Is Erdogan turning Turkey into the new Pakistan?

[Shamraz_Khan]

What Erdogan is trying to to Turkey is what Zia did to Pakistan in 1980s.

Ankara Explosions: 86 Killed, 186 Hurt Before Rally in Turkish Capital - NBC News

ISTANBUL, Turkey — At least 86 people were killed in twin explosions Saturday outside the main train station in the Turkish capital Ankara where protesters were gathering for a peace march, prosecutors said.

Graphic pictures from the scene showed several bodies covered by flags and placards, with bloodstains visible and body parts scattered in the road. Officials said 186 people were hurt.

“There was a demonstration,” one eyewitness told local television. “I was walking next to a stage rally truck. Right here, behind two banners, an explosion went off. We lay on the ground. The second bomb went off there. There were two bombs but the one that went off here was a very strong one.”

Image: A woman helps an injured woman after an explosion during a peace march in Ankara
Multiple wounded were treated at the scene of the Ankara blast. TUMAY BERKIN / Reuters
The peace rally had attracted busloads of leftist and Kurdish activists, who came to Ankara from other cities to join in.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks, Turkey’s deadliest in years. A senior Turkish security official told Reuters that they were the result of a suicide bombing.

The official also said a ban had been imposed in Turkey on broadcasting images which directly showed the bomb blasts.

Images: Explosions Rip Through Peace Rally in Turkey

One local reporter said hospitals in the area had appealed for blood donors as they treated a number of seriously wounded patients.

“I heard one big explosion first and tried to cover myself as the windows broke. Right away there was the second one,” said Serdar, 37, who was working at a newspaper stand in the station. “There was shouting and crying and I stayed under the newspapers for a while. I could smell burnt flesh.”

In the chaotic aftermath of the blasts, the death toll continued to climb. Health minister Mehmet Muezinoglu said 62 people died at the scene while 24 others died after being taken to the hospital.

The blasts came ahead of a planned political rally by labor unions and aid groups protesting the country’s conflict with Kurdish militants in southeast Turkey.

Footage showed a line of young men and women holding hands and dancing, and then flinching as a large explosion flashed behind them, where people were gathered carrying pro-Kurdish HDP and leftist party banners.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemned the attacks, which came during a tense time ahead of Turkey’s Nov. 1 general election.

“The greatest and most meaningful response to this attack is the solidarity and determination we will show against it,” Erdogan said.

In recent months, Turkish jets have carried out deadly airstrikes on Kurdish rebels in Iraq, renewing the conflict with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party.

[Shamraz_Khan]

Re: Is Erdogan turning Turkey into the new Pakistan?

Is Erdogan turning Turkey into the new Pakistan? - Telegraph

Is Turkey the new Pakistan? Even a year ago it would have seemed unreasonable to compare our Nato ally on the fringe of Europe, an active candidate to join the EU, with poor, politically unstable, terrorist-plagued Pakistan.
Since 2000, Turkey had become the poster-child for those who hope a predominantly Muslim society could combine democracy with economic success. While Pakistan had remained in the shadow of Afghanistan’s perpetual crisis since 1979, under the leadership of Recep Tayip Erdogan Turkey had steamed ahead since 2002.
But over the last few years a slow-motion train wreck in Turkey has become increasingly apparent. Saturday’s suicide bombing in Ankara was just the latest in Turkey’s renewed terrorist crisis.
Victims are covered with flags and banners as police officers secure the area after the explosion
Victims are covered with flags and banners as police officers secure the area after the explosion Photo: AP/Burhan Ozbilici
Turkey admitted the prime suspect is Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant over the border in Syria. It then launched air strikes against the dissident Kurds fighting Isil along the same frontier. That is how murky Erdogan’s security policy has become.
One of the big gains of his rule had been a ceasefire with the militant Kurdish PKK in south-east Turkey. Erdogan actually returned to the Turkish Parliament after being banned from a Kurdish region in 2002 for his Islamic activities. It seemed his mix of religion and politics meant a Muslim leader could reach out to fellow Muslim Kurds as well as ethnic Turks.
But as elections in June showed, the bulk of Turkey’s Kurds now support opponents of Erdogan’s AK Party. This is largely the result of his backing anti-Assad forces in Syria who are not only Sunni but hostile to Syria’s Kurds.
Like his allies in Nato, Erdogan had expected the Assad regime to implode as quickly as other Arab dictatorships in 2011. But unlike the rest of the West, Erdogan took sides in the sectarian politics of Syria. Turkey’s sympathy for jihadists there and its blind-eye to weapons supplies to Isil have bitterly divided the Turkish public.
“Erdogan’s ambition to dominate Turkish politics and the Middle East has hit the buffers.”
Syria’s implosion along ethnic and sectarian lines is a warning to Turkey. Many of the dividing lines in Syria reach over the border. France partitioned its Syrian mandate in 1939 to give Antioch to Turkey. Many of the “Turks” there still use Arabic and regard the mainly Sunni rebels in Syria (and the Sunni refugees who have flooded into their border region) with barely veiled hostility.
In July, Kurds in the southern city of Suruc suffered a savage suicide attack. The Turkish state’s failure to forestall such terrorism and the Turkish army’s response to an Isil attack on the Kurdish town of Kobani last year are works of malign indifference. This fuels suspicions among Erdogan’s opponents that his government is behind terrorist violence that so often has Kurds as victims. It is all horribly reminiscent of how Pakistan’s Inter-Services Institute intelligence agency played a double game with the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan.
Of course, Turkey, like Pakistan, does not just face home-grown problems. Both live in difficult neighbourhoods. Both can argue that Western allies have pursued policies which have made their situation worse. But each should deal with self-inflicted wounds too.
An injured man hugs an injured woman after an explosion during a peace march in Ankara, Turkey
An injured man hugs an injured woman after an explosion during a peace march in Ankara, Turkey Photo: REUTERS/Tumay Berkin
Erdogan’s ambition to dominate Turkish politics and the Middle East has hit the buffers. Turkey lacks the resources to play the old Ottoman role. Anyway, few Arabs – and not many Turks – wish to see it revived.
His relations with Putin’s Russia have soured as the Kremlin sent warships and supplies to Syria through the Bosporus as well as the oil that energy-poor Turkey needs. Erdogan upped the ante by threatening to cancel Russian energy imports and a nuclear power project. Now Russian and Turkish warplanes shadow each other, fingers on the trigger.
Desperate to achieve a majority in next month’s parliamentary elections, Erdogan seems prepared to drop the mantle of statesman and gamble that if Turks polarise on sectarian lines, his side will be the majority. This strategy is reopening Turkey’s domestic wounds.
Intensifying internal divisions while playing politics in a neighbour’s civil war is a recipe for recreating Pakistan’s problems on Europe’s doorstep. That would be disaster for us as well as the Turks.
Mark Almond was a visiting professor at Ankara’s Bilkent University and is preparing “Secular Turkey: A Short History”.