) and parts of Kashmir. We had to wear these Pins with US flag and Pakistani flag in crossed arms. The reason for the pins is the Army still had BDU's and so did we and Marines with MARPAT, so NO Velcro and we used pins, We worked with Pakistani Rangers and Pakistani Engineers and this showed unity to them and the local population. The point to this is NO one said anything about offending India in this whole thing but there again India is not Muslim!!! I still have that pin in my shadow box along with a secret service coin and pin that was given to me when I meet POTUS there in Islamabad.

I noticed the Yekîneyên Parastina Gel (YPG) shoulder insignia in a post a friend sent me via Facebook. I had a feeling this was not going to sit well with Turkey. It didn't surprise me that Turkish President Erdogan condemned the United States' support of Kurdish fighters in Syria after these pictures revealed US commandos were wearing the insignia of a militia that was branded a terror group by Ankara. The PPK - Turkish Kurd's are aligned with the PYD/YPG Syrian Kurd's. Thus the problem with the patch - The Russian External Intelligence Service (SVR), has long been a PKK supporter as well with the goal of creating an insurgency in Turkey. It could have been worse as they could have worn the YPJ insignia - the all female brigade Yekîneyên Parastina Jin‎. Again this demonstrates the convoluted dynamics of the battle space.