Incredible revelations

It is unbelievable. The president of the country is speaking and sending everyone into shock. Can elements within the state plot against the state, plant bombs with the state’s armored cars and murder people in cold blood?

I know. Some people will recall the Uludere (Roboski) massacre of Dec. 28, 2011, when the Turkish Air Force repeatedly bombarded an area until 34 Turkish citizens trying to cross into Turkey from Syria were all dead. Was it possible? Could there be such a gross deficiency of intelligence? Right, those Turkish citizens were smugglers. Right, they were perhaps violating the country’s customs laws. They were entering Turkey illegally. Right. Were they not doing that profession, smuggling, with the tacit approval of local officials, including the military? Was it possible for the country’s intelligence organization – an organization boasting it was monitoring camps of the terrorists around-the-clock – to have such a level of intelligence deficiency?

Alas those people were blatantly murdered and for the past so many years, a strong state hand has been continuing to veil the crime committed. What happened, how it happened and who was responsible?

Now, a serious situation is continuing in the southeastern town of Cizre. People are shot in the head. There are rampant claims that there were cases of police firing live ammunition on crowds. Kurdish politicians are warning that the Cizre incidents have reached the dimension of possibly halting the process aimed at resolving the country’s Kurdish problem.

Now, the president of the country is confessing – with a political agenda of course – that some “people working for the state” are engaged in a conspiracy, using public armored cars to plant bombs in Cizre.

Oh la la… “Parallel” again! The president has developed an addiction of attacking the Fethullah Gülen brotherhood at every opportunity. He must have some evidence, of course, before making such explosive statements. If true, of course, there is a very serious situation. Who said it, how he said it is irrelevant, the situation is serious if it is true.

Worse, the president stressed that what was said so far about the “parallel coup” attempt was trivial; such things would be exposed soon and that the country would be shocked. “We have entered their dens … We know well in what calculations are those who have been in efforts to portray Turkey as a country collaborating with terrorism.”

Of course, the allegations are serious. If such accusations are coming from the top of the state, the situation ought to be very serious. Yet, is the president of the country trustworthy? He ought to be of course… Yet, after seeing the “Duşakabinoğulları” (Sons of the shower cabin) mockery at the extravagant Presidential Palace, it becomes obvious that there might be no limit to the extremes in this country. Naturally, no one would expect someone wearing something like a bathrobe suit, representing God knows which Turkish state, would take part in that theatrical show of soldiers wearing symbolic outfits of previous 16 Turkish states.

Turkey is passing through strange times. There is a systematic effort underway to change Turkey into a neo-Ottomanist empire with an expanded territory including Mosul and the Kurdish-populated parts of Iraq and Syria. Did not that tulip-merchant deputy from Balıkesir confess that the 90 years of republic was an “advert break” to the Ottoman Empire and by 2023, the centenary of the republic, the film (meaning new empire) would start again?

Which one is a greater threat to Turkey and peace in this region? A cleric based in Pennsylvania and his brotherhood organization or a patronizing political majority with the professed target of overhauling the secularist republican system all together and replacing it with a Sunni neo-Ottomanist empire?

Which revelation is graver? The one by a president admitting like a gypsy confessing to his faults while boasting and saying that his government could not establish efficient rule over civil servants or a deputy saying the republic was an “advert brake” to the Ottoman Empire or the “parallel” threat, whatever that might be?