MHP: Gov’t portrays ISIL-PYD-PKK as ‘love butterflies’

ANKARA

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The leader of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) has chastised the government for its "foreign policy failures," arguing that both the president and prime minister are so obsessed with toppling the Syrian president that they can portray all outlawed groups in the region as innocent “love butterflies.”

“The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant [ISIL] is arranging execution ceremonies and beheading [people]. An unprecedented savagery is taking place before the eyes of humanity. Mass murders are taking place in our neighboring regions. Terrorists are running rampant around us,” MHP leader Devlet Bahçeli said on Nov. 18.

Recalling that Turkey has allowed a group of Peshmerga, the official security forces of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), to cross from northern Iraq to help defend the besieged town of Kobane at its border, Bahçeli claimed that members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) were also with the same Peshmerga group.

“Just like [President Recep Tayyip] Erdoğan, [Prime Minister Ahmet] Davutoğlu is obsessed with Bashar al-Assad,” Bahçeli said, referring to Davutoğlu’s recent remarks delivered after a meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama on Nov. 15 on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Australia.

In remarks defined by Bahçeli as “cheap and groundless,” Davutoğlu stated that he has received “strong signals” from Obama indicating changes in Washington’s policy on Syria.

As of Nov. 16, Obama denied that he intended to recalibrate his Syria policy, insisting that it was constantly reviewed to see what was working and what was not. “Certainly no changes have taken place with respect to our attitude toward al-Assad,” Obama said at the G-20 summit.

In Ankara, speaking at a parliamentary group meeting of his party, Bahçeli questioned whether Davutoğlu’s motive in traveling to Brisbane was to represent Turkey or “to beg the U.S. to hit Syria.”

“Does Davutoğlu consider sitting at Obama’s table at the G-20 meeting to be a privilege and favor?” Bahçeli asked. “Al-Assad is a terrorist, al-Assad is brutal, al-Assad is a murderer. So, are the ISIL-PYD-PKK love butterflies who collect flowers in the countryside and wouldn’t even hurt a flea?” he said.

“Does the prime minister, who is speaking of shouldering responsibility, suppose that Turkey and the region will reach serenity only when al-Assad goes away, when Syria is disintegrated and when terrorist states are established along our borders?” Bahçeli asked.