We usually don’t find tanks very humorous. They are made to fight wars and are not good for much of anything other than that. I saw one in an island intersection in Scranton, Pennsylvania and it did keep people from being undecided about which way to turn. We have a similar situation with tanks today, and it is characterized well in a BBC article about German concerns that Tiger tanks were used in the invasion of the Syrian area around Afrin.
So the Turks have used German tanks to sweep down into “terrorist” held territory, and the a few German politicians don’t like it. Did they think Turkey would use these tanks for anything other than waging war with someone? When you sell arms to another country there is always the risk that they will use those arms against you, or some of your friends. In this case, the Turks have chosen to kill Kurds who are aligned with the U.S. The Russians bombed this same group, saying they were “going after ISIS.” Everybody there knew that wasn’t true.
The Germans might learn a lesson from this, but I doubt that arms dealers have that kind of sensitivity. Arms are instruments of policy, and so are the Kurds. Turkey is going to learn a lesson here too. Sailing down to fight the Kurds is easy until those tanks get where they are going.
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