Yıldırım more strategic and deep than Davutoğlu
He was Ahmet Davutoğlu. He had written a book on this topic. He was a professor of international relations. In one go, he could count all the villages in Syria… He once thought no bird would be able to fly in the Middle East without his knowledge. He would get on his plane and visit venues of crises.
But then, what happened? This happened: Thanks to him, we have become the most inefficient element in the Middle East. We are at odds with both the U.S. and Russia. All countries took turns becoming our enemy. We did not have the strength to raise our head in Syria.
Then, the expert of the business left.
In place of him came an engineer named Binali Yıldırım who had no assertiveness on international relations matters. And, all of a sudden, Turkey was back in the game, and as a quite effective player…
Expertise… Good old expertise… Good old professorship… Good old know-it-all… Theories, those theories that do not work in practice…
When Turkey hits ISIL
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has conducted massacres against Kurds, Alevis and leftists in Turkey. It is the archenemy of the Democratic Union Party (PYD). It was also rumored to have been protected by Justice and Development Party (AK Party) governments. Turkey launched a total war against this barbaric ISIL army.
Shouldn’t the PYD be happy? Of course it should. Well, but why are they not happy? Let alone being happy, they are suffering anger outbursts; they are unhappy and very sad. For instance, Salih Muslim is very nervous. Well, but why?
As a matter of fact, there are a few logical reasons:
They are realizing that they are losing the monopoly of being the only armed force in the field against ISIL and thus losing the advantages that came with this.
They are not happy that the U.S. air support they enjoyed up to now was given to Turkey. They are unhappy because with Turkey’s intervention, their dream and ambition of forming an impromptu corridor has been crushed.
Why did the rising PYD star fall?
The first of the PYD’s five biggest mistakes was daydreaming. It was caught in the dream of forming a Kurdish corridor with fait accompli and de facto circumstances, whereas the situation in Syria was not similar to northern Iraq. Northern Syria was not a monolithic Kurdish settlement.
The second was that the PYD was too pumped up by stories published, say by The New York Times, showing female People’s Protection Units (YPG) guerillas in their neat uniforms… It trusted the U.S. too much. It assumed the U.S. would totally give up on Turkey and conduct all its policies with the PYD forever.
The third was that the PYD failed to recognize that a radical status change along the Turkish border was not only unacceptable to Turkey but also unacceptable to Arab countries. The autonomy of Kurds in a certain region was possible, but it failed to notice that defining the entire Turkish border as a Kurdish region was not possible.
It also failed to notice that it was not possible to set up a “PYD state” in Syria. It was not able to understand that the right to autonomy that could be given to Kurds in the future did not mean a “PYD state.”
Westerners, even though officially they said the PYD was different from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), of course knew the organic relation in between. This was missed by the PYD. Or they thought this would not pose a problem. Now they see that the wrong strategies of the PKK have totally affected the PYD.
