Two More Wounded in Another Bomb Attack in Turkey
Two more civilians were wounded in a bomb explosion in Diyarbakır last night. Yesterday's bombing in Istanbul cost a woman of about my age her leg.
In the past few weeks, a Molotov cocktail attack was thrown into an AKP election bureau in İstanbul, a sound bomb was thrown at another AKP bureau in Diyarbakır. There was another attack in the Ömerli district of Mardin, where a remote controlled explosive was detonated as a military convoy patrolling the area drove by. An attack on the prime minister's convoy killed a police officer. And a Molotov cocktail was thrown into a bus in central Istanbul, burning it to the ground.
But this is only what's being reported. There is a tendency in Turkey for the press to severely under-report these incidents--whether the censorship is self-imposed or the result of government pressure, I can't say, although I suspect the latter. The justification for the relative silence, I assume, is to deprive terrorists of their objective: If you commit an act of terrorism and no one hears about it, it is harder to terrify people (and, of course, your counter-terrorism policy looks less of a failure). That, I assume, is one reason they selected the shopping mall they bombed yesterday in Istanbul as a target; there's just no way to hush that up. That's too central a location, and it's where the rich people shop.
The PKK is stepping up this violence--and there's not much doubt in my mind that it's the PKK, conspiracy theories to the contrary--because there's an election coming up. They are trying to influence the outcome of a democratic election through terror. How exactly they're hoping to influence it isn't entirely clear--right now the parties are competing desperately for both Kurdish votes and nationalist votes, and attacks like this could influence voting behavior in ways that push smaller parties over or under the threshold required to enter parliament, changing completely the ways a coalition could be formed, or whether one could be formed at all. It obviously has something to do with that.
I have tremendous sympathy for Kurds in Turkey with legitimate, democratic political aspirations. But this is not what the PKK wants: They are Maoists who seek an ethnically cleansed, independent Kurdish state. "Ethnically cleansed" is inevitable, because they don't want ethnic Turks in that Maoist paradise.
Let me offer a hesitant thought here. The Turkish government's support for Hamas is wrong and hypocritical. You would surely think any people who have suffered as much from terrorism would grasp instinctively what Israelis have been through. And many do.
But for years, Turkey has been told--and many have come to believe--that there is no way to defeat the PKK militarily, and that these acts of terrorism are somehow their fault for having failed to make Turkey a tolerable place for its Kurdish citizens. There are many here who have internalized the idea that the solution to this problem is to find some way to negotiate, some way to accommodate, some way to make peace with the PKK. After years of civil war and some 40,000 deaths, Turkey's exhausted. It's so exhausted that the PKK's cult of personality leader, Abdullah Öcalan, is issuing orders and threats directly and publicly from his jail cell, and no one seems to think they can stop him from doing this.
In the minds of some people in Turkey (not all), I suspect the attitude toward Hamas is, "If we have to 'make peace' with the PKK, then the Israelis can damned well 'make peace' with Hamas. It's only fair." Or, "Trust us, Israel, we tried war against terrorists and it didn't work. It won't work for you, either." (The alternative to this would be thinking that the Israelis are better at countering terrorism than Turks, which would not be psychologically comfortable. Nor is it well-supported by the evidence: Hamas seems to be thriving.)
I don't believe you can make peace with the PKK. People who put bombs near shopping malls with the express intention of killing civilians aren't interested in peace. I don't believe you can make peace with Hamas. People who put bombs near shopping malls with the express intention of killing civilians aren't interested in peace. They're interested in killing you.
And I also don't know how you can defeat either one, militarily, without doing things so terrible that decent people--which both the Turks and the Israelis are--shudder at the thought.
Before rushing to condemn Turks as bad, hypocritical people because of their apparent inability to see the parallels between the PKK and Hamas, try to understand the lens through which many are viewing the problem--particularly because few actually know all that much about Israel or Hamas. They have been fighting terrorism for years, and they're losing. It's not entirely surprising that their perspective on the problem, generally, is defeatist.
Yes, you've got a number of people here who simply hate Israel and embrace Hamas because they adore nutty Islamists. Ten, twenty percent, I'd guess. You've got a lot more who assume that somehow the problem is the same, and that therefore Israel should just learn to live with it, like they do, and they should conclude, as many Turks have, that the terrorists must hate them because they (Turks and Israelis) have somehow mistreated them--and they (Turks and Israelis) should therefore mend their ways, and maybe that will help.
Do you see how this works, psychologically? It's twisted, but it's somewhat closer to the truth than, "Turks love Islamists and want to see Israel wiped out." Generally, they don't.
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Nov '10
Re: Two More Wounded in Another Bomb Attack in Turkey
A case for increased cooperation between the Turkish and Israeli governments?
Re: Two More Wounded in Another Bomb Attack in Turkey
Claire, you raise a very interesting point here. You might be right, but it's a tough one to prove. Normal polling practices won't work at all. Have you talked to many Turks openly about this?
Re: Two More Wounded in Another Bomb Attack in Turkey
It's an impossible one to prove, especially because we're talking about attitudes that are vague and even subliminal. I talk to Turks all the time about this, and come up against a huge range of opinions. The Islamist wing will of course argue that the situations aren't relevantly similar, and whatever they're actually saying, it's pretty clear the underlying sentiment is, "Maoist atheists--bad! Islamists--good!"
But then you have people like the basically pro-AKP columnist Mustafa Akyol (a friend of mine, however much we may disagree). Check out his "Open letter to the Israelis," for example. Or this piece. Obviously, I'd argue with his logic, but you can see the mental process at work. (I'm waiting to see whether he's about to admit that all this reaching-out-to-the-Kurds hasn't been achieving the desired results, either.)
Re: Two More Wounded in Another Bomb Attack in Turkey
There is a very wide range of opinions here about what should be done about the PKK, ranging from "There is no military solution, that's been a complete failure," to "We've used the wrong military strategy, we need a better one," to "We need total war" to "The PKK is an (insert your conspiracy theory pet) here," to "Just give them what they want and let them choke on it." You will find people who argue, in all seriousness, that Israel is behind the PKK. You will find people who argue that the Deep State created it (including, recently, the prime minister, who has taken to referring to the "PKK-Ergenekon terrorists," obviously trying to create a linkage in the public mind, and probably succeeding.) But the one thing everyone here knows is that they've heard the words, "We will never give in to terrorism" their entire lives--and bombs are still going off and kids are still being conscripted and still dying in the Southeast; Kurds still seem to hate them, and the world keeps lecturing them about Kurdish civil rights--even when a lot of progress has actually been made on this score.
Re: Two More Wounded in Another Bomb Attack in Turkey
Obviously it is, and historically it has been. People here with half a brain are furious that the government has not only destroyed an immensely important cooperative relationship, but thoroughly eroded international sympathy for its own terrorism problem. (See this column, for example.)
Re: Two More Wounded in Another Bomb Attack in Turkey
Unfortunately, the "half-a-brain" set are the minority. As alas they are around the world. Most people here just aren't thinking that clearly. Something that tends to happen in the wake of PKK bombings is a rise in ultra-nationalism--the "Everyone hates and betrays us; we're on our own; Turks have no friends but Turks" mentality. And that tends to play out as xenophobia--so you get a rise in anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism (and anti-everyone-ism), even though America and Israel are the countries most able to provide real, material assistance. It makes no sense logically, but it does make sense in a kind of twisted emotional way.
Nov '10
Re: Two More Wounded in Another Bomb Attack in Turkey
While we're on the subject, can you clear something up for me? Why is it that the Kurds in Iraq are the seemingly decent, rational, oppressed minority good guys, while the ones in Turkey are the exploding Jihad type?
Is there some way the Iraqi Kurds could positively influence what's happening in Turkey?
Oct '10
Re: Two More Wounded in Another Bomb Attack in Turkey
So the idea of a Kurdish state just never comes up?
It seems to me one of the biggest differences between PKK and Hamas is what motivates them - PKK doesn't seem to have any religious mandate against Turkey, or any religious attachment to any single piece of dirt.They don't appear to have a desire to wage a religious war on the rest of the world ala Taliban and Al Qaeda.
Why not defeat PKK by giving the peaceful Kurds a country to call their own? Wouldn't that kind of take the starch out of PKK, and wouldn't the PKK's ire be directed at the new Kurdish state?
Unlike PKK, Hamas' hatred of Israel and Jews goes beyond just civil rights and self-determination, their culture and their faith are imbued with it.
Re: Two More Wounded in Another Bomb Attack in Turkey
Jan-Michael Rives: While we're on the subject, can you clear something up for me? Why is it that the Kurds in Iraq are the seemingly decent, rational, oppressed minority good guys, while the ones in Turkey are the exploding Jihad type?
Is there some way the Iraqi Kurds could positively influence what's happening in Turkey? · May 27 at 5:28am
They're decent, sort-of rational, sort-of oppressed minorities here, too. The PKK does not speak for the majority of Kurds--especially because they kill Kurds who disagree with them. In large numbers. I don't find Kurdish culture especially lovable (that's definitely not the culture I'd look to for an advanced perspective on women's rights), but it's a huge mistake to assume they're all pro-PKK.
Re: Two More Wounded in Another Bomb Attack in Turkey
jhimmi: So the idea of a Kurdish state just never comes up?
It seems to me one of the biggest differences between PKK and Hamas is what motivates them - PKK doesn't seem to have any religious mandate against Turkey, or any religious attachment to any single piece of dirt.They don't appear to have a desire to wage a religious war on the rest of the world ala Taliban and Al Qaeda.
As fanatics with a global agenda go, I'd put Maoists and al Qaeda on the same plane, really. How many of the PKK are really still devout Maoists I'm not sure. They've morphed into quite a plump little mafia--doing a nice business in drug running and human trafficking and the like--and I'm not sure the leadership really believes in anything anymore. Some of them are obviously still fanatical enough to think there's a cause in the world that justifies blowing off the legs of random women out for an excursion to the shopping mall. And they manage to produce quite some number of suicide bombers, too.
Re: Two More Wounded in Another Bomb Attack in Turkey
It's weird--about ten years ago, I'd get into arguments with people in which I'd try to persuade them that Islamism was a dangerous, global ideology--like communism. Now I need to persuade people that communism is a dangerous, global ideology--like Islamism.
But you're right: The PKK has no specific designs on, say, Manhattan.
Re: Two More Wounded in Another Bomb Attack in Turkey
The peaceful Kurds are citizens of Turkey, and don't want a state of their own--which would be completely economically unviable. The Turkish government cannot ethically consign them to tyranny under the PKK; they're Turkish citizens. Remember also: The world's biggest Kurdish city is Istanbul. The populations are intermingled and intermarried throughout Turkey. There are ethnic Turks in the Southeast and Kurds throughout the whole country. Only way to create an ethnically pure Kurdish state: massive, forced population transfers or genocide.
Re: Two More Wounded in Another Bomb Attack in Turkey
By the way, I should clarify this--I'm speaking of traditional Kurdish culture. The PKK would say they have a really advanced perspective on women's rights; why, they practice free love and even let their women go forth as suicide bombers. Here's the kind of fellow-traveler Leftist Western propaganda piece about this that makes me puke.
Mar '11
Re: Two More Wounded in Another Bomb Attack in Turkey
I think there are some significant differences between the plight and aspirations (real or made up) of Kurds and Palestinians. Even counting in the Iraqi Kurds, there are still more ethnic Turks than Kurds. I don't know the exact numbers but my guess is that Turks outnumber Kurds by 5-to-1 or 10-to-1. As a consequence of this, the Kurds would never hope, even if they wanted to, to get rid of all the Turks and so have no aspirations of taking over the entire country but "only" the area where they are the majority. I write "only" because (understandably) most Turkish citizens do not wish to yield any part of their national territory. Hamas calls for the elimination of Israel, period. Their aspiration is for the Jews to be killed and forced out of the Middle East altogether. Not to mention that there are, what, 6 million Israelis surrounded by 100+ million Arabs. Obviously you know all this, but it may be escaping the attention of those Turks who have reconciled themselves to some form of "peace" with the Kurdish separatists and are urging Israelis to do the same with Hamas.
Oct '10
Re: Two More Wounded in Another Bomb Attack in Turkey
Claire Berlinski, Ed.
The peaceful Kurds are citizens of Turkey, and don't want a state of their own--which would be completely economically unviable... The populations are intermingled and intermarried throughout Turkey. There are ethnic Turks in the Southeast and Kurds throughout the whole country. Only way to create an ethnically pure Kurdish state: massive, forced population transfers or genocide. · May 27 at 6:14am
Hamas has the backing of many Palestinians, arabs, Muslims, leftists, anti-Semites, etc, who are not formally affiliated with Hamas, while PKK is marginalized even by other ethnic Kurds.
There are Kurdish separatist / independence movements other than PKK, but I gather Kurds as a group are able to successfully integrate into Turkish culture to the point that they're not interested in them? Are non-PKK Turkish Kurds more sympathetic to PKK than ethnic Turks?