Being on the wrong side of history

Nowadays Turkey and Russia are in a serious crisis. If this crisis continues with only mutual economic sanctions and not military escalation, we will almost be happy for that.

Since we cannot turn time back and choose the option of not downing the plane, it is good for all of us to foresee the future in the light of this reality.

This is what is important: Turkey, in a way, has succeeded in turning what seems to be its weakest point, the never-ending, chaotic situation in Syria, into an advantage for itself. I think the crisis with Russia is also included in this. 

No, I am not claiming the Russian plane was downed intentionally. What I am trying to say is that the crisis in Syria is about to turn into an opportunity from our point of view. 

Including the United States, the West, for a long time, truly paid no attention to what was going on in Iraq and in Syria. It was Turkey primarily and other regional countries that had to deal with the two states of these huge countries becoming dysfunctional or forced to become dysfunctional. 

However, with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) taking terror to the heart of the West and with Syrian refugees overflowing Turkey to the Aegean Sea and from there to Europe, the West, especially Europe, was obliged to deal with Syria and Iraq. 

This situation drew Turkey close to the West and the West close to Turkey. 

We are not talking about a short-term unity of interests; in any case, the fight against ISIL will be a medium- and long-term effort. This effort, ultimately, will contain the making of functional states for Iraq and Syria and then making them survive. 

What does “functional state” mean? At its simplest, it means a state capable of maintaining public order. 

Who will establish these states? Of course the peoples of these two countries will and their states will be based on the genuine approval of these people. Any other option is out of the question. 

Russia and Iran - and actually also the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) - are, for now, taking the wrong side of history in these efforts. If a Syria with President Bashar al-Assad was ever based on the genuine approval of the people, there would not have been a civil war in that country anyway.

Exactly for this reason, a crisis with Russia and Iran was inevitable anyway.

Effort to infiltrate chaos into Turkey 

In a series of town centers and many neighborhoods something that has not been experienced before in Turkey has been happening since mid-summer; the PKK’s youth groups dig ditches and cut the neighborhood’s ties with the rest of the town and declare “autonomy.”

Months before, columnist Akif Beki asked the right question. He wrote, “What does it mean to declare autonomy in a place where you already receive 90 percent of the votes?”

Exactly, really, while the Kurdish political movement has an overwhelming superiority of 90 percent over other policies in southeastern Cizre, Silvan or Diyarbakır’s Sur, what does it mean to “seize” these places once more with weapons? 

What we see in these clashing neighborhoods is this: The resident population leaves the area immediately and relatively small groups control the place with all kinds of explosives and weapons, trenches are dug, explosives are booby-trapped and clashes with the police start.

What does “liberating” uninhabited places mean? As a matter of fact, the aim is not to “liberate” or “declare autonomy,” etc. The aim is to bring a Syrian-like chaos, a clashing environment, across the borders of Turkey.