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Erdogan Wants to Redraw the Middle East's Ethnic Map
(Foreign Policy) Nick Ashdown - Turkish President Erdogan outlined a plan to resettle 1-2 million Syrian refugees at the UN General Assembly on Sept. 24. Turkey's incursion and subsequent deal in October with Russia have left Ankara controlling a 75-mile strip of borderland, far smaller than the 300-mile corridor Erdogan was originally hoping for - an area so small and desolate that most analysts doubt millions of refugees could fit there. Moreover, most of the resettled refugees would be Arab Sunni Muslims, while the local population includes Arab, Kurdish, and Christian populations. Many critics accuse Ankara of attempting to demographically engineer the area to reduce the presence of Kurds.