Will Turkey go to war?

To answer this question, first we have to outline these facts: A military operation was conducted to save our troops guarding the Tomb of Süleyman Shah. Turkey took its sons overnight from where they were under siege. By all measures, this is a very appropriate political decision and a successful operation.

Syria’s mandatory objections and threats actually have no value.   

What else would Turkey have done? Would it leave its troops on this land under the siege of terror, where domestic clashes are ongoing and where no state authority is left?

Of course not. Whatever it takes to be a state has been done. The world has also found this operation to be justified.

As soon as the operation became known to the public, people were asking, “Will Turkey be engaged in war?”

First of all, Syria is not in a position to even make a scenario for a war. In other words, there will not be a war because of this.

However, there are more important and deeper issues than this, such as the situation of Mosul and Kirkuk.

A U.S. Central Command official was speaking to reporters the other day. He said, “An Iraqi and Kurdish military force of 20,000 to 25,000 troops is being prepared to recapture the city, probably in April or May.”

These words trigger three important questions:

1) A war is in store in the months of April and May over Mosul and Kirkuk, which are critically important for Turkey. What will Turkey’s position be in this war?

2) For the Kurdish forces to conduct a joint operation with the U.S., how will that affect the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the Democratic Union Party (PYD) in Syria? How will the possible reflections from that war affect the peace process in Turkey and, most importantly, the laying down of arms of the PKK?

3) What does the U.S. official’s referring to Iraqi and Kurdish forces separately mean? Are Kurdish forces other than the PYD, the Peshmerga and even the PKK, in question?

Indeed, these questions are also being asked to Ankara.

Election calendar

If we carry these questions to a further date, we will come to the general elections in June. In other words, while Turkey is approaching a general election, it is entering a highly critical period which can also shape its domestic politics in a very sensitive region, such as in Mosul and Kirkuk right across its borders.

To state the question more clearly: “While the PYD and the Peshmerga in the north of Iraq and Syria are being armed by the U.S., will the PKK, which defines itself as a force in the region, be willing to lay down arms easily?”

This question must have a share in the close contact between Ankara and Iraqi Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani, because Ankara considers any Kurdish forces other than Barzani’s to be illegal.

To be able to better analyze how critical the coming months are, we should note that the peace process is a historic benchmark for Turkish democracy. One leg of these talks is in Kandil. The indicator of this is the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) delegations shuttling between İmralı and Kandil. The laying down of arms of the PKK is the most critical condition of the peace process, but these developments across our borders are making this condition more difficult.

Well, this is the essential issue. Replies expected to come from Kandil in the coming days will make this situation clearer.

Well, would Turkey go into a war over Mosul and Kirkuk? No, I don’t think so. But this war would keep on going at our door, at our threshold. Well, when did we have a peaceful door, anyway? The Iran-Iraq war, the Israel-Syria war, the Azerbaijan-Armenia war, the blood of the brothers we have been shedding domestically for 30 years, Kardak, the continental shelf and Cyprus, the civil war in Syria and 1.5 million refugees in our country…

Look at this history and geography… It is full of bloodshed…
We are already in a war, our neck is bleeding…