We had a very grave, very annoying incident in Turkey last week. The mother of Aysel Tuğluk, a deputy of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), passed away, and while her body was being buried in Ankara, a group of fascist provocateurs attempted to sabotage the funeral and prevent the body from being buried in that cemetery.
This incident has to be shared in a correct way, because as far as I can see, the Western media is cutting corners to attribute what has happened to politicians.
Let us start with what happened when there was a provocation.
Tuğluk was immediately released from prison with the permission of the Ministry of Interior, (why she was detained is a subject of another article and discussion), and was allowed to stay at her house for two days. This is not a routine practice, given that prisoners who attend the funeral of their relatives return to prison on the same day, but Tuğluk was granted a privilege.
Later on, a group of fascist provocateurs at the cemetery started shouting slogans such as "We will not allow the burial of PKK members in a Turkish cemetery," and continued with verbal assault consisting of discriminatory and disgusting expressions and hate speech. Then, other HDP deputies, including Sırrı Süreyya Önder, Pervin Buldan and Sırrı Sakık, who were at the funeral, called Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu and informed him of the incident.
The minister rushed to the scene and contacted the governor and the police in a short time. The cemetery was checked, those who were found to be involved in the incident were detained, and the interior minister examined and scrutinized footage of the incident for hours at a police station. The following morning, state officials at all levels, from the president and prime minister to the minister of justice, made statements condemning the incident. Interior Minister Soylu, whom I interviewed on the same day, told me that they were investigating all kinds of connections the provocateurs might have.
In short, the government did not do anything like whitewashing the event or not reacting to it, but reacted to the contrary. Then, a photo of one of the provocateurs and the interior minister was put forth in an attempt to create a perception as if the minister had been protecting these people. However, he had taken photos with the crowd surrounding him at the police station in the heat of the moment that night, and when the incident started to unfold later, he ensured the detention of that person in the photo.
In Turkey's tradition and codes, before anything else, respect for a funeral is a very internalized pattern of behavior. On the other hand, such open racism is not specific to this territory. The reason why such an odd thing happened just before the independence referendum in Irbil makes me think that it could have been intentionally organized.
In other words, some deep elements in the state coming from the past could have interfered with the people, provoked them and fueled this incident. This is because some events that have taken place one after another in recent days seem to be very favorable for the powers that will want to create chaos in Turkey.
It was reported just yesterday that a number of people stoned a group of Armenians in Istanbul, shouting, "death for you." This seems an effort to move different fault lines. The West needs to see this as well. There are considerable powers in the Middle East that will want to initiate a civil war or at least ignite the fuse of chaos in Turkey. For that reason, we should get to the root of events and not surrender to propaganda. As a matter of fact, Turkey being destabilized in the already chaotic region will bring things to a further impasse.