What Has Turkey Learned From Terrorism?

The Middle East is a challenging region. Beset by strife and destruction on all sides, Turkey shoulders a great responsibility and mission as a country of this troublesome geography. It is for this reason that, given both the mission it has undertaken and its own geopolitical importance, Turkey has gone through many times of hardship from past to present.

Just as coups and terrorism form long and inseparable parts of the Middle East, the same sadly holds true for Turkey as well. The coup attempt Turkey went through on July 15, 2016 was a crucial lesson in terms of recognizing both the terrorist organizations and the treacherous deep structure Turkey is faced with. This coup attempt led to the realization that Turkey not only has to confront those terrorist organizations that do not hide their true colors and intentions, but also hypocritical ones that infiltrated the state from within, such as FETO.

The state of emergency, which has been in effect since then, aims to thoroughly expose this deep, insidious organization. Having infiltrated almost all vital institutions from military to police, from the judiciary system to politics, from the media to the economy, this organization demonstrated by martyring almost 250 civilians that the bitter enmity it bears is not just directed at those governing Turkey, but the Turkish people as a whole. This is an indication of the fact that the terrorism issue Turkey now finds itself again confronted with has never been a minor one.

FETO’s affiliation with the PKK terrorist organization, which has been perpetrating vicious attacks within the borders of Turkey for the last 40 years in order to seize Southeastern Turkey, was of course not a surprising revelation. The “solution process” initiated in 2014, which was based on negotiating with the Stalinist terrorist organization PKK, proposed various privileges to the PKK in return for laying down their arms. During that period, when discussing this issue, we laid great emphasis on the following potential dangers:

1. A Stalinist terrorist organization that solely relies on weapons will never lay down arms.
2. The promises of laying down arms and withdrawing from the country will never materialize; only the sick and maimed terrorists will be sent away from the country. During this phase, however, the terrorist organization will rejuvenate its cadre while feigning a withdrawal from the country.
3. Meanwhile, the members of the terrorist organization will be deployed to the cities, forming the organization’s urban structure.
4. This method will allow them the pretense of laying down their arms while they take root in cities under the threat of weapons, establishing their dominance in the region.

As the situation began to unfold in the exact same order we had foreseen, the Turkish government paid heed to our warnings and with a sudden maneuver, suspended the solution process. Some countries may have employed the reconciliation method in their struggle against terrorism; however, this method will certainly not prove a solution for the PKK issue in Turkey. The first and foremost reason of this is the fact that the PKK terrorist organization desires to found an anarchist communist state: To that end, the PKK presses its territorial demands and is bent on the worldwide propagation of the red communist system that it plans to establish over the territories it snatched from Turkey.

Therefore, a terrorist organization like the PKK will only be willing to strike an agreement so long as its territorial demands are met. This, however, is beyond consideration for the Turkish people and government.

So if the armed struggle does not yield the desired results and negotiation is out of question, does this mean that the issue is insoluble? It surely is not. As with all the issues regarding terrorism, the PKK problem is, at its core, ideological one. The reason that urges people to take up arms and join the PKK is the Stalinist ideology. Despite all their efforts to masquerade as an entirely unrelated organization under the PYD umbrella (the PKK and PYD are two sides of the same coin) to be able to curry the USA’s favor, anarchist communism has always remained the underlying ideology. Therefore, the ideological reasons driving these groups into the clutches of anarchism and communism must be thoroughly examined and confronted with due scientific response.

To that end, what needs to be done is to accurately identify the ways to make such a scientific response, as well as raising a youth with a well-developed national conscience. Although the Turkish national conscience manifested itself in an utterly valiant fashion during the July 15 coup attempt, a national education policy built around this goal is still sorely needed.

The same is also true for the FETO organization. In the broadest sense, FETO is a terrorist organization operating under the orders and shaped around the demands of certain secret foreign powers. It executed their orders and sought a divided Turkey. The insidious modus operandi employed by the organization surely makes the situation that much harder for both the Turkish government and the Turkish nation. But there are crucial and major steps Turkey has to take in order to avoid facing with these types of attacks ever again.

The fact that those who betrayed Turkey are the very people who were raised and trained in Turkey has prompted the question of how and through which methods they have been manipulated. People who are easily swayed into becoming traitors usually grow up in environments where sycophancy is cultivated at the expanse of national sentiments. For that reason, it is crucial that a youth with an ideological mission is raised and actions towards achieving this goal are taken in the country.

Terrorism is ultimately a problem rooted in ideology. If a person or a group takes up arms and tries to impose an idea, it means that that person or group has placed their faith in and passionately believed in an erroneous and highly dangerous ideology. It means that they have been deceived, albeit unaware of the deception that fools them.

This is because they have never been offered the scientific evidence that shows the erroneousness of their ideology. For Turkey, a country at the heart of the Middle East acting as a bridge between civilizations, efforts towards raising ideological awareness are of crucial importance. The serious shortcoming in this regard is the sole reason that allows the PKK to continue its existence in Turkey for 40 years and paves the way for the emergence of traitorous organizations such as FETO.

Of course, any discussion on terrorist organizations also calls for addressing the external factors that nourish and reinforce them. This, however, will have to be the subject of another article.