We were in Strasbourg between Jan. 25 and Jan. 29 to attend the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) meetings. Turkey has increased its contribution to the budgets of the Council of Europe and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) by 200 percent, lending much needed help to these key organizations and at the same time obtaining the right to have 18 seats in the council, of which it is a founding member.
The Council of Europe is an important and influential organization with legislative, executive and judicial branches. Its influence results from member states' obligation to comply with its decisions and the supremacy of ECtHR rulings over national legislations. As the council draws on common values from the wider European region, which has a population of 820 million, and as it helps these values to be accumulated and maintained, it wields more established influence.
Democracy is like a delicate, hard-to-keep-alive but wonderful flower. It needs constant care and protection.
URGENT TASK: KREMLINOLOGY
When PACE President Pedro Agramunt's predecessor Anne Brasseur's book, "Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law Know no Borders and Never Should," you see the hectic efforts she and her staff had launched during her presidency. Of course, Brasseur did not write this book to give the message that she had not sat idle, but had done many things. She sincerely writes about her failures - maybe she does not even think of this.
Naturally, the top priority during Brasseur's presidency, and probably during that of Agramunt, was Ukraine. Russia's annexation of Crimea and destructive activities of Russian-backed armed groups in eastern Ukraine have long annoyed Europe and are likely to irk it some more. Brasseur rightfully says: "If you asked me the three priorities for the Council of Europe today, I would have to reply: Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine."
Russia's violation of the fundamental principle of the council against the "forceful change of borders" has necessarily become a top priority. But what kind of method would bring a result? The Council of Europe passively watching this invasion and thuggery, passing it off with hackneyed and ineffectual condemnations would both damage its legitimacy and harm the values it is meant to protect. After all, how could we be secure in a world where the mighty expand their borders with impunity? In fact, two of the key aspects of our civilization are the right to property and, in the context of states, respecting national borders.
The council did not expel Russia, but chose instead to keep it inside the organization, gave strong messages about the unacceptability of its invasion and adopted a series of sanctions. Indeed, as it was in 2015, the credentials of the Russian delegation were approved again during the sessions in 2016. But Russia's suspension of collaboration with PACE has brought about and will continue to bring huge problems in solving issues through negotiations and peace.
Describing the above as a typical security-obsessed military assessment would be simplistic, as the Ukrainian crisis, thought of along with today's crisis in Syria, points to a rather serious rupture.
TELL ME THE OLD OLD STORY
In short, we have two big fault lines: of the Syrian civil war and Ukraine. The actor that can trigger both fault lines is Russia. Can Russia's presence in Syria, which goes beyond a proxy war and targets mostly civilians and Syrian opposition instead of DAESH, with 70 percent of Russian airstrikes targeting opposition forces and only 30 percent targeting DAESH, be an attempt to misdirect the world about Ukraine, concealing a possible scenario following its involvement in Syria? In other words, Russia may be trying to play for time by diverting attention from an approaching massive war in Ukraine to the war in Syria and to its U.S.-approved role there. Of course, it is also useful to note the difficulties Russian President Vladimir Putin is facing at home.
Are we really faced with the risk of a third world war? This potential risk cannot be viewed as a secondary issue to speculate on. Is the historic mistake made by the fateful appeasement policy of Stalin and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain toward Hitler repeated once more?
U.S. President Barack Obama's relations with both Russia and the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and PKK resemble the atmosphere before World War II a lot. Currently in Turkey's southeast, soldiers, police and civilians are killed by PKK snipers and weapons brought from Kobani, Syria. As we know, the U.S. airdropped weapons to the PYD's armed People's Protection Units (YPG) in Kobani. Some of these weapons have ended up in the hands of DAESH and some in the hands of the PYD/YPG forces operating under the umbrella of the Kurdish Communities Union (KCK). The PYD is a terrorist organization directly formed by the PKK and is currently managed from PKK headquarters based in the Qandil Mountains of Northern Iraq. And now, these groups are trying to do in Turkey's southeast, just what the Russian-backed groups are doing in eastern Ukraine.
I have an old issue of The Independent from the 1980s. Its headline reads: "Anti-Soviet warrior puts his army on the road to peace." Guess who is pictured on the page? Osama Bin Laden. Bin Laden is lauded by the newspaper as a "Saudi businessman supports mujahedeen fighting the [pro-Soviet] Afghan government." And yes, he is marked as a "partner for peace."
I remember the remarks made years later by Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was then national security adviser to U.S. President Jimmy Carter: "Which is more important, the Taliban or al-Qaida, or the collapse of the USSR because of its invasion of Afghanistan, and the liberation of Eastern Europe?" This mentality had argued for the procurement of weapons, money and support that enabled the creation of the Taliban and al-Qaida, and paved the way for the Sept. 11 attacks, which led to the successive U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan that helped DAESH rise.
How similar is this mentality today that portrays the PYD as a good partner since it fights DAESH on the ground, and Russia as an ally since it occasionally targets DAESH? In this case, it is not for the Swedish general only to seriously think about the possibility that Putin, who tested the West's reaction by violating NATO airspace along the Turkish-Syrian border, may take action in the north.
A NEW WORLD FORMULA: COUPS
In the 1980s, when the U.S. was involved in the Afghan war, it had violated Western liberal democratic values and got into bed with the devil and ended up being attacked at home. In 2003, U.S. President George W. Bush invaded Iraq at a time he should have refrained from doing so. Obama, on the other hand, pulled troops from Iraq in 2011 at a time when he shouldn't have. Iraq was left to then Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, himself a Shiite version of Saddam, before democracy became established in the country. The ensuing massacres of Sunnis provided DAESH with the needed legitimacy and led to radicalization. The U.S. and EU's tacit approval of the shameful toppling of Egypt's elected President Mohammed Morsi through a military coup and the killing of thousands of civilians caused the belief in civilian democracy and negotiation methods in the Middle East to decline. During the same period, various coup attempts by an alliance of ultra-nationalists, "secularist" elites and Gülenists against the elected and legitimate civilian government of Turkey were given a democratic veneer. If the Gezi riots, Dec. 17 and Dec. 25 judicial coup attempts and Oct. 6-8, 2014 PKK insurgency had succeeded and the country's functioning democratic system collapsed, Raqqa would have been transplanted to the Turkish-Greek border and tens of millions of refugees would have flooded Europe. The resulting situation would have been beyond comparison to the current one. Would the EU, which has suspended the Schengen system after an influx of only 1 million refugees, have managed to maintain its unity?
Kati Piri, rapporteur of the European Parliament for Turkey, made a very relevant statement: "The PKK is on the EU's list of terrorist organizations, and I do not believe that their removal from the list at a time when they launch deadly attacks would be correct." Piri recently said: "I condemn the PKK's return to violence and its attacks on security forces and civilians. The barricades and the trenches are unacceptable."
Unless terrorism is dealt with through comprehensive and joint efforts, it will be impossible to defend European values in the face of terrorism and the forces resorting to brute force. Portraying some terrorist organizations as nice guys, since they serve certain purposes at the moment, like U.S. special presidential envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL (DAESH), Brett McGurk's visit to PYD-controlled areas in northern Syria, means sowing the wind only to reap the whirlwind later. What is more important is the rift created between European institutions, NATO partners and the U.S. due to terrorist organizations. Western democracy cannot resort to proxy wars. For former PACE president Brasseur's negotiation methods to work, democratic principles should be observed while not making concessions to the aggressor and taking the tough decisions required for getting results in negotiations.
TERROR'S PENETRATION POWER
Indeed, since the PKK, PYD and Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) have spotted this weak point, they launched a serious public relations campaign as if Turkey has ended the reconciliation process for nothing, woke up one morning and said: "I want to kill Kurdish civilians from now on." Imagine thousands of trenches are dug in the streets of Strasburg, Paris, or The Hague and are filled with tons of explosives while soldiers, police officers and civilians are killed by snipers coming from neighboring countries. That is what Turkey is currently experiencing.
Piri has prepared a list that says 253 civilians were killed in Turkey's southeast. I checked the list carefully because we are sensitive to civilian deaths, too. Out of the 253 people on Piri's list, three are said to be killed by the PKK. It claims that the remaining 250 people were killed either by Turkish soldiers or police.
Such non-objective views bring no good to the people living in the region or contribute to a proper understanding of and solution to the problem. Turkey needs objective and fair criticism. European organizations should know that war is not fought with arms only, but also through propaganda, and make sure that they are not complicit in propaganda efforts. In other words, while high-tech weapons that are destined to end up in the hands of the PKK are supplied to the YPG, European and U.S. organizations cannot do injustice to a country on which these weapons exact the greatest toll.
In my capacity as a member of Parliament, let me give you the correct figures. The number of citizens killed so far is 77. Of these, 49 were killed by direct fire from PKK militants while eight were caught between crossfire and probably killed by fire from police forces. Investigations into 20 deaths are ongoing. The 120 people mentioned on Piri's list were PKK militants. Seventeen people died from heart attacks and there is no record in Turkey's official documents and investigations about the remaining 39 people on the list.
In its fight against terrorism, Turkey is simultaneously coping with such terrorist organizations as the PKK, DAESH, and the Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C). Meanwhile, there is hell on its southern border and Russian planes routinely violate its airspace. Despite that, Turkey deserves praise for taking in 2.6 million refugees in highly civilized conditions. In fact, Brasseur has personally witnessed that. Curfews and operations last longer to minimize civilian casualties. But the PKK uses civilians as human shields and, while doing that, depends on its propaganda machine to blame the deaths on the government.
Terrorism and violence is our common enemy. Indeed, terrorism has no religion or nationality, and neither is there good, bad, secular or radical terrorism.
This view points to a fundamental principle of European civilization, which includes Turkey as well.
*This article was written prior to the painful Ankara bombings by the YPG that left 28 dead.