The brutal attack in Suruc on Monday and the killing of two policemen in the town of Ceylanpinar on Wednesday, have brought the already deeply divided country to the edge of the precipice.
Monday’s suicide bombing near Turkey’s border with Syria which killed 32 people and injured 100 others has sparked a public outrage. Most of the dead were university students, preparing to cross the border to take aid to the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobane. Their cold blooded murder will leave an indelible mark in nation’s consciousness.
At the mass funeral ceremony in the south-eastern city of Gaziantep, there was as much anger as grief. The usual condemnations and clichés about “terror having no religion or creed” did not wash.
Flags that were lowered back in January after the death of the Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz did not come down for the young activists killed in Suruc. The Republican People’s Party’s call for a three-day long period of national mourning fell on deaf ears. President Erdogan did not see it prudent to cut short his trip to Northern Cyprus either.
In Istanbul and other cities, indignation turned into anti-government demonstrations. Authorities responded in their usual style. Police used tear gas and water cannon to disperse protestors. A court in Suruç ordered a news blackout and blocked internet access to the images of death and destructon. Twitter was banned for several hours.
The Prime Minister, infamous for his earlier sympathy for “the angry young followers” of ISIS, pointed the finger at the organisation this time, saying that it was highly probable that ISIS has targeted Turkey. Questions about the incompetence or the ignorance of Turkey’s extensive secret service network regarding the security risks near the Syrian border went unanswered. Increasingly sharper criticism of the AKP government’s policies and its ambiguous approach towards Islamist militancy in Syria continued to be ignored.
Hours later, The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) claimed responsibility for the assassination of two police officers in Ceylanpinar. Their statement was truly alarming. The PKK said they killed the policemen in retaliation for the Suruc bombing.
The pro-government media and trolls that chose to downplay the massacre in Suruc instantly found their voice. There were calls for revenge and the return of the 1990’s style state violence against the Kurds.
Sure enough, within minutes, almost every act of terrorism that took place in Turkey during the past few months, including the bomb attacks targeting the Kurdish affiliated Peoples’ Democratic Party HDP before the June election, were blamed on the PKK.
At the time of writing, the leader of the HDP, Selahattin Demirtas has already condemned the murders of the two policemen, saying “blood cannot be washed with more blood” but there was yet no clear response to the PKK statement.
I can only hope that they will, urgently and without reservation, distance themselves from this new spiral of violence.
President Erdogan, the AKP and their loyal supporters must have realized by now how damaging their power games have been for the country.
We are fast approaching the point of no return in Turkey. If there ever was an existential threat to the country, it is today.
This post is also available in: Turkish
krmcn says
No, Firdevs Hanim, I’m afraid that Erdogan believes that things are coming together perfectly. Bombing PKK, closing down HDP, more jailings, no Parliament to interfere with anything he does. What could be better if you’re him? (Please don’t say a functioning democracy; it would put him in jail.)