Turkey and global terror
Both DAESH and the PKK are targeting Turkey's national security. They sequentially perpetrate terror attacks in the country using similar methods
Turkey is under threat from systematic and global terror for the first time. The PKK and DAESH are attacking Turkey one after the other as if they nourish each other. It is impossible to think these attacks are independent from the Syrian civil war and plans to redraw the map of the Middle East.
When the Syrian civil war began changing all balances of power in the entirety of the region and re-determining the Middle East, it escalated into a power struggle in the strictest sense of the word. The parties that take part in this struggle are ambiguous as various states and their formal intelligence services and terror organizations are involved in the Syrian war, which has also given rise to the emergence of various groups. Terrorist organizations that do not act in their own right and organizations that are shaped by intelligence services and are used as a trump card by great powers, armed groups and soldiers are all intermingled with each other. This has led to the emergence of many grey areas in Syria. Therefore, any incident cannot be attributed to a single player or reason.
The suicide bombing that took place in Istanbul on Saturday is a terrorist attack of this kind. The perpetrator of the attack was a Turkish terrorist named Mehmet Öztürk who had ties with DAESH. When the attack occurred, a common idea was that it was masterminded by the PKK, which carried out a terrible suicide bombing in Ankara last week. There were rumors circulating that the PKK was planning treacherous acts over the weekend. However, this time DAESH is responsible for the attack that killed three Israelis and an Iranian.
First, let us note that it is becoming increasingly impossible to talk about the attack styles of terrorist organizations. They imitate each other's methods and become increasingly the same. The PKK did not use suicide bombers in the past, but it uses them now and tends toward similar goals.
The second striking point is that so far DAESH has claimed responsibility for all attacks it carried out outside Turkey, not for its attacks in Suruç, Ankara, Istanbul's Sultanahmet and now Taksim.
Third, DAESH has drawn attention by not attacking Israel so far - a topic that the media has addressed for a long time. Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon was asked this question. Although he said that they did not want to open a new battlefront and indicated that they are afraid, these were obviously populist statements. The organization targeted neither Israel nor Israelis clearly and directly. This being the case, what does DAESH's attack near a group of Israeli tourists in Istanbul mean? Is it a coincidence, or does it point to a strategy shift?
Obviously, these are efforts to destabilize Turkey and harm its economy. This cannot be thought as separate from the objective of keeping Turkey away from the Syria peace negotiations. The PKK, along with the Democratic Union Party (PYD), is increasingly becoming a proxy organization and a pawn of international forces as it hopes to gain footing in Syria. How else can we explain the PKK's attempts to drag Turkey into a civil war and return to the period when Nevruz celebrations were banned instead of maintaining the reconciliation process even though Ankara waged many political struggles to resolve the Kurdish question and the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) increased its votes up to 13 percent at one point?
When the Syrian civil war began changing all balances of power in the entirety of the region and re-determining the Middle East, it escalated into a power struggle in the strictest sense of the word. The parties that take part in this struggle are ambiguous as various states and their formal intelligence services and terror organizations are involved in the Syrian war, which has also given rise to the emergence of various groups. Terrorist organizations that do not act in their own right and organizations that are shaped by intelligence services and are used as a trump card by great powers, armed groups and soldiers are all intermingled with each other. This has led to the emergence of many grey areas in Syria. Therefore, any incident cannot be attributed to a single player or reason.
The suicide bombing that took place in Istanbul on Saturday is a terrorist attack of this kind. The perpetrator of the attack was a Turkish terrorist named Mehmet Öztürk who had ties with DAESH. When the attack occurred, a common idea was that it was masterminded by the PKK, which carried out a terrible suicide bombing in Ankara last week. There were rumors circulating that the PKK was planning treacherous acts over the weekend. However, this time DAESH is responsible for the attack that killed three Israelis and an Iranian.
First, let us note that it is becoming increasingly impossible to talk about the attack styles of terrorist organizations. They imitate each other's methods and become increasingly the same. The PKK did not use suicide bombers in the past, but it uses them now and tends toward similar goals.
The second striking point is that so far DAESH has claimed responsibility for all attacks it carried out outside Turkey, not for its attacks in Suruç, Ankara, Istanbul's Sultanahmet and now Taksim.
Third, DAESH has drawn attention by not attacking Israel so far - a topic that the media has addressed for a long time. Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon was asked this question. Although he said that they did not want to open a new battlefront and indicated that they are afraid, these were obviously populist statements. The organization targeted neither Israel nor Israelis clearly and directly. This being the case, what does DAESH's attack near a group of Israeli tourists in Istanbul mean? Is it a coincidence, or does it point to a strategy shift?
Obviously, these are efforts to destabilize Turkey and harm its economy. This cannot be thought as separate from the objective of keeping Turkey away from the Syria peace negotiations. The PKK, along with the Democratic Union Party (PYD), is increasingly becoming a proxy organization and a pawn of international forces as it hopes to gain footing in Syria. How else can we explain the PKK's attempts to drag Turkey into a civil war and return to the period when Nevruz celebrations were banned instead of maintaining the reconciliation process even though Ankara waged many political struggles to resolve the Kurdish question and the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) increased its votes up to 13 percent at one point?