MESOP TODAYS OPINION : Turkey’s Cover – by FOREIGN POLICY – What Ankara is Really Trying to Accomplish With Airstrikes

By Michael J. Koplow – 3. Auf. 2015 –  (….) – Fighting the PKK and thwarting Kurdish ambitions in Syria are not the only dynamics driving Turkish actions. In addition to all of this, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), which is head of the current caretaker government that will rule the country until a new coalition is formed (or, if one fails to form, until new elections are held in the fall), is attempting to reverse the political consequences of its Kurdish Opening policy, which granted Turkish Kurds greater rights in using the Kurdish language and expressing their Kurdish culture. It brought momentary peace, but appears now to have weakened the AKP’s hold on power.

Initiated by then Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 2009, the Kurdish Opening eventually led to the 2012 Kurdish–Turkish peace process with the imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan. Those negotiations resulted in a ceasefire with the PKK in April 2013, one that has now been eviscerated in the wake of PKK attacks on Turkish soldiers and Turkey’s recent military strikes against PKK strongholds in northern Iraq.Aside from bringing much-needed quiet following decades of terrorism and assassinations by the PKK, as well as the constant military operations to fight them, the AKP used the peace process to bolster its political standing. Given its more liberal stance on Kurdish issues, the AKP was the only parliamentary political party that was competitive in Turkey’s southeast. By appealing to the Kurds, the AKP assumed that it would reap even greater electoral rewards in the future, and in the process, cement itself as Turkey’s ruling party for a generation.

The recent June 7 parliamentary election turned that logic on its head. The AKP had already been losing popularity among the Kurds, who faulted Ankara for endangering Kurdish fighters in Syria that were fighting ISIS by blocking reinforcements and supplies from reaching them across the border. This anger reached a boiling point during the fall 2014 siege of Kobani, a Syrian border town, during which Turkish armed forces stood by and watched ISIS gain ground. It was only U.S. airstrikes that enabled the YPG to successfully push out ISIS. In fact, many Turkish Kurds believe that Turkey has actively aided—and even created—ISIS in an effort to stamp out Kurdish nationalism.

When Kurdish political parties reorganized and consolidated as the People’s Democratic Party (HDP) in 2014 and announced that the HDP would compete in parliamentary elections, the AKP perceived the move as a new threat to its parliamentary dominance. It spent much of the campaign season railing against the HDP and its links to the PKK, and vilifying HDP leader Selahattin Demirtas. It turns out that the AKP’s fears were not unfounded, as the HDP outperformed expectations and garnered 13 percent of the vote on June 7, pushing the AKP below a majority of the seats in the Grand National Assembly for the first time in the party’s 13 years of single-party rule.

The government’s current military campaign against the PKK must be seen within the context of June’s election, and its timing is no coincidence. The strikes ostensibly focused on rolling back ISIS, but are being primarily directed at the PKK and come hand-in-hand with a political effort to roll back the HDP. Erdogan, who initiated the Kurdish peace process, has accused the HDP of being little more than a thinly veiled political arm of the PKK and slammed the HDP for expressing regret rather than condemnation after recent PKK terror attacks. It is all part of his effort to link the HDP with the PKK in the minds of Turkish voters.

On the political front, the AKP has begun proceedings to strip Demirtas of his parliamentary immunity from prosecution, and submitted a criminal complaint against the HDP that has led to a judicial investigation into the party’s ties to the PKK. That could lead to the shuttering of the party. This all-out assault against the Kurdish political party is in anticipation of new elections in the fall, which Erdogan will call if the current caretaker government is unable to form a coalition this month, a scenario that appears more likely with each passing day. If the HDP is significantly weakened or even removed from the scene entirely by then, the AKP’s path back to an outright majority will be significantly smoother. Whereas the AKP used to view a liberal approach toward Turkey’s Kurds as the key to its political dominance, the Kurds’ boost in power from the Syrian civil war and the success of Syrian Kurdish militias has pushed the AKP to take a hardline approach in order to improve its political standing.

Few will object to the AKP’s efforts to deal the PKK a fatal blow, particularly following the resumption of Kurdish attacks on Turkish police and military targets. From a political standpoint, the military campaign will be popular with Turkish nationalists and will reassure average Turks that a vote for the AKP is a vote for security and the resumption of law and order. The moves against the HDP, however, are being folded into this military campaign despite being a purely political maneuver. While Turkey loudly touts its intention to fight against terrorist groups of any and every persuasion, it is using this fight as a cover to carry out a parallel political battle that will remake Turkish politics and reestablish the AKP’s own political dominance. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/turkey/2015-08-03/turkeys-cover