The bombing that killed at least 95 people in a pro-Kurdish peace rally in Turkey on Saturday is shocking in a country that is a popular tourist destination and the current host of the G20. But it could provoke Turkey to take a tougher stance against the terrorist group Islamic State on its southern border.
No one has identified the suicide bombers who detonated two bombs in the capital city of Ankara but the fact that the target was a rally by the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), a pro-Kurdish party, makes it highly likely the attackers were linked to IS, which is battling Kurdish forces linked to HDP in northern Syria.
If it turns out the bombers are Syrian Islamists, and for the moment there are no other obvious suspects, questions will be asked about whether Turkey should devote some of the energy it has used to hurl at Kurdish terrorists to crack down on Islamic radicals coming from Syria.
"This is the worst terrorist atrocity in Turkish history," says William Gourlay, who is completing a PhD on Kurdish affairs at Monash University. "I'm sure that the government will eventually blame Islamic State for the bombing but whether it will shift its policy towards Islamic State is not clear. It's still true that more Turks have been killed by Kurdish terrorists than Islamic State."
While Australia is focused on the threat from IS, Turkey has a historical fear of Kurdish separatism, dating back to civil wars in the 1920s and 30s. Thousands of Turks have been killed in an intermittent guerrilla war that has raged for decades in the Kurdish-dominated south-east of the country.
The Kurdish problem has re-emerged in the past year largely because of the instability caused by the war in Syria, where the Turkish government of Islamist politician Recep Tayyip Erdogan has supported the overthrow of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad. That has dragged Turkey closer to the radical Islamists in Syria who are fighting the Assad regime and eventually reignited conflict with the Kurds.
Celal Dogan, a senior HDP MP who served for 14 years as mayor of Gaziantep, a big city on the Turkish-Syrian border, told The Australian Financial Review in an interview in his Istanbul office last week that Erdogan has backed Islamists in Syria because they are ideologically close to him and he has opposed Kurdish rebels in Syria even when they were fighting IS.
"If Turkey had a smart foreign policy and didn't see [the Kurdish factions in Syria] as enemies, it would be neighbours with them rather than Islamic State now," he said. "In the beginning, Turkey chose to support Islamic State because they are Sunni and Erdogan was afraid that Syrian Kurds and Kurds in Turkey could unite."
Ersin Kalaycioglu, a professor of politics at Sabanci University in Istanbul, said Erdogan had miscalculated his attempt to overthrow Assad and it had turned into a prolonged war. Now that Russian President Vladimir Putin has sent in his fighter bombers, the chances of getting rid of Assad quickly have all but evaporated and Turkey has been left hosting over 2 million Syrian refugees.
He said until recently, Erdogan was willing to tolerate even radical Sunni Islamist factions in Syria because he shared their belief in traditional Sunni Islam. "The mentality of some in Erdogan's party is not that different to Islamic State. They are both Sunni fundamentalists," Professor Kalaycioglu said. "The government seems to be more concerned about the Kurds than Islamic State, although the government will deny that."
Erdogan was once hailed as a shining example of moderate Islam. In the name of Islam, he softened Turkey's decades-old secularist policy of banning anything that brought Islam into public life such as wearing the veil. But he maintained democratic institutions and delivered the strong economic growth that has propelled Turkey into the G20. Now, after 12 years in power, he faces growing criticism in the West for suppressing domestic critics and trying to alter the constitution to give himself more powers.
Erdogan initially reached out to Kurds, who make up about 20 per cent of the population, but the war in Syria ended that. He inflamed Kurdish resentment by refusing to lend even moral support to the Kurds during the prolonged siege of the Kurdish Syrian city of Kobani by IS. He even prematurely announced the city had fallen, only to be embarrassed when US air strikes and a heroic Kurdish defence eventually lifted the siege.
Kurds then blamed Erdogan for a suicide bombing by an IS militant in July which killed 33 Kurdish sympathisers in southern Turkey. A few days later, Kurdish terrorist group the PKK broke a ceasefire and killed two Turkish soldiers. Erdogan responded with a full-scale assault on the Kurds.
Erdogan said he was joining the US-led war on terror but apart from allowing the US to fly missions against IS from the NATO airbase at Incirlik in southern Turkey, he has devoted almost all his attention to the Kurdish terrorists.
In April, Australia signed a memorandum of understanding with the Turkish government, asking it to arrest Australians suspected of travelling through Turkey to join IS. Kalaycioglu says Turkey usually takes action when it is tipped off by foreign police about individuals joining IS, but until now it has not tried to dismantle the networks that link radical Islamists in Turkey with IS in Syria.
There has been talk that the United States and Russia could combine to help the Kurds extend their territory and block IS access to the Turkish border, which is a transit route for fighters and smuggled goods. But that will also depend on Turkish policy.
The situation could become clearer after elections on November 1, in which Erdogan is trying to win support for his plan to grant himself more powers as president. Until a year ago Erdogan believed he had a good chance but the HDP, which was the target of the bombing, has thwarted his plans.
In elections in June, the HDP scored more than the 10 per cent minimum to win seats in Parliament which, combined with support for secularist and ultra-nationalist parties, denied Erdogan a clear majority. The secret of the HDP's success has been reaching out beyond its Kurdish base to appeal to Turks with a leftist, progressive bent in major cities such as Ankara and Istanbul. This capitalised on a wave of protest against the regime that started with the protests over a property development in downtown Istanbul at Gezi Park in 2013.
Many argue that Erdogan's decision to launch an attack on the Kurds in July, a few weeks after the election was an attempt to discredit the Kurds and the HDP in a fresh election that Erdogan called within days. The bombing in the south-east could make it difficult for some Kurds to get to polling stations but opinion polls suggest the result will be more or less the same on November 1. That could force Erdogan into a coalition, which could be a catalyst for a rethink of Turkey's Kurdish and Syrian policies.
Geoff Winestock travelled to Turkey as a guest of the Turkish government.
Source: Attack shines light on Turkey's flirtation with Syrian Islamists
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