Ergun Babahan on the news site Özgür Düşünce writes that AKP’s antagonistic policies against Muslims and Kurds are at a par with the oppression that has historically been associated with CHP, the founding party of the republic. In fact what is happening can be viewed as “mopping up” actions by the state which uses the AKP as its tool.  The Kurds and the Gülen movement are seen as enemies by the state. AKP are doing the bidding of the state by terrorizing girls in headscarf and by being the standard-bearer of the policy of extermination against the Kurds. But make no mistake, for the state the AKP is nothing but a tissue that is used and which will be discarded when it’s no longer needed. In the 1990’s, the military had had to pay for what was done against Kurds and Muslims, and this was what paved the way for the ascent of AKP to power. This time, it will not be the military, but the president, the prime minister and the other AKP leaders who are going to be held responsible for the breaches of law and the violations of human rights. What we are witnessing in Şırnak, Cizre and Sur shows that the state has decided to destroy the Kurdish cities and empty them of their inhabitants. This is the 1915 model adapted to the conditions of our time, and it could set off an exodus of Turkey’s Kurds toward Europe.

By Lars Haugom

March 11, 2016

The Turkish military has no known intention to intervene in the political decision-making process. However, the military has retained a capacity to do so - both by means of its continued role in security policy making and its relative institutional autonomy. The extent of any military involvement in politics will largely depend on how the Kurdish issue is handled by the government. But it is still highly unlikely that any such involvement will take the form of a direct intervention.

By Gareth H. Jenkins

March 8, 2016

Former President Abdullah Gül’s recent decision to adopt a higher public profile and meet with known dissidents from inside the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has triggered a flurry of speculation that his successor, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, may be about to face a serious challenge to his flailing attempts to tighten his grip on power.

Murat Belge in Birikim writes that the reigning mentality in Turkey is that tension is the best ally of rulers. Tayyip Erdoğan saw that declaring war on the Kurds would give him back what he had lost, and he made those who called for stern measures against the Kurds happy. Tayyip Erdoğan had also decided to make peace with the neo-nationalists with whom he had been jarring until recently. After the parting of ways with the Gülenists, there is a potential to make peace with the Kemalists, or at least with some of them. When the Kurds are struck, some of the nationalists who hate the AKP can’t help but to be happy about it and they start thinking that the AKP may have some “positive” sides. Can these circles forget, let alone pardon, all those “Sledgehammers” and “Ergenekons?” I don’t think so. But this is the world of politics. It may be necessary to store away some problems for a while; and then, when you have become sufficiently strong, you think that you will extract them again. For the time being, this is the prevailing mood among those circles. So, can we thus conclude that Tayyip Erdoğan has gotten his “rose garden without thorns?” Well, history has never seen any such “rose garden.” What a look at the facts tells us is that these policies of tension and quarrel that Tayyip Erdoğan has made so much use of have confined him to a terrain that is becoming increasingly narrow.

Mümtazer Türköne in Zaman writes that the Kurdish issue was the most important reason for the survival of the AKP in government, but that the way the state views the party has changed after the PKK was allowed to stockpile arms and ammunition in the cities during the solution process.  Ultimately, the AKP was tolerated by the military, the bureaucracy and the judiciary – after they had struggled for a long while against it – because the continued rule of a party that could get votes all across Turkey was also a gurantee for keeping the state in one piece. But during the solution process, the PKK was able to become entrenched in the cities, stockpiling arms and ammunition there. Carelessness and deliberate mistakes let this happen, and it amounts to treason. Now, those who were responsible for these mistakes are going to pay for them. The current security bureaucracy and the provincial governors who issued the orders of non-intervention against the PKK in the face of reports that it was stockpiling arms are going to be seated next to each other as accused at the coming mass trial. That is the only way for the state to put its house back in order.