Has Turkey lost the plot?

S P SETH

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is losing the plot when confronting the crisis his state finds itself in. The recent massive blasts at a peace rally in the Turkish capital, Ankara, believed to be the work of two suicide bombers, killed about 100 people and injured nearly 250. It happened at a mainly Kurdish peace rally held to protest against the government’s incessant bombing of Kurds in northern Iraq and inside Turkey. The Turkish government blames the militant Turkish movement, PKK, for terrorist acts inside the country in pursuit of autonomy/independence for the Kurds. For a period, there was some hope of peace and reconciliation between Turkey and its Kurdish population. But the parliamentary elections in June in which the predominantly Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) won more than 10 per cent votes (the minimum constitutional threshold) with 80 parliamentary seats, undercut the ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) parliamentary majority requiring new elections now scheduled next month.

President Erdogan had put much hope on the June election, anticipating a comfortable parliamentary majority for the ruling AKP to change the constitution to become the country’s executive president. With new elections, held under his party’s interim prime minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, that might still not happen. Therefore, to ensure desired parliamentary victory, the moderate and predominantly Kurdish party, HDP, would need to be tarred with the same brush as the militant PKK. To this end, the government has repeatedly accused the HDP of links to the PKK. In other words, the entire Kurdish community is under suspicion of actual or potential subversion of the Turkish state and society; making the Erdogan government the country’s ultimate savior. It is hoped that this will rally much of the country behind them.

Against this backdrop, the rise of IS has created opportunities as well as pitfalls for the government. The opportunities lie in an increasingly bloody confrontation between the IS and Kurds, spread across Turkey, Iraq and Syria, that might weaken the Kurds. But as the Kurds are taking the fight on the ground against IS, they have won the admiration and support of the US that is helping them with weapons and aerial support. This hasn’t found favour with Turkey, as it might help to strengthen the Kurdish position to eventually carve out a homeland for themselves. Turkey’s first response to the US-led military coalition against IS was not only to keep out of it but also to deny them the use of Turkish bases for bombing raids. The US, a long time Turkish ally, was unhappy with it. Later, Turkey changed its position by joining the US-led coalition, as well as allowing the use of its bases for bombing raids on IS. But, simultaneously, it turned on the Kurds by attacking and bombing PKK targets in northern Iraq and in southeast Turkey.

While it was trying to curry favour with the US-led coalition by coalescing with it on IS, it was making it clear that the Kurds wouldn’t be allowed to use their frontline role against IS to advance their Kurdish autonomy/separation agenda. And, at home, the electoral respectability of the predominantly Kurdish HDP party was a worry as reflected in the June election. There is, therefore, a concerted attempt to tar the moderate HDP with the militant PKK brush.  The bombing raids and round up of Kurds inside Turkey look like an attempt to create a security threat scenario for the Turkish state from inside and outside the country. Even though it is generally accepted that the blasts at the Ankara peace rally were the work of IS, President Erdogan seemed more inclined to blame all violence on PKK. He reportedly said after the blasts in Ankara, “The terrorist attack targeting civilian citizens today at the Ankara station is no different at all from the previous attacks in various locations against our soldiers, our police, our village guards, public servants and innocent citizens.” There is thus an attempt to blame the Kurds and the militant PKK for all the killings and security problems in Turkey to create a siege mentality, with the ruling AKP party seen as the only alternative to crush Kurdish violence. If this narrative were to take hold, AKP has hope of winning the parliamentary elections. There is thus a concerted campaign to somehow mix up HDP and PKK as one and the same.

This sort of confusion and resultant security operations against the Kurds must be music to IS ears, as much of the Turkish government’s energies are directed against a perceived Kurdish threat. This is bound to affect the effectiveness of Kurdish operations against IS, as they now have to face two fronts, leading one to wonder if the Turkish government is at all serious about fighting IS. The initial satisfaction in the US-led coalition over Turkey’s decision to join their ranks has almost disappeared because, on balance, it is probably weakened the coalition by weakening the Kurdish contribution on the ground that was considered quite effective.

The Erdogan government has been unhappy with the US for its handling of the Syrian crisis almost from the time when the rebellion to overthrow the Assad regime started in 2011 as part of the Arab Spring. And Erdogan is politically inflexible when he has taken a position on any issue.  His government seems to believe that the present mess in Syria, with IS emerging as a determining force in Syria and Iraq, is due to the US failure to act against the Assad regime. And this mess has also raised the profile of the Kurds across Turkey, Iraq and Syria, thus creating problems for Turkey. And this might need to be dealt with directly through security operations by the Turkish state and, indirectly, by IS. This pincer movement will most likely weaken Kurds over a period of time. In the meantime, this might win the ANP the parliamentary elections, thus entrenching its political dominance in place since 2002. Such calculations do not seem to factor in the threat from IS, not only for Turkey but the entire Middle Eastern region. And this is where the Erdogan government has lost the plot.

  

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.

Contact: sushilpseth@ yahoo.com