A bloody game of elections
Four of the leading trade unions and professional organisations in Turkey organized a mass meeting on October 10, 2015, in order to call for negotiations to stop the war with Kurds, which had been resumed after the resolution process came to an end. The goal of the meeting in the capital Ankara was to show strong support for peace by having 100,000 people come from all quarters of the country. Among the supporters of the meeting were the main opposition party, the Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi (CHP), as well as the alliance party of socialists and the Kurds, the Halkların Demokratik Partisi (HDP).
However, when two ISIL-member suicide bombers blew themselves up in front of the Ankara railway station, the gathering area for the attendants of the peace rally, it turned into the deadliest “terror” attack in the history of Turkey, which killed a total of 102 people, including the two suicide bombers themselves, while hundreds were injured.
The blast in Ankara significantly increased tension in Turkey. As the targets of the attack, the Kurds and left wing circles, particularly the HDP, blamed the government as having the primary responsibility for the attack.
The background of Ankara massacre and ISIL organization
The Ankara attack was the deadliest in the history of Turkey but was not the only massive attack in recent history. There had been a series of attacks on the HDP before the June 7 elections in 2015, which had changed the situation where the AKP was the sole party in power. The elections also destroyed the party’s founding leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s dream about the presidency.
The bomb attack on the HDP offices in Adana and Mersin fortunately did not lead to loss of life. However, the bomb planted at the HDP meeting organized in Diyarbakır only two days before the elections killed four and left hundreds wounded. It turned out that the suspect bomber in Diyarbakır meeting had come from Adıyaman province to Diyarbakır and that he had been detained in his hotel by the police for a short time due to his compulsory military service problem. The police then released the suspect for whom “a warrant of arrest for terror crime” had been issued, and the next day he planted the bomb in the meeting area. Journalists researching the suspect’s contacts found out details about the ISIL organization in Adıyaman province. The ISIL organization in that province was taking place openly, and all the appeals to the police made by the families of the youngsters who joined ISIL, the Prime Minister and the presidency via email were ineffective.
In the elections held in the wake of Diyarbakır attack, the HDP passed the election threshold of 10% and received 13% of the votes, which was far beyond everyone’s expectations. This put an end to the AKP’s dream of coming to power alone. After the elections, the AKP procrastinated negotiations concerning the formation of a coalition government while hardening its attitude towards the HDP and the Kurdish movement.
The Suruç massacre and its aftermath
It was within this context that 33 people were killed in a suicide attack carried out by an ISIL member named Abdurrahman Alagöz on July 20, 2015, during a press conference held by the young members of the Federation of Socialist Youth Associations (Sosyalist Gençlik Derneği Federasyonu). They had convened in Turkey’s Suruç district located on the Syrian border in order to deliver humanitarian aid to Kobanî.
Not long after the shock of that suicide attack, two police officers were killed at their homes in Ceylanpınar district. PKK declared it was carried out by their “local units." The AKP government took the advantage of these developments to put its policies into action and therefore put an end to the resolution process: The AKP government hit PKK camps in Kandil and launched operations in Kurdish cities at the same time.
While the PKK usually prefers to employ land mines and bombs in the war, the government focused on larger provinical districts on the grounds that it could not limit its operations to specific neighborhoods due to the presence of drainage ditches being dug in the streets. In many districts—mainly in Varto, Cizre, Nusaybin and Sur—curfews were declared and tens of civilians were killed for defying the curfew.
The CHP report on Adıyaman
The evidence regarding the Suruç attack that retriggered the conflict led the way to Adıyaman. Investigating the ISIL organization in the province, the main opposition party, the CHP, confirmed that the police was turning a blind eye to ISIL and that the militants were able to operate freely, and warned the authorities against future potential massacres.
In its report that it presented to authorites, the CHP referred ISIL’s suicide bombers in Adıyaman and requested the authorities take necessary measures. A list of suicide bombers including Yunus Emre Alagöz, the elder brother of the suicide bombing perpetrator of Suruç attack, Abdurrahman Alagöz, was brought forward in the CHP report as well as in the coverage of the journalists who made investigations in the province. The allegations about negligence became even more serious when it turned out that one of the suicide bombers in Ankara attack was Yunus Emre Alagöz himself.
There have been interpretations that the security forces practically allowed the attack to be carried out after it became known that police had intelligence on September 19, days before the attack, regarding the likelihood of suicide attacks on the meetings. The allegations have yet to be confirmed about whether the measures had not been taken although an confirmed intelligence about the likelihood of an explosion in the Ankara meeting was sent to the police by the intelligence organisations three days before the attack. Nonetheless, the developments reinforce the likelihood that the allegations are true.
The state turning victims into perpetrators
After the incidence, the government strongly expressed the view that the attack had been carried out in cooperation by the ISIL, the PKK, the Syrian State and the PYD. The claim was found to be ridiculous by critics because it was not compatible with any evidence in the investigation files.
On the other hand, opinion polls indicated that nearly 40 % of the population believed the attack had been carried out by the PKK or the HDP. The government’s successful strategy in turning the victims into perpetrators was helped by the coverage repeated for days by the pro-government media, which showed no evidence to back up their claims. When the Prime Minister Ahmet commented on a survey on television, he did not hesitate to add that they “gained votes after the attack.”
Ankara massacre and the Turkish policy in Syria
The Ankara attack and prior developments are closely connected with Turkish policy in Syria. Since the beginning, Turkey openly took the side of opposition groups in the Syrian civil war. The main goal was to topple Syrian leader Bashar Assad. In the stormy period called the Arab Spring, the AKP had done its best to support Muslim Brotherhood organizations in Arab countries to help them come to power in those countries as it regards them as partners. In Syria, where the Muslim Brotherhood organization is weak, jihadist forces have become the most significant actors in a short period of time.
It has already become common knowledge that Turkey gives official support to the Free Syrian Army while giving non-official support to jihadist organizations, particularly through Turkish intelligence organization. Both in the fight against the Syrian regime and the one against the PYD that Turkey regards as a branch of the PKK, it has been claimed several times and revealed with significant evidence that Turkish support for the Al-Nusra Front and then ISIL and other organizations was not only in the form of border clearance and allowing them to organize in its territories but also in the form of transporting truckloads of weapons through the Turkish intelligence organization MIT. The revelation of that connection in such a clear fashion has not led to significant reverberations among the large constituency of the party in power despite a partial erosion in votes.
The policy of polarization and the groundswell
To the extent that the attack in Ankara railway station escalated the polarization in the society, it is possible to argue that it had a solidifying effect among the constituents of the AKP that is the chief builder of the policy of polarization.
The increase in AKP votes once again from 38% to 40% after the attack can be primarily attributed to the context of polarization among other factors. The main target of the AKP was to get nationalist votes after the elections on June 7 where it saw a dramatic decrease and lost its status as the party receving the most Kurdish votes in Turkey. Its aim after the elections was to take votes from the nationalist party, the MHP. Therefore, there is a significant view in the Turkish public opinion that the war with the PKK was launched in line with that goal in mind.
The government has strong expectations that the attack in the Ankara railway station will give the AKP votes back, for which it paved the way by neglecting to take security measures. However, it is also possible for the AKP to be confronted with a surprise reaction from its the constituents due to the AKP’s uncompromising attitude towards forming a coalition government after the June 7 elections, as well as the genderal demand to get out of the war environment.
While the AKP is still at the critical threshold of being able to come to power alone, there is a growing sense of uneasiness among the constituents due to the explicit messages given by the AKP that it will intensify its authoritarian practices once it achieves its goal. What is going to seal the fate of the country this time will be the attitude of the constituency toward a vision of the country getting farther away from democracy, where each day bombs explode, war prevails in half of it, corruption allegations can not be investigated, journalists are arrested and media outlets are confiscated.