As Ankara has again been hit by deadly terrorism, Turkey’s Prime Minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu, has been very quick to assign blame for Wednesday evening’s car bomb in Ankara that killed 28 people.
All the evidence, he said, suggested that the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) were responsible.
Davutoğlu’s declarations should be viewed with suspicion for a number of reasons, particularly the speed with which he announced that Turkey’s security services had uncovered the identity, birthplace, personal history and affiliations of the alleged bomber – literally within hours of the attack.
Verdicts that are reached and announced that quickly are often tell-tale indicators of a pre-planned narrative and false-flag operation.
For one thing, we should wonder why Salih Necer, the 24-year-old Syrian national blamed for the explosion, was someone the authorities had so much information on that they were able to declare him the perpetrator so immediately.
If there was that much information on him, how was he able to carry out the attack in the first place?
Furthermore, both the Kurdish YPG and the PKK have denied any involvement in the attack. The PYD leader has also said his group was not involved.
That’s always a problem with with these narratives; the first rule of terrorism is to claim responsibility. That’s the whole POINT of a terrorist attack – to claim responsibility. But all of the Kurdish groups – who may or may not be ‘terrorists’, depending on where you stand – have entirely denied involvement.
What this attack smells of is deep-state, false-flag terrorism to further an obvious agenda. Aside from the fact that the Turkish state has conducted false-flag terror attacks in the country before (including the nonsensical business of blaming Kurdish groups for attacks on Kurdish rallies), the Turkish government is currently trying to re-establish justifications for its attacks on Syrian Kurds across the border. It is also quite possibly trying to establish justifications for an invasion into Syria. Therefore a deadly terror attack by Syrian Kurds comes at the perfect time to both justify Turkey’s existing activities and to justify further activities that are likely imminent (such as a military incursion into Syria).
Turkish violations of Syria’s sovereignty have become so frequent and brazen that it has prompted Damascus to petition the UN to investigate the Turkish state’s actions. Further to Turkish military shelling of both Syrian Kurdish fighters and Syrian regime targets in recent days, Reuters reported that “the Syrian government says Turkish forces were believed to be among 100 gunmen it said entered Syria on Saturday accompanied by 12 pick-up trucks mounted with heavy machine guns, in an ongoing supply operation to insurgents fighting Damascus.”
And subsequent to that, it is reported that at least 500 more ‘rebels’ crossed the Turkish border into Syria on Wednesday – the same day as the Ankara bombing. They included rebels as well as Islamist fighters.
In its harsh campaign against both Syrian Kurds and the Kurds in southern Turkey, as well as against the government of Bashar Assad, the Turkish state needs ongoing justifications like this latest attack in Ankara – this is mostly in order to validate its behaviour, not so much domestically as to its international allies and critics.
Official talk also currently indicates Turkey wants to establish a “humanitarian zone” inside northern Syria. The stated reason for this is to protect refugees and prevent them from continuing the mass exodus; but it’s also worth noting that the desired establishment of these zones is entirely in keeping with the buffer zones or “safe zones” envisioned in the Brookings Insitution policy plan for Syria, the primary purpose of which is to create safe zones for armed rebels and anti-government fighters in Syria; which is perhaps all the more urgent now, as rebel groups in northern Syria are crumbling under the assaults from the Syrian Army and its Russian allies.
But the Turkish state’s problem, like that of Saudi Arabia, is that it appears to be hardheadedly committed to a singular outcome that it is unwilling to waver from or compromise on.
Warnings that Turkey, like its neighbour Syria, is in danger of sliding into its own civil war – one that could destabilise Europe even more than Syria has – should be of serious concern to the international community, the EU and Turkey’s allies.
As Turkish journalist Metin Munir correctly forecast back in August 2012, ‘Whichever way Syria goes, Turkey is in big trouble. Turkey’s active engagement in trying to depose Bashar al-Assad has been the country’s worst foreign-policy blunder since its independence’.
The last thing I heard was that an offshoot group who no longer talks to PKK had claimed they did the attack. If we believe that story then Turkey’s MIT is slipping and didn’t even notice the rupture between kurdish groups – terrorist or not. It always amazes me how Turkey knows seemingly within hours who the guilty party is yet they didn’t know in time to prevent said attack. Last time they came out saying DNA evidence in less than 48 hours – totally not possible. The other little reported story yesterday was that Turkey had called in representatives of the UNSC and shown them the Turkish proof that it was PYD – more problems since nobody seems to believe it only they put it more diplomatically than I would have.
silverpalomino2013, the Turkish state is taking its country to a very dark, dangerous place.