It’s Time To Evaluate The Turkish Contribution Against ISIS!

Rebwar Reshid

By Rebwar Rashed:

On Monday 20th July 32 youths were killed in the Kurdish town of Pirsoz (Suruc is the Turkish name of the city after the Turkification of Kurdistan from 1923) by an alleged ISIS suicide bomber, although Kurds think it’s in reality president Erdogan who is lying behind this. As a revenge action two Turkish officers got killed while in combat with militant youths on Thursday 23rd July. The two officers had a history of harassing, persecuting and mishandling Kurdish youths in the area. Turkish officials and the semi-state’s mass media started, however, to fabricate disinformation: that the suicide bomber was of Kurdish origin and that the two police officers were killed while they were not on duty, and they were also labeled as ‘non-commissioned officers’.

Both claims were proved wrong, despite the efforts of the Turkish mass media, and especially state-owned journalists who are paid by the state and who work in an undeclared ‘Propaganda Ministry’ spreading disinformation about ‘innocent’ policemen. The reason behind their assertions became clear later. It was to find political excuses to wage a war on Kurds.

Thus Turkey started to say that the two-year ‘ceasefire’ between Turkey and Kurds is over. It started a mass bombardment on Friday, 24th July against Kurdistan, both inside Turkey and Iraq:

  • Turkey stated that it has started a war against terrorism, namely against ISIS and the PKK.
  • Turkey began to shout loudly about the need for an extraordinary NATO meeting concerning the “potential threat” against Turkey´s national territory.

Turkey started to stage a theatrical show on Friday, 24th July, claiming that the police had arrested and searched hundreds of suspected IS supporters and that Turkish F-16 jets had bombed IS targets in Syria. The Turks didn’t manage to hide the fact that the Turkish jets only fired a few missiles into ISIS military targets at the border from the Turkish side. The Turkish jets were operating inside Turkish skies, fearing Syria’s air defense system.

According to the AKP government, both ISIS and the PKK were strategic targets.

Since Saturday 25th July, Turkish fighter jets have carried out hundreds of heavy bombardments on Kurdistan. One of the bloodiest was the bombardment of civil areas on Saturday 1st August. There were more than one hundred civilian casualties in the village of Zergele, which is situated inside Iraq´s official territory (KRG Area/ Bashur). The Turks say openly that they have killed more than 365 guerrilla fighters. Beyond the killings of humans and wildlife, Turkey has also devastated the Kurdistan environment using heavy bombs.

Observers explain the AKP/ Erdogan move in different ways but many argue that Erdogan sees the HDP in Turkey and the YPG (in Rojawa) as factors behind the AKP´s parliamentary and Syrian policy losses. Therefore Erdogan needs a war to cover these losses and pave the way for a new election, hoping to win this time with Kurds behind bars. Erdogan’s next move is to customize the situation by stripping the HDP MPs of their parliamentary immunity.

Despite NATO’s distrust of Turkey’s motives and undeclared anti-Kurd agendas, Turkey got green lights last week on Tuesday, after NATO’s security summit on 28th July, to continue bombing Kurdistan. By having NATO in the same trench, Turkey thus legitimizes its war against Kurdish people. Turkey is an expert in the use of NATO against the Kurdish people.

Despite Turkish aggression, the PKK has not yet answered the Turkish state by breaking the ceasefire, although it says it will react in self defence, especially if Turkey hurts Kurdish civilians.

But whatever the reasons behind Turkey’s decision to fight the Kurdish liberation movement and close the doors on peace and a political solution, we all have to ask Turkey to give an account of its contribution against ISIS, for basically it is Turkey’s sudden turn towards the ISIS which gives it the opportunity to to pose as a participant in the coalition against ISIS, rather than the war against Kurdistan.

Turkey’s lack of accountability gives the democratic and public opinion the right to ask: has Turkey in fact joined the coalition against ISIS or not?

What has Turkey achieved in the last 10 days? What’s the real statistics for detentions of ISIS members in Turkey, stopping terrorists crossing the border, bombing ISIS targets, etc.? And for stopping transfers of money and banning financial activities, etc.? These are questions to be answered.

Perhaps there is no answer, because Turkey is not in a war with ISIS.

Turkey has nothing to report, only a theatrical move of launched strikes against ISIS.

How NATO will handle this political catastrophe has yet to be seen.

In Jihad you are allowed to lie, and even do much worse things, so long as you do it for the sake of Allah and for Jihad. Erdogan doesn’t hide his own Jihadist spirit. He is rather proud of it.

Rebwar Rashed has a Ph.D. degree in Political Science. He has translated several books into Kurdish and also written many articles in Kurdish and English about the Kurdistan National Liberation Movement, human rights, anti-Semitism, equality between the sexes and ethnicities, and the need for a democratic and peaceful struggle.

3 Responses to It’s Time To Evaluate The Turkish Contribution Against ISIS!
  1. Jan Best de Vries
    August 5, 2015 | 06:00

    The most threatened area in which an ethnic majority of Kurds lives are the three districts of Rojava. In order to ward off Erdogan’attacks on these after the next, unnecessary but falsely constructed elections in Turkey in order to “legalize” his dictatorship and to crush the democratic Kurdish party HDP in Turkey itself, it is necessary to start Kurdish uprisings in other NATO countries against Turkey as an extension of the military efforts of YPG and YPJ to batlle Turkey’s ideological ally ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Only then Dr. Rebwar Rashed will not be the last to discover in Mr Erdogan the masked, islamist jihadist he will have proved himself to be.

  2. Amy L Beam
    August 5, 2015 | 08:05

    At last the truth about Turkey’s attack on Kurds. KurdistanTribune has an excellent reputation for printing the unadorned truth. Thank you Rebwar Rashed for being brave enough to write it.

  3. Carl Adrian
    August 13, 2015 | 10:30

    EDog an is really now being able to strike against the Kurdish people since he is now allowing the U.S. to use Turkish airfields. What a clever tyrant this man is. I hear he has a beautiful castle to rule from. The U.S. is probably giving him lots of money for the bases. I will be very glad when he is dethroned and Obama is also out of office. Things will definetly change but the US will have caused the war against ISIS to be prolonged. I feel very sorry for
    All the people suffering in this crazy mess. Sincerely Carl Adrian. USA

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