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By Rebwar Rashed:
By now everyone is aware of the atrocities that the Turkish State has committed since 29th October 1923 against Armenians, Assyrians, Kurds, non-Sunni religious such as Allawites and others like the Jewish community, the Yazidis etc. Anyhow, the subject of this article is not about Turkish state terrorism inside Turkey, but rather the State of Turkey´s international terrorism in sponsoring, encouraging and organizing terrorism outside its territories.
Back in 2000 the members of the undeclared Muslim Brotherhood of Turkey, the AKP to be, had learned the hard way how to camouflage their radicalism and extremism. There are no “Islam” or “Muslim” words in the AKP´s political program, at least in the translated English version. The party´s political concept is called “Muhafazakar Demokrasi / Conservative Democracy”.
Through a political camouflage they have succeeded to conceal the real “identity” of the AK party. The program abounds of general populist tickling words to deceive the masses. Erdogan and Co. could however pursue a radical Islamic line for at least 12 years without any difficulty. The current authoritarian sway of the AKP, Erdogan and Co. did not come about overnight of course. From the very beginning until today, the AK Party has never managed to avoid being associated with ‘Islamism’ and it probably never wanted to do so. Through at least 16 years of working under cover, the end has justified the means!
Still, despite enough knowledge the Western democracies wanted to believe in the AKP’s “non-Islamism”. Turkey was a “Moderate Islam”, “Democratic Islam” and so on. Turkey was the Baby Islam that Europe sang lullabies to and wished sweet dreams for.
Even though the AKP Program states that “Our party considers religion as one of the most important institutions of humanity” there was not one single soul to ask some difficult questions. Quite the contrary, the AKP received a very warm welcome when it won the election on 3 November 2002.
Everybody knew that in between the lines of the AKP´s political program there is a hidden radical Islamism and the party was led by ultraconservative people. Despite the knowledge that the AKP could start its journey from political Islam to fascism, it got baby-showers again and again.
It didn’t take long, and we witnessed how just a year later, on November 15th 2003, two trucks carrying bombs slammed into the Bet Israel and Neve Shalom synagogues in Istanbul. It was said that this was done by the al-Qaida-linked Turkish suicide terrorists. However, it can´t be a coincidence that Erdogan, some 12 years later, on June 1st 2015 asked the Muslims of the world to “liberate” Jerusalem. This is exactly why ISIS and various al-Qaida affiliated groups feel at home in Ankara and Istanbul.
A few months before that bombing, on July 4th 2003, there was the Hood Event in Southern (Iraqi) Kurdistan. The US army had to put hoods on Turkish military officials who were trying to assassinate the newly-elected governor of Kirkuk. Their aim was to destabilize the KRG region, especially around Kirkuk.
Back on September 29th 2008 a video tape was published showing Erdogan sitting on the floor in front of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the famous Afghan warlord. It says that the visit took place 1993, some 8 years before the AKP’s establishment. Anyhow, the position of Hekmatyar sitting comfortably on a chair and Erdogan sitting on the ground, tells us the subordinated hierarchical position Erdogan assigned to himself. Erdogan had many Muslim masters in his early career. He had a similar relation, a subordinated hierarchical position, to his master Fathulla Gulen prior to designating him as a terrorist.
Despite the United States State Department and the United States Treasury Department jointly designating Hekmatyar as a “global terrorist” on February 19th 2003, the Council of Ministers of the AKP chose to wait until October 2013 before it designated Gulbuddin Hekmatyar as a terrorist. There were rumors in December 2016 that Gulbuddin Hekmatyar had been taken by Turkish air ambulance into Turkey to get health treatment. This was of course denied by AKP officials. However, the same Council of Ministers has rescinded its decision and Hekmatyar is no longer regarded as a “terrorist” – as he probably never practically was.
The Turkish press loyal to Erdogan showed a photo of Hekmatyar in a Gentleman-style garb and wrote of how Hekmatyar is struggling for “peace” and brotherhood of Muslims.
The chronology of Erdogan and the AK Party supporting, encouraging and organizing Islamic terrorism is evident. Hizb ut-Tahrir (the Party of Liberation) which, based on what they say, could be far worse even than ISIS and Al-Qaida, has in recent years held its conferences in Istanbul and Ankara, in early March. Hizb ut-Tahrir operates in many Arabic countries, waiting for the “right” day to come.
The most obvious transition of Turkish state terrorism towards international terrorism can be seen in its aggressive interventions in Syria and Iraq and the recent threats by AKP officials, including Erdogan himself, to Europe.
Erdogan had a dream to build an extremist Sunni-Islamic Sultanate on the lands of the Ottoman Empire, using American and European taxpayers’ money and NATO’s sophisticated arms.
He has already militarized the police force and made a special force of his own. We saw how they were chopping the noses and ears of “coup makers”, with at least one case of beheading and thousands of cases of humiliation. We also see them when they attack Kurdish children and women when they demonstrate peacefully.
So, Erdogan has his own special “police” force. The same force which kicked out Ahmet Davutuglu when he became too much for Erdogan. This special force will do anything Erdogan asks them. The judiciary system collapsed a long time ago. Turkey is not a prison only for politicians and democratic activists; it’s rather a prison for everyone that possesses little conscience.
Erdoğan is also behind the case of Zarrab, the Turkish-Iranian citizen, who is accused of breaching sanctions against Iran. Without the involvement of the Turkish state bank Halkbank, which literally means the knowledge of Erdogan, there is no way an average citizen would be able to participate in such transactions. Outside the tourism industry, Turkey is known as a police-state. The Turkish Halkbank could never be a playground for outsiders. An executive of Halkbank, Mehmet Hakan Atilla, has also been arrested in the U.S. and is being tried together with Zarrab while Erdogan’s son, Bilal Erdogan, is under investigation in Italy for money laundering. The list is long.
The Islamic terrorist groups such as the Jabhat Fateh al-Sham or Ahrar Al Sham (since July 2016: Harakat Ahrar al-Sham al-Islamiyya), Sultan Murad Brigade (most of them from Chechenia and other Islamic Republics around Russia, which Turkey calls the “Turkmen group”), Jaish al-Fatah/The Army of Conquest and a dozen more similar groups under different names and banners, all have Erdogan in common. They use Istanbul and Ankara as their own home.
The all-sided Turkish support to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, to the ISIS-Egypt branch, to the Muslim Brotherhood in Libya and the Tandhim ad-Dawla and the support against the autonomous state of Somaliland and other semi autonomous regions in Somalia is a part of Turkish international terrorism.
Turkish international state terrorism goes beyond the Middle East and Africa; it has reached Armenia, Bulgaria and the Western democracies. Using mosques against the secular and democratic system of Europe has become an Erdogan specialty.
It’s not a secret that Turkey has been and still is the main transit route for foreign terrorist fighters, from Russia-bordering Islamic countries to China and the Philippines.
The recent Turkish attack, on April 24th 2017, by at least 26 Phantom jet fighters, against poorly armed YPG and Yazidi fighters inside Iraq and inside Syria, shows the dangerous levels of Turkish international state terrorism. Erdogan´s vow saying to reporters “We may come [to strike the Yazidis, YPG and civilians] overnight, all of a sudden without warning” before his departure from Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport for a two-day visit to India, must not be taken as a joke. Turkey has committed atrocities against people of the area and will certainly do so again.
From the year 2001 Erdoğan was the chairman of the AKP. He abandoned his chairmanship when he was elected as president in August 2014. Now he has conquered the chairmanship again while he is also the president of the country with a long list of urgent missions that Allah has ordered him to fulfill.
Now that he is a Turkish “Ares”, the fate of seniors like Bülent Arınç, Ali Coşkun, Volkan Bozkır, Cemil Çiçek, Egemen Bağış, Abdullah Gül, Ahmet Davutuglu and even Binali Yeldirim, who never got an opportunity to act as real PM, is quite unknown. These gentlemen have seen what Erdogan´s special “police” force is capable of. A fight can cost them dearly.
By attacking Kurds in both Iraq and Syria and insisting on calling the PKK a “terrorist” organization, Erdogan is trying to conceal and deny the existence of a Kurdish problem in Turkey, as they have done for the last 94 years.
Consequently, it’s not an exaggeration to claim that the real solution to the Turkish problem is to solve the Kurdish issue by democratic and peaceful means. A federal or a confederate Turkish-Kurdish state will give the Turks a neighborly-relations attitude and engender a realistic behavior toward others based on mutual respect and interests.
Otherwise, the chances are high that Turkey will gear up its international state terrorism and enmity against its neighbors and other countries.
Rebwar Rashed is Co-Chairman of the Kurdistan National Congress – KNK
