Globe Trot: Turkey bombs historic Christian area

TURKEY: Unauthorized Turkish airstrikes yesterday not only hit Syrian Defense Forces (SDF) near Derik but also struck at the center of a Christian area, and coincided with the April anniversary of the genocide when Turks massacred thousands of non-Muslims a century ago. “Beyond casualties, this had a demoralizing effect for its timing, and when we are encouraging our people to remain in this historic region,” said Bassam Ishak of the Syriac Union, speaking to me from Washington today.

The strikes hit Kurdish elements of the SDF backed by the United States and fighting ISIS, which has carried out attacks into southeastern Turkey at the Syrian border in the last year.

The Turks also struck Sinjar in Iraq, an area liberated from ISIS late last year and patrolled by Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga forces. Turkey has stationed thousands of soldiers in these areas for months, seemingly intent on staking control of largely Kurdish and Christian or Yazidi enclaves as ISIS is forced out.

The Kurds, too, seem intent on blocking Yazidis from returning to Sinjar, imposing an economic blockade.

SYRIA did not declare all the elements of its chemical weapons program, states the latest U.S. State Department annual assessment, despite former President Barack Obama’s December 2016 assertion that a 2013 deal brokered by Russia “eliminated Syria’s declared chemical weapons program.”

RUSSIA: For the first time, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) called on the State Department to designate Russia a “country of particular concern” for its crackdown on organized groups, mostly recently Jehovah’s Witnesses, outlawed in Russia earlier this month. In its annual report released today, USCIRF also said religious freedom violence overall is “worsening in both the depth and breadth of violations.”

EUROPE: It was Christians in the West who launched the largest relief efforts to alleviate the suffering of war victims and refugees following World War II.

KENYA’s last northern white rhino is so desperate to mate he’s posted a profile on Tinder: “I don’t mean to be too forward, but the fate of my species literally depends on me.”