Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s Secretary of State, later sent a telegram of condolence in Pope Francis’s name to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan following two bombings.
Advertisement
But if his supporters will die for him, his opponents hate him.
Thousands marched through the southeastern city of Diyarbakir the same day; almost 1,000 in Mersin in the south; 500 in Bursa in the west. Other solidarity rallies included 1,000 in Toronto and 500 in Paris.
The soldiers were killed in clashes with Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants in Daglica, in the province of Hakkari, where six others were wounded. If the polls are to be believed, Turkey is headed for the exact same result in November, and this time it will come with the added pressure of more bad blood between the AKP and HDP, more pressure from the government on journalists, a reinvigoration of the government’s war against the Gülenists, and conspiracy theories about the bombing flying fast and furious. His refusal to intercede in the conflict to prevent the bloodshed appalled his conservative Kurdish base, driving them away from the AKP.
What is more, it is not only the Kurds that the AKP and its unquestioned leader Erdogan have alienated. They now join a growing list of other groups that have suffered: liberals, leftists and Alevis (who belong to a liberal branch of Islam). Moreover, as I have alluded to above, the quest of the Kurds for the full recognition of their identity and rights, especially in the context of the developments in Iraq and Syria, is in the long-run irreversible.
Erdogan’s government and the PKK, which had fought Ankara’s oppression for decades, reached a cease-fire agreement in 2013.
Now that appears unlikely. Three among them – who were detained due to suspicious posts on Twitter – were later released.
“President [Tayyip Erdogan] and Prime Minister…every speech you make causes people to hate one another”. And he had the final say in determining party leadership at the AKP’s convention last month. Given the country’s deep divisions, the only way out is for Erdogan to return to the powers defined for his office by the Turkish constitution: a non-partisan president who is not in charge of government.
Turkey is the main point of entry to Syria for IS recruits.
The twin blast has already become the deadliest in Turkey’s history, claiming the lives of at least 102 people and leaving hundreds more injured. In my opinion, in all these situations, in the actions of Russian Federation, I am deeply convinced of this, there was no trace of the Turkish factor. The attack is understood to be the deadliest of its kind in Turkey. After the temporary ban, Twitter, Facebook, and several other social media sites were also inaccessible throughout Turkey. Kurdish groups have also spearheaded effective counterterrorism against the Islamic State.
How could Turkey’s massive secret police, and in turn government, not have known when seemingly all of the Turkish media knew?
Advertisement
If that same government has been unable to bring the perpetrators of previous attacks, i.e. the terrorist attacks in HDP′s Diyarbakir rally in June 2015, or the Suruc massacre of July 2015, to justice? The flow of jihadists and supplies allows ISIS to pursue its barbaric effort to build and protect a new state on the territory of Turkey’s neighbors. While no group has taken credit for the bombings, they were nearly certainly the work of ISIS and deliberately targeted Kurdish political parties at the rally, so this is the latest in the never-ending fallout from the fight for Kobani earlier this year.
