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.<\/p>\n
Monday\u2019s suicide bombing near Turkey\u2019s 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\u2019s consciousness.<\/p>\n
At the mass funeral ceremony \u00a0\u00a0in the south-eastern city of Gaziantep, there was as much anger as grief. The usual condemnations and clich\u00e9s about \u201cterror having no religion or creed\u201d did not wash.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s Party\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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 Suru\u00e7 ordered a news blackout and blocked internet access to the images of death and destructon. Twitter was banned for several hours.<\/p>\n
The Prime Minister, infamous for his earlier sympathy for \u201cthe angry young followers\u201d 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\u2019s extensive secret service network regarding the security risks near the Syrian border went unanswered. Increasingly sharper criticism of the AKP government\u2019s policies and its ambiguous approach towards Islamist militancy in Syria continued to be ignored.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s style state violence against the Kurds.<\/p>\n
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\u2019 Democratic Party HDP before the June election, were blamed on the PKK.<\/p>\n
At the time of writing, the leader of the HDP, Selahattin Demirtas has already condemned the murders of the two policemen, saying \u201cblood cannot be washed with more blood\u201d but there was yet no clear response to the PKK statement.<\/p>\n
I can only hope that they will, urgently and without reservation, distance themselves from this new spiral of violence.<\/p>\n
President Erdogan, the AKP and their loyal supporters must have realized by now how damaging their power games have been for the country.<\/p>\n
We are fast approaching the point of no return in Turkey. If there ever was an existential threat to the country, it is today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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\u2019s suicide bombing near Turkey\u2019s border with Syria which killed 32 people and injured 100 others has sparked a public outrage. Most […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[4],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27752"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27752"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27752\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27754,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27752\/revisions\/27754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}