Whom is Turkey fighting against?

Turkey’s “struggle with ISIL” has turned out to be an armed struggle with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a domestic offensive against the Kurdish party, the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), a general witch hunt against dissent and finally a search for a homeland for Turkmens in northern Syria.

So far, so bad!

Now, it is no secret that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his governing party supposedly joined the Western alliance in the effort to fight the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) due to Western pressure and used the opportunity to crush the PKK in northern Iraq. There is almost no mention of the struggle against ISIL, as AKP politicians only mention the evil of ISIL in passing, attacking PKK and the Kurdish party every day while their media targets Kurdish politicians all the time. Finally, the president has called Kurdish party members to be stripped of their parliamentary immunity. At the same time, the governing party and media is trying to silence dissent by accusing all sorts of dissenters that they are committing the crime of “cooperating and conspiring with Kurdish terrorists.” Some pro-governing party media’s hitmen and hitwomen have targeted the biggest media group and individuals directly and unashamedly intimidated them, demanding that they be persecuted by “state powers.”

What we see is not much a struggle with ISIL, but a grand offensive against dissent along with regression to armed confrontation with the PKK and the consequent politics of war. Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu makes calls for people to “kill and die for the motherland,” refers to power, the will and finally “the omnipotence of the state.” Under the circumstances, we have started to regret that our government joined “the fight with ISIL;” perhaps we would have been better off without “the struggle with ISIL,” which is not a “struggle with terror,” but has become a very useful tool to terrorize the whole country.

As for Turkey’s participation in the Western alliance, we have not heard much, even if they now have joined.

On the contrary, the governing bloc seems to be embarrassed to be in the same camp with the West and does everything to hide it from the public. Turkey’s Western allies may be concerned that the governing party is using the opportunity to “legitimize” the armed offensive against the PKK. No need to worry, since the president and his party no longer see their Western allies as a legitimizing force and leverage, but quite to the contrary, they see their relations with the Western alliance as something to be embarrassed about and concealed. So much so that the so-called “struggle with ISIL” is being legitimized by portraying ISIL as the “product” and even as “a plot of the West against Islam.” In the end, it has emerged that Turkey is not fighting against a threat to all, but fighting against a conspiracy of the West.