If anyone doubted how big and numerous the challenges faced by Turkey are, the Wednesday\u2019s suicide bomb attack in Ankara should have been a real eye-opener. The fifth terrorist attack in less than a year, it has claimed at least 28 lives in the administrative heart of the capital.<\/p>\n
Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu blamed<\/a> the Ankara bombing on the YPG, \u00a0armed wing of the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party PYD.\u00a0 But he also pointed the finger at the Syrian regime as well as Russia. He has claimed that the PKK and its Syrian sister organisation PYD were the agents or pawns of the Russian and Syrian regimes, used against Turkey.<\/p>\n Turkey\u2019s main NATO ally, the United States, has had its fair share of criticism from the Prime Minister for supporting the PYD in its fight against ISIS, too. \u201cTurkey cannot excuse any NATO ally, including the U.S. of having links with a terrorist organization that strikes us in the heart of Turkey,\u201d Davutoglu said.<\/p>\n The Syrian Kurds deny involvement in the Ankara attack. Russia, too, rejects any connection with terrorist activities. Both the YPG and al-Assad regime claim that Turkey is looking to create an excuse to start an offensive against Syria.<\/p>\n Turkey said it had evidence to show that the attack was carried out by the YPG and it was presented to the ambassadors in Ankara. So far, the US has found the evidence inconclusive. If off-the-record briefings are anything to go by, Turkey did not manage to convince the other countries, either.<\/p>\n It is beyond doubt that Turkey is facing multiple threats and severe challenges both inside and outside its borders and they are real.<\/p>\n All of its adversaries, from the illegal armed organization PKK to Syria\u2019s president al-Assad regime, are already renowned for their brutality and unlikely to attract much sympathy.<\/p>\n No other country felt the negative impact of the Syrian war more than Turkey, nor shouldered such a heavy burden. Even those highly critical of Turkey\u2019s foreign policy acknowledge that.<\/p>\n True, Turkey has made mistakes in Syria. It did not comprehend the enormous complexity of the crisis, especially in the beginning. It assumed the conflict would end within months and that displacement of refugees would be temporary. But these mistakes were not made solely by Turkey. You only need to read the latest independent evaluation report<\/a> on Britain\u2019s Department for International Development (DfID) to see how common and widespread these mistakes were in early days of the Syrian crisis.<\/p>\n So, why then, Turkey is singled out for its shortcomings? What is the reason for Turkey to become more isolated than ever? Why can it not demonstrate to the world that it has a case and it deserves to get the support it needs?<\/p>\n As Amberin Zaman, of the Washington DC based Wilson Centre, explained in her recent article<\/a> in Foreign Policy<\/a>, the PKK fighters have frequently targeted army convoys and because of that, they could not be ruled out as a suspect in the latest Ankara bombing.<\/p>\n Besides, Turkey is not wrong to claim that the PYD is a PKK franchise in Syria. There are also splinter groups, such as TAK, who are perfectly capable of executing such an attack, especially when you consider Turkey\u2019s well-documented intelligence failures.<\/p>\n I have no inside information in order to be able to comment on the reliability of Turkey\u2019s evidence, but I can only guess that the swift rejection by some and the strong doubts expressed by others, had something to do with Turkey crying wolf before.<\/p>\n The 10th<\/sup> of October 2015 bomb attack outside Ankara\u2019s train station, killing more than 100 people, was initially blamed on the PKK, too. Like the earlier suicide bomb in Suruc and later in Istanbul\u2019s Sultanahmet Square, where the PKK was mentioned as the likeliest culprit, it turned out to be an attack attributed to ISIS.<\/p>\n As in the previous atrocities, the Turkish government imposed a media blackout minutes after the Ankara attack. It took a while to find out what the officially acceptable narrative would be.<\/p>\n With the country\u2019s independent media under heavy pressure and censorship, its judiciary tightly controlled by the government and its Parliament effectively sidelined, is it any wonder that any statement made by Turkey\u2019s leaders is met by suspicion?<\/p>\n Because, by now, the lack of transparency concerning the government\u2019s Syria policy is very well known internationally. Two journalists, Can Dundar and Erdem Gul from the independent Cumhuriyet newspaper have been in jail for 86 days, for publishing documents alleging that Turkey\u2019s secret service had sent arms to Islamist fighters in Syria. They have been charged with spying, with the Prosecutor seeking aggravated life sentences against them.<\/p>\n Yet, only this week, the Financial Times has reported<\/a> that at least 400 Islamist fighters backed by Turkey had entered Syria in a region contested by the YPG. Agence France-Presse said<\/a> at least 500 rebels, all of them armed, crossed the Turkish border on February 17. Some Turkish TV stations showed it with pride.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s not kid ourselves. Today, Turkey\u2019s government suffers from a serious credibility problem.<\/p>\n It is seen as unaccountable inside and unpredictable outside. At a time when it genuinely needs its friends and allies, it has nobody but itself to blame for not being believable anymore.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If anyone doubted how big and numerous the challenges faced by Turkey are, the Wednesday\u2019s suicide bomb attack in Ankara should have been a real eye-opener. The fifth terrorist attack in less than a year, it has claimed at least 28 lives in the administrative heart of the capital. Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu blamed the […]<\/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\/27982"}],"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=27982"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27982\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27984,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27982\/revisions\/27984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}