Daily Times

Turkey has been victim to a wave of unrest, and the reasons for that are somewhat complicated. The latest deadly attack, which was on a wedding “in a conservative Kurdish neighbourhood in the city of Gaziantep, near the Syrian border,” has reportedly left 50 dead and many more injured. President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan raised his finger towards IS saying that the militant Islamic group is the most likely perpetrator. It would not be surprising if that turns out to be true since Turkey, being a member of NATO, is a partner in the western coalition against IS, and it even allows the US to use its airfields for attacks on IS militants in Syria and Iraq. Moreover, President Erdogan has claimed that the attacker was likely to be a child between the age of 12 and 14 years. This is deplorable to say the least, and is a reiteration of the fact that these militant groups have forsaken all moral considerations in their drive to spread violence and chaos.

An important detail of this latest attack is that the majority of its victims were Kurds. The resistance movement led by the Kurds against the IS has made them one of the principal targets of IS brutality. However, as far as the Kurds’ relationship with the Turkish state is concerned, it can be considered ambivalent at best, as historically Turkey has always had problems controlling the sentiment of Kurdish separatism.

The Kurds pan along the borders of Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran, and there has always remained an aspiration for a separate Kurdish state in certain segments of the Kurdish population. In the early days of the Turkish republics, there were obvious difficulties in absorbing the Kurdish population within the newly created definition of Turkish nationalism. The response was a complete negation of Kurdish culture and forceful conformity to the strictly defined Turkish culture.

At present, Turkey has declared the Kurdish separatist party, Kurdistan Workers’ Party, better known by its acronym PKK, as a terrorist organisation, and wants it along with the supporters of the US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen — who Erdogan alleges to be behind the attempted coup — to be pinned in the same group as the IS. All of this muddies the position of Turkey even further. While the Iraqi Kurds have been instrumental in pushing back the IS, they are obviously irked by Turkey’s targeting of PKK. Moreover, both Erdogan’s Justice and Development party (AKP) and Gulen’s Hizmet movement are moderately Islamic, and so clustering the latter with IS is deeply problematic to say the least, and goes to show Erdogan’s willingness to conflate his enemies without regard to their internal differences.

Ever since the failed coup attempt, Turkey is turning increasingly authoritative. Heavy-handed treatment of journalists and academics by the Turkish state, and the hunt for all those linked with Gulen has put pushed aside all democratic and liberal values. However, the muted response by the world, particularly the West, is because Turkey is greatly important for them given the current refugee crisis. Turkey’s strategic position as the main land link between Middle East and Europe means that Erdogan has a big bargaining chip with the western leaders. But, as long as Turkey remains a democratic republic, it is hoped that this authoritative trend would be reversed.*