{"id":27840,"date":"2015-10-22T23:30:20","date_gmt":"2015-10-22T23:30:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/?p=27840"},"modified":"2015-10-22T23:30:20","modified_gmt":"2015-10-22T23:30:20","slug":"turkey-how-far-can-it-muddle-along","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/turkey-how-far-can-it-muddle-along\/","title":{"rendered":"Turkey- how far can it muddle along?"},"content":{"rendered":"
The greater the need for Turkey to make reasoned strategic adjustments to its Syria policy, the more befuddled its policies have become.<\/p>\n
With the geopolitical realities in the region changing rapidly, Turkey\u2019s rationale and rhetoric are remaining roughly the same. Only the jargon seems to be changing.<\/p>\n
Nowadays, the new buzz-word is \u201ccocktail\u201d.<\/p>\n
Not surprisingly, the first one to coin the phrase was the Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, the architect of an earlier, now discredited, buzz-word \u201czero problems with neighbours\u201d.<\/p>\n
Mr Davutoglu blamed<\/a> the 10th<\/sup> of October massacre in Ankara on both the PKK and ISIS. \u201cWe became the target of a cocktail terrorism,\u201d he said.<\/a><\/p>\n A week and a lot of incriminating evidence of intelligence and security failures later, President Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan has reiterated the \u201ccocktail\u201d theory.<\/p>\n Except, this time, he added a few more ingredients to the mixture.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Ankara bombing is a collective terrorist act, in which Daesh [ISIS], the PKK [Kurdistan Workers\u2019 Party], the Mukhabarat [Syria\u2019s military intelligence] and the PYD [Democratic Union Party] in northern Syria each played a role,\u201d Erdo\u011fan said.<\/a><\/p>\n A few days earlier, a top level official gave an off-the-record briefing to some leading journalists in Istanbul.<\/p>\n The Yeni Safak columnist Ali Bayramoglu was there. From his account <\/a>of the briefing, we have learnt that ISIS was also seen by the government as a \u201csuccessful project by Iran\u201d.<\/p>\n All of these cocktail variations were before the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union party (PYD) delegation met Russian officials in Moscow to discuss opening a representative office there.<\/p>\n