Last week, it became abundantly clear that Turkey’s newfound zeal for accelerating the demise of Islamic State is motivated chiefly by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s desire to nullify a ballot box victory by the pro-Kurdish HDP, which grabbed 13% of the vote and won party representation last month in an election that also saw AKP lose its absolute majority for the first time in over a decade.
Now, Erdogan looks set to call for new elections as "efforts" to build a coalition government have largely failed. As WSJ noted [7] last week, Erdogan needs but a two percentage-point swing to restore AKP’s absolute majority, which would in turn make "concessions demanded by its potential coalition partners on press freedom, corruption prosecutions and foreign policy unnecessary." It would also "allow Erdogan to proceed with controversial plans to turn Turkey into a presidential republic and solidify his personal power."
The first step here is obviously to undermine the coalition building process and indeed, Erdogan has now been accused of doing exactly that. Here’s Reuters [8]:
Turkey's main opposition leader has accused President Tayyip Erdogan of blocking efforts to form a coalition government and warned him against taking the country to new elections through "blood politics" by reopening conflict with Kurdish militants. "I say this with all sincerity: Prime Minister (Ahmet) Davutoglu really is willing to sit down and form a coalition and save the country from its problems," CHP leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu told Haberturk TV late on Sunday.
"But the person sitting in the post of presidency is not allowing it," he told the Turkish broadcaster in an interview.
Erdogan's opponents accuse him of launching military action against the PKK to rally nationalist support and undermine the pro-Kurdish opposition, whose strong showing in the June election helped deprive the AKP of its majority.
The government says the campaign against the PKK, which has left a peace process on the brink of collapse, was launched in response to a series of killings of military and police officers blamed on the Kurdish militants.
Indeed it was launched "in response to a series of killings", but what’s left out here is that those killings were themselves a response to a suicide bombing [9] in Suruc that killed 32 people. That incident was pinned on ISIS sympathizers. The issue is that the PKK (and they aren’t alone) suspects Ankara itself of being an ISIS sympathizer, which makes the entire series of events leading up to the current outbreak of violence look remarkably convenient for Erdogan.
That is, Erdogan may have known that given YPG's fight with ISIS and given the PKK's suspicions regarding Ankara's connections with Islamic State, all it would take is one ISIS-linked suicide attack to set off a chain of events that would culminate in NATO backing a renewed Turkish offensive against the Kurds, which would in turn help Erdogan undermine HDP's popularity ahead of new elections.
And that is exactly how things have played out. Turkey is essentially using a mock campaign against Islamic State to justify a renewed conflict with the PKK which Ankara will promptly cite as evidence of why voters should not back HDP when elections are held again in a few months.
Predictably, reports of PKK "terror" attacks have begun. On Sunday, the PKK was blamed for a suicide bombing that killed three Turkish soldiers. BBC has more [10]:
Two Turkish soldiers have been killed and 31 wounded in a suicide attack by Kurdish PKK militants, the Turkish military says.
A tractor laden with explosives was driven at a military police station, a statement said. The attack happened early on Sunday near the town of Dogubayezit in Agri province, near the border with Iran.
Since 24 July, Turkey has carried out hundreds of air raids on PKK bases on both sides of the Iraq-Turkey border.
A Turkish state news agency, Anadolu, said the tractor was carrying two tons of explosives that were detonated by a suicide bomber.
Turkey's army said in a statement that "long-range guns" were also found. Four of the injured were in a serious condition.
And the Erdogan regime is stepping up the anti-HDP rhetoric as the violence esclates. "HDP deserves to be shut down 1,000 times," Burhan Kuzu, an Erdogan adviser told Haberturk on Monday. "A chance to form a one-piece government has to be given to the people again," he added, noting that he is "allergic to coalitions."
Finally, in case anyone had forgotten why Turkey is suspected of cooperating with ISIS in the first place, and hence why Ankara will seek to limit the damage the militant group incurs during the supposed "offensive", here's AFP with a reminder [11]:
Russian President Vladimir Putin is having a change of heart on the Kremlin's wholehearted support for Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad and may "give up on him" in the future, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was quoted as saying Monday.
When asked if Putin could be persuaded not to support Assad, Erdogan said he saw his counterpart as "more positive" during a face-to-face meeting in the Azerbaijani capital of Baku in June and in subsequent telephone talks.
"Putin's current attitude toward Syria is more encouraging than before," Erdogan told a group of journalists on his presidential jet as he returned from a trip to Asia.
"He is no longer of the opinion that Russia will support Assad to the end. I believe he can give up Assad," he was quoted as saying by the Daily Sabah and Sabah dailies.
Turkey and Russia stand on opposing sides over the crisis in Syria, with Ankara one of the fiercest critics of Assad.
