The New York Times quotes VP and Hariri Center Director Francis Ricciardone on the implications of the battle for Kobani in Turkey:
“It seemed they were making historic progress,” said Francis J. Ricciardone Jr., who until recently was the United States ambassador to Turkey and is now the director of the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East. The progress in Kurdish cultural and language rights, he said, “were things I never expected to see in my lifetime.”