The US are only the in Syria region because they had their arms twisted to get rid of ISIS. The reason? Because Russia was there doing that job. Russia was good buddies with Asad's regime and they are allied with Iran. USA are not on good terms with Iranian regime and wants to get rid of them. Asad is Druze (they are a Shia sect) and this minority rules Syria which has a Sunni majority as well as your regular Shias and Christians. There is no way that the US wants Iran to have influence in the region. Lebanon has a very large Shia  population,  that is where Hezbollah come from and they have traditionally allied with Syria regime and Iran (Shia boys united). Hezbollah rule South Lebanon and have given Israel loads of grief in the past. Saudi cannot stand Iran and they don't like Syria. They want to play a part in dismantling Iran's influence. ISIS has had a lot of their insurgents from Saudi, they want to get rid of Asad. Iran in turn supports the Houti rebels (Shias in Yemen) and Shia majority areas in Saudi which is coincidently where Saudi's oil fields are based. Iraq which is now run by Shia's in the south and Kurds in the north. Saddam Hussain was Sunni and the Iraqi Sunni are no longer in power.  That is where a lot of ISIS support comes from as well as Saudi and as well as Turkey who also hate Syria. They think Israel is complicit in this as they all have common interests.  So you have Syrian regime + Iran + Hezbollah + Yemeni Houthis + Iraqi Shias + Russia vs Saudi+ Israel + Turkey. Turkey has been growing it's Islamic ness in the last few decades and with Erdogan are flexing their muscles, they want to be Ottomans again. The Ottoman Empire controlled large parts of the Middle East and controlled Mecca and Medina, Islam's holy sites. Iraq is controlled in the north by the Kurds. Kurds are not Arabs, they are an Iranian speaking people. It is a de-facto Kurdish republic. The pisses off the Turks because they do not want their Kurds in Turkey to get any ideas. Also there is a lot of oil in the Kurdish controlled Iraq. With instability in Syria and the Asad regime not being in total control, it means that there is a vacuum in power. It stands to reason that the Kurds in Syria will fight back against ISIS and it stands to reason that the Kurds in Iraq will support them. So you end up with two Kurdish controlled regions. One in Iraq and one in Syria. The Turks are s****** themselves. What happens if these two regions become one breakaway country? They have oil too. The Kurds in Turkey will want to breakaway. (The govt in Turkey don't like calling the Kurds Kurds, they want to call them Mountain Turks.) The only thing they don't have is the pipelines to export it. That is why Turkey was interested,  they can control that area and build oil pipelines to the Mediterranean so they can export the oil. Erdogan's family is complicit in the traffiking of the oil supplies. Turkey's Turk population is experiencing a serious decline, the Kurds have a higher birth rate therefore the Turks are scared that the Kurds may become a majority.  What I have explained so far is far too simple and it goes beyond even that.

Here is some history about the Ottomans. They were a turkic people like the Mughals.  Like the Mughals who bred with Rajput women, the Ottomans did the same with the locally conquered women: https://www.thoughtco.com/ottoman-sultans-were-not-very-turkish-195760

Thread from an Albanian friend of mine (Albania is a formerly part of the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans) so he has far better understanding than I ever will.
There are aspects that can be related to our people and the history of partition (but this guy does not like Greeks or Turks very much), but I suspect if you ask a Greek he may have different point of view:


 Okay thread.

Topic:

TURKEY HAS "LEGAL RIGHT" TO ETHNIC CLEANSE THE KURDS.

Not a joke.

1/

 During the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, ethnic groups were spread out across the empire.

Once ethnic states started to appear with the creation of Greece by Germans in 1827, a chain reaction ensued across Ottoman Rumelia (aka Land of Romans), the mess started.

2/
 Long story short, Bulgaria, Serbia, Romania, Montenegro, Albania, Turkey etc were created over the course of 100 years from the Roman Revolution in 1822, now known as the Greek Revolution.

3/ During these 100 years, from 1822 to 1923, (literally 101 years), was to find a way to pinpoint all borders in order to avoid ethnic conflicts, within each new ethnic state multiple ethnicities resided, which itself had multiple religions, which was normal for the ottomans.

4/
 There were Orthodox Greeks and Muslim Greeks, orthodox bulgarians and muslim bulgarians, orthodox serbs and muslim serbs, orthodox albanians and muslim albanians, orthodox turks and muslim turks.

And all were spread UNEVENLY across the collapsing empire.

5/
 In the meantime what we now call Western Europe, was going through an ethnic consolidation as well, as German elite was trying to create Unified Germany, which they achieved in 1871, excluding the Austrians, who refused to be Germans.

6/ Long story short, by late 1870s onward, Ottoman elite was getting together with the western elite, aka Big Powers, to solve the mess.

It started with Congress of Berlin in 1878, then Treaty of London in 1913, it ended with Lausanne Treaty in 1923.

7/ During these years, Balkan Wars occurred and the weakest links were sacrificed to achieve some kind of managed peace in the Balkans.

It started with Otto von Bismarck, the first Chancellor of the unified Germany declaring:

"The Albanian nation does NOT exist".

8/
 So, the only way to find any solution was to assert that X nation does NOT exist at all or does not exist in X area, there was no other way.

9/
 So, that is what they did.

What is now called Greece, it used to be a mixture of Greeks, Albanians, Bulgarians, Vlachs (Romanians) and Turks.

Baaaaam, nobody else exists, only Greeks. Decision made.

10/
 The only reason that Albanians now exist, is because at last moment a Hungarian prince raised the issue with the Austro-Hungarian emperor, that if Albanians do not exist, then Serbia/Russia would have access to the Adriatic.

The Emperor freaked out. Albanians exist he said.

11/
 Long story short, after 101 years, all comes down to the Lausanne Treaty in 1923 between Greece and Turkey.

12/
 In the Lausanne Treaty, it was codified the practice of deciding whether a nation exists or not.

Venizellos and Mustafa Kemal, one orthodox greek and the other muslim greek (Ataturk spoke greek fluently), simply decided that any orthodox was Greek and any muslim was Turk.

13/
 So, within Greece, per Lausanne Treaty now codified as international treaty supported by big powers, all orthodox were forced to be hellenized, all albanians, bulgarians, vlachs and turks.

14/
 Per the treaty as well, codified as international law, anybody inside Turkey, whether turks, greek, albanian, bulgarian, or ....KURDISH, simply did not exist, there were only Turks in Turkey.

15/
 Hence per the treaty, anybody had to be Turkified, like in Greece anybody had to be hellenized.

The problem here, and I understood this by reading Taleb saying "scale matters", the problem is that it takes long time to Hellenize and Turkify large populations.

16/
 Based on past practice now codified in international law, Greece and Turkey intensified now openly what they say "population exchange", which was LEGAL MUTUAL ETHNIC CLEANSING, now codified in international law.

17/ Greece, per the law, ethnic cleansed all muslims from Greece, except for the ones in Thrace, which was part of the treaty.
  Turkey per the law ethnic cleansed all orthodox from Turkey, except the ones in Constantinople, which was part of the treaty, they moved to Greece. 18/ These ethnic cleansing did not happen instantly, it took decades to be completed, literally decades. In 1945, Greece ethnic cleansed "muslims" from Chameria per the Lausanne Treaty, they were all Albanians. 19/ Yugoslavia, made a deal with Turkey in the 1960s to have about 400k "muslims" moved to Turkey. The offer from Ankara was 1 horse for 3 muslims (no joke, as they were all Albanians). The serbs replied: take them all for free, as long as all albanians leave. 20/ The tricky part of this one is that Turkey wanted these 400k Albanians to displace the Kurds in East Turkey. Of course Albanians refused, they settle in West Turkey. So, the plan to ethnic cleanse the Kurds by use of Albanians, failed. 21/ In 1999 Abdullah Ocalan, Kurdish fighter against Turkey was arrested in Kenya after the Greek government delivered him into the hands of the Turkish gov, fully complying with the Lausanne Treaty. 22/ So, as you see, it is Turkey's right legally, per lausanne treaty, to ethnic cleanse the Kurds. 23/ The only difference here is USA. USA does NOT recognize international treaties which come against its interest, it is in the US constitution. Hence, USA disregarded the Treaty of London of 1913 giving Kosovo to Yugoslavia, simply invaded KS away from Serbia. 24/ USA is disregarding Lausanne Treaty as well now, by organizing the Kurds together against Turkey. It takes time, but they will do it, as Turkey is now basically an enemy. 
Give it 20-25 years, just like with Kosovo. 25/ END  
 

Erdogan in June 2015:

“I’m addressing the whole world. Whatever the cost it might be, we will never allow a state established in Northern Syria”

Why does he not want a Kurdish state in Northern Syria? I know why, does anybody know why?

What caste pride do I have? Only Juts have caste pride? Let's get back to the question of Kurds. Instead of looking at the situation from the filter of only British colonialism and caste, what do you actually understand about the whole situation of the Kurds in it's entirety? Do you understand the history of the Kurds, their relationship with the Ottoman Empire, their role in exterminating the Armenians from Eastern Anatolia (1915 genocide) the carving up of former Ottoman lands (sandjuks) in the picot sykes agreement. The effect of the Lausanne Treaty between Greece and Turkey. The role of the Young Turks and Ataturk. The relationships of the Kurds in the 4 countries I have mentioned with Shias/Sunni Arabs/Turks in those respective countries. The relationships and groups within those Kurdish groups, the demographic changes in Turkey. The effect of Erdogan and his family's relationship with the intention of supporting ISIS so that the gas/oil pipelines can be transmitted through Turkey. That is just the tip of the iceberg. There are whole geopolitical implications here that involve Iran, Iraq, Eastern Med, Russia, parts of the caucuses, even parts of the Balkans are impacted. It is very complex and far more nuanced. Compared to that, subcontinental politics is a picnic. You'd be really shocked to see the level of hatred between these people. A real eye opener. You might make some synergies with struggles of our panth with the Kurds but that is an over-simplification.  If you want to do rajniti, you have to understand everything in it's entirety and not what suits us.