After Ankara, Cover-Ups and Conspiracies

Twin bombs rocked the Turkish capital Ankara on October 10, killing close to 100 civilians and injuring over 250 attending a peace rally. The two suicide bombers, linked to the Islamic State (ISIL) — one of whom happens to be the brother of the perpetrator of a suicide attack in July — each carried TNT fortified with metal ball-bearings, to maximize casualties. While citizens are now calling this “Turkey’s 9/11,” it was only the latest in a string of attacks. Within the last four months, ISIL targeted two other opposition rallies in a similar manner, killing seven in Diyarbakir and 34 in Suruç. There are now ample warnings that we may be entering into an era of “Pakistanization,” yet Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) refuses to acknowledge the crisis.

As late as August 2014, Turkey’s Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu avoided referring to ISIL as a terrorist organization, defining it instead as a “reaction born out of discontent and anger.” Davutoğlu also argued that “jihad is the name of fighting for our honor,” and is not related to terrorism. Over the years, the AKP’s Sunni sectarian vision led to a reckless policy that effectively paved a two-way “jihadist highway” on Turkey’s border with Syria. There has been mounting evidence pointing to the collaboration of certain elements within the AKP and the Turkish state with ISIL on Turkey’s southeastern frontier, as well as other jihadists in the region. Soon after the June elections, allegations surfaced that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s daughter was running a covert medical facility for treating ISIL fighters.

For a majority of Turkey’s citizens, the AKP’s culpability, however, is not limited to its jihadist sympathies and entanglements. The tens of thousands of protestors who gathered in Ankara the day after the latest attack blamed the government for the massacre of their friends as they shouted, “murderer Erdoğan” and “murderer police.” When a pro-government journalist tried to deflect criticism by pointing out that such attacks are common in the Middle East, it only exacerbated the public anger. The speaker of the Parliament, who wanted to join the funeral service of the victims in the city of Malatya, had to flee when the locals started shouting “Murderers out!”

Troubling theories are now circulating. The Turkish police, which is notorious for its zero-tolerance policy and brutality against any dissidents who try to stage protests, was oddly absent at the site of the bombing before the ISIL attack. There are Turks who want to know why law enforcement would somehow leave the public square in front of Ankara’s main train station unguarded, a site that is only one kilometer away from the Turkey’s police headquarters and three kilometers from the country’s intelligence agency. As an opposition deputy from the far-right Nationalist Action Party (MHP) claimed, a suicide attack in such a location “was either a failure by the intelligence service, or it was done by the intelligence service.”

The root of such conspiracy theories lies in the misguided priorities and cynical calculations of a failing political leader. The night before the attack, for example, Turkish police were busy arresting the editor-in-chief of Turkey’s second largest circulating English daily for his tweets “insulting” President Erdoğan, only the latest of hundreds of similar cases this year alone. Even as ISIL attacks are on the rise, the police have been raiding media outlets, businesses, and even private schools that are critical of the government. The campaign has included removing opposition media channels, including a children’s channel, from digital platforms. The AKP’s shotgun strategy of cracking down on dissidents nationwide has left the police overstretched and unable to carry out any meaningful counterterrorism work.

Turks have little faith in their judiciary, either. They remember well the massive graft probe of December 2013, implicating Erdoğan, his family and cronies. Through political means, the AKP was able to sweep it under the rug. Erdoğan has since then been systematically purging thousands of police officers, judges and prosecutors to block any further inquiry.

Amid all this, Prime Minister Davutoğlu is fast losing whatever credibility he had. In his press conference following the Ankara attack, he credited himself with bringing the suicide bomber of Suruç, who died in the blast, to justice. In fact, the Davutoğlu-led government failed to prevent the brother of the Suruç bomber, from carrying out in Turkey’s capital a copycat of the suicide attack, although he was listed as one of the 21 suspected would-be suicide bombers. Bizarrely, in a separate interview, Davutoğlu stated that the government has a list of suspects who could carry out future suicide bombings, but out of a consideration for the rule of law, he would not arrest them until they act.

As Turkey’s institutions and rulers continue to fail the nation’s 77 million citizens by taking the country on a collision course of violent extremism, one glimmer of hope seemed to have arrived the day after the Ankara attack. In a spontaneous demonstration of solidarity with the victims and a show of defiance against both the AKP government and ISIL, Turkish citizens took to the streets in more than 20 provinces around the country, marching for peace and democracy. Just a few weeks before Turkey’s November 1 elections, the world waits to see whether this chapter of Turkish history has foretold the fall of a morally bankrupt regime.

Aykan Erdemir is a former member of the Turkish Parliament and a nonresident senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington. Follow him on Twitter @aykan_erdemir