The Whole Syria And ISIS Conflict Explained So Simply Even I Can Understand It

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ku3A0ooZXE

There's a lot of confusion flying around this morning, actually, every morning lately, but particularly in the wake of Turkey shooting down a Russian warplane, leaving all of us kind of scratching our heads wondering what is going on.

First of all, let's backtrack a little and actually get our heads around the war in Syria, the role of Isis and the involvement of countries around the world in the conflict.

To be honest, it's complicated. You see there is no simple 'good' and 'bad' side. There are four sides at the very least and perhaps even more.

Thankfully, a man named Hassan Ali has explained everything on Facebook, far better than I ever could:

So now we understand just how fucked up the whole thing is. You can also easily see how actually storming in and declaring outright war on Isis could actually complicate things even further.

Speaking of complications, we move forward to today. What do we know about the Turkey/Russia incident? Turkey say the Russian plane failed to leave their airspace despite repeated instructions. Russia say the plane wasn't in Turkey's airspace. That's pretty much it at the moment.

The background to all this however is that Russia are backing Bashar al-Assad in Syria, while Turkey are seemingly in favour of northern rebels.

Hence today's events are worrying but at the same time, the mood among those in the know seems to be that neither country wants this to escalate further.