Turkey implicated in Islamic State terrorism
The ultra-reactionary movement Daech (known as the Islamic State) on 20 July targeted the cultural centre of Amara in the city of Suruc in Turkey. Amara hosted a meeting of 300 young Kurdish leftists, members of the Federation of Socialist Youth Associations (SGDF, by its initials in Turkish), who were preparing to go to Kobani, Syria, to participate in its reconstruction.
These young revolutionaries had left Istanbul the day before the terrorist attack, to present themselves as “children of Gezi”, children of the protest movement that began in Istanbul in June 2013. In a video of their campaign, a socialist youth of the SGDF said:
“We will plant 500 trees in the name of revolutionaries who were killed in the resistance against the Islamic State in Kobani. We will also plant fruit trees in the name of Berkin Elvan [who was killed during the Gezi protests at the age of 15], reconstruct the war museum in Kobani, rebuild the library and nursery at the cultural centre, build a playground, and join the cleaning efforts in the city centre.”
These young people were bringing books, toys, clothes and young trees to plant. The terrorist attack caused the death of more than 30 and injured hundreds. Meanwhile, Daech also attacked Kobani at the same moment.
These new, barbaric crimes of Daech come in addition to the numerous crimes and massacres of the ultra fundamentalist movement in Iraq and Syria and also across the Middle East region and North Africa. Its totalitarian and reactionary project targets all the peoples of the region without exception. In Syria, Daech has particularly attacked and targeted Syrian revolutionaries.
This terrorist attack must nevertheless be understood as a consequence of AKP [Justice and Development Party] government policies, in collaboration with the Turkish “deep state” dominated by the Turkish military command, since the beginning of the revolutionary processes in the region in late 2010 and early 2011.
These two reactionary forces have steadily come to a rapprochement and collaboration in recent years, despite significant opposition between the two actors when AKP reached power in 2002, as we have seen during the Gezi protests in the summer of 2013.
In addition to this, the strengthening of the authoritarianism of the AKP’s government in the past last years: multiplication of draconian laws and others giving more weight to security and police forces; violent repression of popular movements such as the Gezi protests in 2013, Gay Pride, May Day and labour strikes; use of sectarian rhetoric against Alevis [a branch of Islam]; conservative and reactionary discourses against women, notably president Recep Erdoğan stating that gender equality is against nature; corruption; and strengthening the hold of the executive over the judiciary and other manipulations of the judiciary – especially when four Turkish senior prosecutors, who had instigated corruption investigations against AKP high personalities in the winter of 2013 and 2014, were removed from office for disciplinary reasons.
As highlighted rightly by numerous Turkish progressive activists, it is also strange that the Turkish army – so effective at turning away Syrian civilians fleeing the bombing of the Assad regime or attacks from Daech – are unable to provide security to a gathering of 300 people in a cultural centre. Moreover, the buses of young socialists were followed from Istanbul by plainclothes police.
Also, the governor of Urfa in June ordered a stop to journalists who asked him questions about the presence of members of Daech in his city. The Turkish police in Istanbul also repressed the demonstrations in solidarity with the victims of Suruc on the same evening of the terrorist attack.
The AKP government has actually supported in Syria Islamists and jihadists against Syrian and Kurdish democratic forces of the revolution. For example, the leader of the army of Islam Zahran Alloush – located in the countryside of Damascus and guilty of numerous exactions against Syrian activists and the kidnapping of revolutionaries such as Razan Zaytouneh – was able to visit Istanbul without any problem to get to a conference of clerics.
The Turkish government has gone blind to the passage of jihadists to Syria from Turkey, turning the latter into a transit zone for jihadists from around the world. Collaborations between the Turkish army and some Islamist and jihadist groups were also discovered.
In May, former prosecutor of the Adana region, Bagriyanik Suleyman, and his deputies Ozcan Sisman, Aziz Takci and Ahmet Karaca, were arrested by the Turkish authorities and appeared before the Adana court. Former colonel Ozkan Cokay was also arrested. The four prosecutors were transferred and suspended after having ordered the search of several trucks and buses in the provinces of Adana and Hatay, bordering Syria, in January 2014. They suspected them of smuggling arms and ammunition to Syria.
In the autumn of 2014, when Daech was besieging the town of Kobani, causing the departure of about 200,000 people, the AKP government refused to help the Kurds or to allow PKK [Kurdistan Workers’ Party] fighters to cross the border to fight the jihadists. During this period, tents to accommodate refugees were destroyed and a human chain of peace activists along the border was attacked with tear gas at Kobani.
President Erdoğan said that the PKK was worse than the terrorists of Daech. The Turkish authorities imposed at this time a curfew for the first time since 1992 in six provinces in the predominantly Kurdish regions. This followed large demonstrations by members of the Kurdish people against the AKP government.
The main goal was and is for the AKP government to prevent any form of autonomy of the Kurdish people in Syria, while supporting fundamentalist movements in Syria which have ideological and political affinities with and connections to the central government in Istanbul and which are hostile to any form of autonomy for the Kurdish people.
These policies, and the chauvinistic discourse of Erdoğan, make difficult any continuation of the peace process begun with the PKK in 2013.
During the last legislative election campaign, the HDP [People’s Democratic Party], which achieved a historic vote of 13.1 percent and obtained 80 deputies, was also the target of many aggressive intimidations by the AKP and particularly of the president. There also were physical attacks by Turkish far right nationalist movements and bomb attacks against election meetings of HDP.
This party, which is majority composed of and based in the Kurdish population, has managed to broaden its appeal beyond the Kurdish population (20 percent of the population in Turkey) by pursuing a democratic and progressive political program that recognises the Armenian genocide, defends the rights of LGBTQI people (it has the first openly gay member of parliament) and defends the rights of religious and ethnic minorities. More than 40 percent of its elected deputies are women.
The Turkish state historically has discriminated and repressed the Kurdish people, whose identity is still in many ways denied despite some advances, whether on the cultural, socio-economic and political level.
In this context, the movement of the PKK and its members have been criminalised. There are more than 8,000 Kurdish political prisoners in Turkey. It is necessary to condemn the PKK’s inclusion on the lists of terrorist organisations, such as the EU list – although the PKK is not above criticism.
The AKP government and the Turkish “deep state” dominated by the military have a responsibility for this barbaric massacre committed by Daech. That is why we oppose these two actors. These two reactionary forces have to be combated in order to hope for a radical change in Turkey and to move towards greater democracy, social justice and equality for all popular classes in Turkey, for the right to self-determination of the Kurdish people in Turkey (as well as in Syria, Iraq and Iran) and the recognition of the Armenian genocide and other popular causes.
[First published at InternationalViewpoint.org. Edited for length.]
