On both sides of the Bosphorus with Turkish and Russian flags in our hands

What did the Russian soldier holding a missile on the deck of a Russian warship on the waters of the Bosphorus Strait symbolize? 

My answer is that it symbolized the “look at the bird” distraction policy of the Kremlin, which seems to think we are naïve… 

Russian President Vladimir Putin, as he sees it, will draw attention to the straits… 

He will make people think of the Montreux Convention Regarding the Regime of the Straits signed in 1936.

NATO Spanish and Portuguese warships will take the stage on the Bosphorus as extras in a film set… 

While the world is busy, engaged in incidents here, Putin will arm the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) through the Democratic Union Party (PYD), the PKK’s Syrian extension.

Maybe he will hand them over a couple of missiles… 

While we are engaged in this dummy missile on the Bosphorus, Putin will arm the PKK with missiles and equip the PKK with missile power at the Ceylanpınar-Tal Abyad passage across the Turkish-Syrian border… 

Or is Putin saying something else? 

Is he saying, “I will not be content with only a trade embargo but nevertheless there will not be a military attack either?” 

Well, what is left in between?  

What is left is terror. This is now obvious. Putin will scratch the peace process, which is Turkey’s most important issue, in the coming term.   

It will trigger Kandil Mountain and incite the daringness of digging trenches on the streets of southeastern Diyarbakır and Nusaybin, an act the PKK has been doing for some time…

If Kandil Mountain, which is the military center of the PKK, has the support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Russia, and if it comes to that point, they will not even be listening to their imprisoned leader, Abdullah Öcalan. 

Here, I repeat once more: “During Bashar al-Assad’s Moscow visit, the PKK was absolutely discussed.”

For this reason, I am saying, the missile-holding Russian soldier on the deck of the Russian warship in the Bosphorus was a “look at the bird” tactic. 

What should we do? 

I have a much more sentimental proposal. 

I wonder if we could all be informed when another Russian warship enters the Bosphorus from the Black Sea. Then we should, starting from Sarayburnu on the shore of the Bosphorus near Topkapı Palace, form two lines along both sides of the Bosphorus…

What if we wave Turkish and Russian flags together to the Russian warship? 

What if we all cry “Peace!” together? 

The diplomacy of people is sometimes more sentimental and more effective than the diplomacy of states. 

Can you imagine such a scene? 

A Russian warship is passing through the Bosphorus…

Istanbul, the world’s city of Istanbul… The heritage of an empire, Istanbul…

And on the two shores of Istanbul, thousands of people lined up…

A human chain with Turkish and Russian flags in their hands…

They shout “Peace!” to that Russian warship…

I really don’t know what the world would do with such a photograph…