Category Archives: Turkey

Erdogan want Turkey’s constitution ‘updated’ to reflect the power he already asserts

Mustafa Akyol writes: Over the past decade, many of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s adversaries were blamed for cooking up coups in Turkey against “the constitutional order.” Some were imprisoned, for months or even years, after highly controversial investigations and indictments. It has also been a dominant theme of the pro-Erdogan propaganda machine to depict all elements of the Turkish opposition as pawns of a global conspiracy to topple Erdogan with a coup. Few could imagine that Erdogan himself would be blamed for a coup.

Yet it came with an astounding remark Erdogan made in a public speech Aug. 14 — a speech that created shock waves in the nation. To a cheering crowd in his hometown, Rize, he said:

“There is a president with de facto power in the country, not a symbolic one. The president should conduct his duties for the nation directly, but within his authority. Whether one accepts it or not, Turkey’s administrative system has changed. Now, what should be done is to update this de facto situation in the legal framework of the constitution.” [Continue reading…]

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Turkey’s close relationship with Ahrar al-Sham raises serious questions about Ankara’s aims in Syria

Sam Heller and Aaron Stein write: In April 2012, Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs Ahmet Davutoglu authored a paper that was to be the basis for Turkey’s Arab Spring doctrine — a “values-based foreign policy” for a region in flux. Davutoglu articulated an interventionist approach according to which Turkey would pursue greater regional integration and encourage representative democracy. He also repeated a central theme from his book, Strategic Depth, pledging that Turkey would work to avoid “new tensions and polarizations” in the region, particularly along sectarian and political lines.

Three years later, the positive vision of Davutoglu’s manifesto seems jarring, and nowhere more so than in neighboring Syria. Turkey has gone to incredible lengths to assist Syrian civilians in need, and it has cultivated ties with an array of political and military actors in the Syrian opposition. Yet Turkey has also invested heavily in rebel allies that both reject democracy and espouse extreme sectarianism. In particular, Turkey has developed a close relationship with Ahrar al-Sham, a Salafist rebel movement that espouses a Syrian focus, but also has roots in global jihadism and maintains close ties with Syrian al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusrah. Aside from the Islamic State, Ahrar is now the single strongest rebel force in Syria. Turkey’s role in supporting Ahrar illustrates how Turkey has compromised its ambitious policy goals in Syria and raises questions about Ankara’s reported planned intervention in Aleppo to carve out a “safe zone” along its border with Syria. [Continue reading…]

The New York Times reports: Prospects for a period of instability in Turkey increased on Tuesday after attempts by the dominant party to form a new coalition government officially ended in failure.

The development helped create the basis for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to call for a new election, which would mean the installation of a temporary government just as Turkey is facing new threats from Islamic State militants in neighboring Syria and a re-energized Kurdish insurgency at home. An Islamic State video released on Monday called for Turkish Muslims to revolt against the president. [Continue reading…]

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U.S., Turkey aim to create buffer zone on Syrian border. Nobody knows how

The Washington Post reports: Mohamed Jlelati is not sure whether a de facto “safe zone” along the Turkey-Syria border will include his home town. But he is preparing for it anyway.

Jlelati is a member of the Syrian opposition’s local government in Aleppo, about 40 miles from the Turkish border. And he has plans for his city.

“If people have water and electricity, they will feel stable,” he said, sketching out Aleppo’s water and power grids on a piece of paper. “Then you can provide food. And then start cleaning up the rubble.”

U.S. and Turkish officials last month announced a landmark deal to fight the Islamic State, the militant group that has seized large swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria.

The agreement allows the United States to launch aircraft from inside Turkey for swifter strikes against militants. It also envisions an area along the border that is free of extremists and protected by U.S. air power. Turkey hopes the zone will be a haven for the millions of Syrians who have fled across the border into its territory.

But while news of the deal has spurred hope among Syrians, neither the United States nor Turkey has offered details on how such a zone would be established and enforced. In the past two weeks, the Islamic State and al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra, have launched attacks in the area where the United States and Turkey hope to establish the zone. Analysts say that any plans for a buffer zone will fail unless there is a will to organize, administer and police the region.

“I don’t think we will see anything approaching what even resembles a safe zone” in Syria, said Yezid Sayigh, a senior associate at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut.

“If you’re going to have significant numbers of people sheltering in the zone, you’ll need various things — like electricity, fuel, water tanks, piping, clinics,” Sayigh said. But instead of planning for large humanitarian or reconstruction operations, Turkey and the United States are “mostly trying to do PR” for an unworkable plan, he said. [Continue reading…]

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Turkey and the Kurdish corridor: Why ISIS survives

Joseph V. Micallef writes: On July 21, 2014 IS militants announced that all Kurdish inhabitants had to leave Tal Abyad or they would be killed. Thousands of the town’s inhabitants, including Turkmen and Sunni Arab families, promptly fled. Islamic State militants systematically looted the abandoned homes and resettled displaced Arab refugees from the surrounding region.

A year later, on June 15, 2015, the town was recaptured by a combination of YPG, Free Syrian Army (FSA) forces and a variety of Arab militias operating under the umbrella of the Burkan al-Furat (The Euphrates Volcano), the YPG-FSA “joint operations room”, supported by air power from the U.S. and its coalition partners. Following the battle, U.S. officials praised YPG troops as being the most reliable of the ground forces working with the U.S. to roll back the Islamic State. The victory was seen as striking proof of how the combination of overwhelming American air power and effective and reliable boots on the ground could decisively defeat Islamic State forces.

The capture of Tal Abyad had another consequence. By combining Kurdish control of the Kobani and Jazeera cantons it created a “Kurdish corridor” extending from Iraqi Kurdistan all the way to the city of Kobani in north-central Syria. It thus linked up two of the three current autonomous Kurdish zones in Syria, in the process forming the nucleus of, what the Turkish government of President Recep Erdogan fears, will, potentially, be a Kurdish controlled zone that could someday serve as the core of an autonomous Kurdish state. [Continue reading…]

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The plight of refugees, the shame of the world

Zeynep Tufekci writes: The world is facing the biggest refugee crisis since World War II, a staggering 60 million people displaced from their homes, four million from Syria alone. World leaders have abdicated their responsibility for this unlucky population, around half of whom are children.

The situation is sadly reminiscent of that of refugees fleeing the destruction of World War II and the Nazi onslaught. Then, too, most governments turned their backs, and millions who were trapped perished.

We are mired in a set of myopic, stingy and cruel policies. The few global institutions dedicated to supporting this population are starved of resources as governments either haven’t funded them or have reneged on their pledges of funds. Wealthy and powerful nations aren’t doing their part; the United States, for example, has taken fewer than 1,000 refugees from Syria.

The World Food Program was recently forced to cut its monthly food allocation to refugee families in Lebanon to $13.50 per month, down from $27 in January.

In Iraq, the United Nations announced that a “paralyzing” funding shortfall was causing it to shutter health care services, directly affecting a million people. That means that hundreds of thousands of children will not be vaccinated against polio and measles — a terrifying development risking the resurgence of these diseases in the already devastated region. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees calculates that 750,000 Syrian children in neighboring countries are out of school simply for lack of money. One result has been a huge rise in child labor, with girls in their early teens (or even younger) being married off. [Continue reading…]

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Report: Turkish intel delivers 60 foreign fighters to ISIS in Syria

Today’s Zaman reports: Turkey’s intelligence agency has been involved in escorting over 60 Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) extremist militants over the Turkish border into Syria, according to a report by the Nokta weekly.

The report, published on Aug. 3, claims that the National Intelligence Organization (MİT) escorted over 60 militants to Syria who wanted to join ISIL. It states that the applicants had previously been incarcerated after being apprehended by the Turkish police for suspected involvement in criminal activities pertaining to terrorism. It is alleged that MİT then collected the applicants from prison and brought them to ISIL handlers in Syria via the Akçakale border gate.

Nokta claims that after their apprehension by Turkish law enforcement agencies between April and September 2014, the prisoners should have been deported but were not. The weekly claims that the prisoners were delivered to MİT agents with the knowledge and authorization of Şanlıurfa Police Chief Eyüp Pınarbaşı.

The report also claims that on the day and hour of the delivery of the future ISIL fighters to their handlers, the CCTV cameras were turned off and border personnel were ushered away from the meeting spot.

Nokta’s report provides all 60 of the ISIL militants’ names, nationalities and ages, with some fighters even as young as 12 years old. Two members of the group were female, while many members of the 60-strong group were determined to be of Russian or Turkic ethnicity. The group also included American, Swedish, German, French, Turkmen, Chechen, Ingush and East Turkistan fighters. [Continue reading…]

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Early election now only option for Turkey, Davutoglu says

Bloomberg reports: Turkey is headed for early elections after coalition negotiations with the opposition CHP party failed, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on Thursday. His comments sent the lira to a record low.

Davutoglu, who’s also head of the governing AK Party, told a televised news conference in Ankara that there were deep divisions on education and foreign policy with the opposition party. The AK Party offered to establish a coalition government that would rule only until new elections are held, a proposal that the CHP rejected, Davutoglu said.

The AK Party, co-founded by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, lost its parliamentary majority in June’s inconclusive election for the first time in more than a decade. Coalition talks with the nationalist MHP party broke down partly due to disagreements over Erdogan’s role in governing the country.

“An early election is the only option ahead,” Davutoglu said after meeting with CHP leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu in Ankara. “It would be better if the parliament decides on early elections through dialogue.” [Continue reading…]

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Turkey, Iran help broker rare truce in Syria

Reuters reports: Syria’s warring parties declared a 48-hour ceasefire in two frontline areas on Wednesday after unprecedented mediation from Turkey and Iran, signaling a new approach by some of the main regional backers of the opposing sides.

The ceasefire halted fighting between insurgents on the one hand, and the army and its Lebanese militant Hezbollah allies on the other, in the rebel-held town of Zabadani and in a pair of Shi’ite Muslim villages in Idlib province.

The two areas are strongholds of each side under ferocious attack by the other. Sources familiar with the talks, which have been under way for weeks, said the truce could be extended to give time for ongoing negotiations aimed at evacuating civilians and combatants.

Three officials close to Damascus described the truce as a result of mediation by Turkey, which backs rebels fighting against President Bashar al-Assad, and Iran, whose support has been vital to his survival. [Continue reading…]

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Defeating ISIS in Syria is essential to prevent catastrophe

Frederic C Hof writes: Islamic State (Isis) is the catastrophic consequence of political illegitimacy in Iraq and Syria. In Iraq, the prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, created a governance vacuum. With the unflagging support of Iran, he disenfranchised and alienated Sunni Arabs through narrow, partisan and utterly sectarian policies. In Syria the vacuum’s creator is Bashar al-Assad – with the enthusiastic backing of Iran, he pursues a political survival strategy of collective punishment, featuring mass homicide focused on civilians. Legitimate governance in both places may be a long way off. But keeping Isis from sinking roots in Syria is an urgent priority, which, if unmet, will enable this criminal band to sustain its combat operations in Iraq from a secure rear area where it will also menace Turkey and Jordan.

Political legitimacy – a condition in which the citizenry agrees on the rules of the political game – is a tall order for the two countries in question. Can Iraq survive as a state, even as a confederation? Is there a future for Syria within borders drawn during the colonial era? Surely a stable, peaceful and confederated Iraq is not right around the corner. And for Syria, reconstruction, reform, and reconciliation may be generational undertakings.

No doubt the process of overcoming the conditions that made large swaths of Iraq and Syria safe for Isis will be a long one. The hardships associated with this process will be borne in large measure by Syrians and Iraqis. Yet to admit that the struggle for political legitimacy will be extended is not to say that the battle against Isis must be a multi-year engagement. Indeed, in Syria it must not be, as this deadly combination of al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein loyalists seeks to establish itself in a country where it has no natural constituency. [Continue reading…]

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U.S. shelves its $500M Syrian rebel army — sees Syrian Kurds as a more reliable fighting partner

The Daily Beast reports: The Obama administration is still publicly counting on a $500 million rebel army to beat ISIS in Syria. But privately, the Pentagon brass long ago moved past its own proxy force, The Daily Beast has learned. They’ve found another group to fight the self-proclaimed Islamic State instead.

In recent weeks, the handful of fighters in the administration-backed rebel army — the so-called “New Syrian Force” — have been killed, kidnapped, or fallen off the proverbial radar. But the Pentagon maintained a brave face, even after these 54 fighters (out of what was supposed to be a total of 15,000) were decimated by Islamist attacks. “We continue to see volunteers want to be a part of this program,” Air Force Colonel Pat Ryder, a Defense Department spokesman, told reporters Friday.

It’s a public stance that has left many in the administration and in the defense establishment scratching their heads.

“I don’t understand why we are still training, other than to inoculate criticism. … [The administration] cannot admit it is a complete disaster,” said one senior defense adviser familiar with the U.S. approach. Even after the U.S.-trained fighters vanished, “there was no receptivity to new ideas.”

But what Ryder didn’t say is that, in the eyes of the administration, a better force had emerged — already trained, competent, organized — that posed little risk of abandoning the fight or worse yet, switching sides. They are the Syrian Kurdish militia — the Popular Protection Units or YPG, by their Kurdish initials. And they have successfully wrestled Syrian territory out of ISIS’s hands.

“We knew it would be a challenge but we didn’t expect them to confront the fight they did,” said a second senior defense official, referring to the New Syrian Force. On the other hand, “the YPG is the most effective fighting force in Syria.”

According to one group, the YPG has so far reclaimed at least 11 villages from ISIS, including in the Syrian city of Kobani, one of the biggest victories in the year-long campaign. And in June, the YPG regained control of the Syrian border town of Tal Abyad, cutting off a key ISIS conduit to weapons and supplies. Like the New Syrian Force, the YPG can call in coalition airstrikes as needed.

Along with hoping nascent Arab fighters can take on ISIS, the U.S. is now keen to work alongside as many as 50,000 proven Kurdish fighters. [Continue reading…]

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Turkey is waging a two-front war. Some worry it’s only making things worse

The New York Times reports: The Turkish deal with the United States sets up an “ISIS-free” bombardment zone along a 60-mile strip of the border region [of Syria] that features another exclusion: At Turkey’s request, it is also explicitly a zone free of the Kurdish militia, even though the Kurds had begun advancing toward the area to start battling the Islamic State there.

Despite cooperating with American forces for months, the Syrian Kurds are now starting to worry that their success might not outweigh Turkey’s importance to the United States.

“There is only one group that has consistently and effectively battled ISIS in Syria, and that is the Y.P.G.,” said Redur Khalil, a spokesman for the militia who says it has grown to include 35,000 soldiers, about 11 years after its start as a self-defense force in a single town. “Opening another front in the region — as Turkey has by attacking the P.K.K. — will make the forces fighting ISIS weaker,” Mr. Khalil said. “Which in turn makes ISIS stronger.”

Cale Salih, a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations and the author of numerous articles on Kurdish affairs, summed up the unease over the deal with Turkey this way: “If it comes at the price of the relationship with one of the few effective partners on the ground in Syria, it doesn’t seem to make sense.” [Continue reading…]

The Washington Post reports: Turkey’s decision to move against the Kurds is likely to do more to destabilize the region, some analysts say.

The police dragnet has fostered resentment against authorities in places such as Suruc, where Kurdish families have relatives living on both sides of the border. The United States has looked the other way as Turkey has hit the PKK in Iraq. The U.S. silence on the Turkish operations may hurt its burgeoning alliance with the YPG, whose fighters have proved to be the most effective ground force battling the Islamic State.

“It’s not smart for Turkey to do this,” Aaron Stein, a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East, said of Turkey’s twin military campaigns.

“Opening a two-front air war against insurgents you can’t defeat by air power alone is not smart strategically,” he said. Indeed, the U.S. military says it has launched more than 5,600 strikes on the Islamic State since last August, but the raids have not dislodged the group from its major strongholds. [Continue reading…]

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Ocalan calls on PKK and Ankara to end fighting

Rudaw reports: The jailed leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), Abdullah Ocalan, has called on the PKK and Turkish government to end ongoing clashes and resume negotiations, which were planned to lead to permanent peace in the country.

The Civil Peace Department, a government-backed organization which supervises the peace process between Ankara and the PKK, published a letter written by Ocalan in which the jailed leader slammed the negotiating partners for the “bloodshed.”

“Our (PKK) fighters, leaders of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) and the Turkish government’s officials failed to administer and commit themselves to the peace negotiations,” Ocalan wrote from his prison on Imrali Island in the Sea of Marmara, calling for an immediate ceasefire. [Continue reading…]

Rudaw reports: Recent Turkish airstrikes against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party in northern Iraq have killed 390 PKK members and injured 400, Turkey’s official Anadolu Agency on Sunday quoted unidentified security sources as saying.

“Turkish security sources are claiming to have killed a total of 390 militants from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in a series of recent air strikes against rebel targets in northern Iraq,” the agency said.

“An anonymous security force source also told Anadolu Agency that 400 PKK insurgents were injured in the attacks,” the agency added. [Continue reading…]

Reuters reports: Two women shot at the U.S. consulate in Istanbul on Monday and at least eight people were killed in a wave of separate attacks on Turkish security forces, weeks after Ankara launched a crackdown on Islamic State, Kurdish and far-left militants.

The NATO member has been in a heightened state of alert since starting its “synchronized war on terror” last month, including air strikes against Islamic State fighters in Syria and Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants in northern Iraq. It has also rounded up hundreds of suspected militants at home.

A far-left group that killed a Turkish security guard in a 2013 suicide bombing of the U.S. embassy in Ankara claimed it was involved in Monday’s attack.

The Revolutionary People’s Liberation Army-Front (DHKP-C), considered a terrorist organization by the United States and Turkey, said one of its members was involved in the attack, and called Washington the “arch enemy” of the people of the Middle East and the world. [Continue reading…]

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Al Qaeda in Syria leaves area where Turkey seeks buffer

Reuters reports: The al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front says it has quit frontline positions against Islamic State north of Aleppo and ceded them to other rebels, leaving an area of northern Syria where Turkey wants to set up a buffer zone.

A Nusra Front statement dated Sunday criticized a Turkish-U.S. plan to drive Islamic State from the Syrian-Turkish border area, saying the aim was to serve “Turkey’s national security” rather than the fight against President Bashar al-Assad.

The United States and Turkey last month announced their intention to drive Islamic State from a strip of territory in northern Syria near the Turkish border in a campaign that would provide air cover for Syrian rebels in the area.

Though Nusra is an enemy of Islamic State, its foothold in northern Syria has been a problem for the U.S.-led campaign against the ultra-hardline group. Late last month, Nusra attacked Syrian rebels trained as part of the U.S.-led campaign against Islamic State, calling them agents of U.S. interests. [Continue reading…]

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Is it too late to stop Turkey’s coal rush?

The Guardian reports: The smell is sharp and smoky, with a metallic tinge, and very, very strong. “That,” says Yıldırım Biçici, “is the smell of coal”.

The tea-shop owner’s home is just a couple of hundred metres from a huge, ageing coal-fired power plant in central Turkey, whose red-and-white chimneys spew dirty fumes. Biçici has lived amid the smoke for decades but now finds himself on the frontline of the nation’s new coal rush: the Afşin-Elbistan station is planning to expand into the biggest coal-fired power plant in the world.

Sitting on a little wooden stool in the shabby square of Goğulhan village, Biçici says: “There are warnings on cigarette packets saying don’t smoke, but here we have no choice.” Waving his hand through the pungent air, he says: “We have to smoke.”

Biçici’s mother died of lung cancer – “we figured it was the air pollution” – and his four-year-old daughter Gülbeyaz has chronic bronchitis. “It is so sad, we don’t let her go out even if the weather is nice,” he says.

Turkey has very big plans for coal, with more than 80 new plants in the pipeline, equivalent in capacity to the UK’s entire power sector. The scale of the coal rush is greater than any country on Earth, after China and India. It is pushing forward in a year when the world’s nations must seal a deal to combat climate change at a crunch UN summit in Paris in December and when scientists have warned that 80% of known coal reserves must stay in the ground. [Continue reading…]

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Is Turkey creeping toward civil war?

Der Spiegel reports: Newal Bulut grew up in war, and now she fears it could return. She is a 27-year-old graphic designer from the predominantly Kurdish city of Diyarbakir in eastern Turkey. Sometimes she asks herself whether that night in June, when the pro-Kurdish party HDP won seats in the Turkish parliament thanks in part to Turkish voters, was only a beautiful, ephemeral dream?

Bulut spent several nervous months with Selahattin Demirtas, the co-chairman of the HDP. She applauded at his speeches, and convinced friends and relatives to support the young party leader, who not only promised but also embodied change in Turkish politics. At school and later at university, Bulut saw how friends who had advocated for more rights for Kurds, were arrested as suspected terrorists. She hoped that the HDP’s success in the June 7 election would help Turkey become a peaceful, pluralistic country.
Just two months later, Bulut walks through downtown Diyarbakir, wearing black leggings, dark nail polish and piercings. She strolls past armored police cars as fighter jets roar overhead. Anti-government protesters erected barricades and set cars on fire the night before. The words “Kobane is everywhere” and “Freedom for Öcalan” are spray-painted on walls. “I was naïve,” says Bulut.

The same ritual repeats itself night after night: At around 9 p.m., fighter jets take off from the military base outside the city to conduct air strikes against positions held by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, in northern Iraq, and its offshoots in Syria. Only a few of the air strikes target Islamic State (IS) positions. At the same time, young Kurds are setting downtown Diyarbakir on fire. Where roadblocks are erected, the police respond with water guns and tear gas. But the protesters are not easily deterred. They chant: “This is only the beginning.” In Istanbul and other cities, violent clashes with police have erupted, resulting in injuries and death.

The Kurdish Spring has turned into a hate-filled, violent summer. Many people in Diyarbakir believe that civil war is inevitable. [Continue reading…]

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ISIS woos Kurdish attackers in Turkey

The Wall Street Journal reports: Orhan Gonder was a quiet, studious Kurdish teenager who went out of his way to help people, according to those who knew him in this small Turkish city near the Syrian border.

So when he started frequenting a tea house known as an Islamic State recruiting center last year, his parents went to the police and implored them to detain their son before he could do any harm. On June 5, the 20-year old set off a bomb at a Kurdish political rally in the nearby city of Diyarbakir, killing four people and injuring dozens, officials said.

And two weeks ago, another young Kurd from Adiyaman blew himself up in the middle of a rally of student activists, killing 31 people preparing to go help rebuild Kobani, the Syrian-Kurdish town that overcame a long Islamic State assault in January.

The two attacks exposed a troubling phenomenon: Islamic State appears to be successfully wooing young Turkish Kurds, while their kinsmen in Iraq and Syria — for the most part — are taking up arms against Islamic State. Kurdish militants in Syria, backed by U.S.-led airstrikes, have become the single most effective fighting force on the ground against the extremist group. [Continue reading…]

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Turkey’s Kurdish party leader suspects government instigated Suruc bombing as a pretext for war

Der Spiegel reports: Selahattin Demirtas, 42, co-chairman of the HDP, is widely regarded as the winner of the election in early June. His charismatic demeanor was mainly due to the fact that his People’s Democratic Party (HDP) received 13 percent of the popular vote, becoming the first Kurdish party to win a mandate in Turkey’s parliament and deny the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) an absolute majority. For an interview, Demirtas received SPIEGEL in his parliamentary party’s new offices in Ankara. The room is large and bright and his desk is flanked by both the Turkish flag and that of his party.

SPIEGEL: Mr. Demirtas, your success two months ago gave hope to many people in- and outside of Turkey, who hailed it as a milestone for democracy. But today, the country threatens to return to civil war-like conditions. How could it come to this?

Demirtas: The AKP, the party of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has brought about this situation deliberately. Until the elections in June, they had ruled Turkey unilaterally for more than a decade. But they weren’t able to block our ascent to power any longer, so they opted to foment chaos in the country instead. This is the only possible explanation for their war against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

SPIEGEL: You go so far as to claim that the attack by the terrorist militia Islamic State in Suruc, in which 32 people were killed, was instigated by the government as a pretext for armed conflict. Do you have any proof?

Demirtas: If by that you mean documents that prove that the state was involved then, no, we don’t. But there are clear indications. Our research suggests that this attack by IS was made possible by the AKP government, which for years tolerated the extremists’ activities in Turkey. [Continue reading…]

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Kurdish party chief dismisses Turkey anti-ISIS airstrikes as a ‘show’

AFP reports: The co-leader of Turkey’s main Kurdish party on Thursday dismissed air strikes and police raids by Ankara against Islamic State (IS) jihadists as a “show”, saying their real target was Kurdish militants.

In an interview with Agence France-Presse, Selahattin Demirtas of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) said the peace process between Turkey and Kurdish militants was now “in deep crisis” due to the offensive by Ankara against the separatist rebels but insisted it should not be written off.

Turkey has launched a two-pronged offensive against IS jihadists and Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants but the strikes against the Kurdish rebels have been far the more frequent and intense.

Demirtas accused the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of using strikes against IS as “cover” for its main goal of striking the PKK and weakening the HDP’s major electoral gains.

“A few air raids were launched by Turkey against IS targets for show only and it is over,” he said.

“So-called IS suspects were detained with a few operations for show and most of them were released,” he said.

According to figures from the Turkish government, around one tenth of those arrested in raids against suspected militants were IS-linked and the rest largely Kurdish. [Continue reading…]

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