Will moves for peace always be too little and too late?

The same thing held for the peace agreement that Clinton brokered by winning over the Israeli and Palestinian leaders: “Will the moves and steps taken for peace always be too little and too late?” Attentive Cumhuriyet readers may recall how, when circumstances demand, I have cited this assessment passed on to me by the academic chairing an Israeli peace organisation and Palestine’s Ankara representative as they warmly shook hands immediately after the said agreement. The inevitable social consequence of the adverseness and inaction lamented over by the two pro-peace spokespeople, whose desire for peace came from the bottom of their hearts with their peoples in mind, is that peace remains as elusive as ever, and not just for Israel and the Palestinians.

In today’s Middle Eastern quagmire, in the shadow of the civil wars and fragmentations that wreak havoc mainly in the Islamic world and among the poor southern peoples, the balance is tipped in the ruleless order’s ruleless wars by the use of terrorist organisations, now enjoying great support in terms of money and armed power. When not the slightest link with identity, purpose and belonging can be advanced in justification of the existence of terrorist organisations, which have taken Turkey by storm in recent days with their unbearably brutal blows each one harsher than the last, is it not most significant and horrifying that assessments by terrorism experts seem capable of establishing a chain of causality in justifications made for both actions and motivations and the support that is furnished and made available in terms of money and arms?

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When it comes to pinning the rap, our political leaders will have felt immense relief with it having emerged that the assassin who served in the rapid response police in Ankara and was capable of killing the Russian ambassador in the most merciless and professional way belonged to the Fethullah Gülen Terrorist Organisation (FETÖ). The conclusion will inevitably be reached that an assassination supplementing the FETÖists’ half-finished coup is a further instance of the USA-NATO-EU constellation of political powers’ unfriendly approach towards Turkey of recent years, of which we quite rightly complain. Within the chains of logic and causality, these will constitute solid grounds for the endeavour to avoid fragmentation and the need engendered by current developments for cooperation with Russia and Iran over Syria of a Turkey that has moved beyond post-coup recuperation.

This will be used for all it is worth in domestic politics when a referendum is embarked on that portends of civilian dictatorship and whose lofty stated purpose will be replacing a prime-ministerial system with a presidential one. The powerful ruling party that, as it enters its fifteenth year, should have to reckon with a very severe and stark settling of accounts may, through regime change and all the chaos-engendering assaults, instantly manage to evade a settling of accounts with the electorate over the very grave political crime committed under its watch that will come with at a very hefty future price for our country.

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The certain link that may be made between the assassin and the FETÖ terrorist formation may, on the other hand, serve as a means for NATO and the UN and EU to escape responsibility and evade responsibility in compensation for the USA having let go of the political strings in the region. The virtually synchronous attacks in chain-like succession by Turkey’s self-obsessed terrorist organisations that are as opposite to one another in terms of goal as they are ideologically may also be deemed to be indicative that they are acting as ‘subcontractors’ in the service of a common puppet master.

The legend that saw the creation of the AKP, positioned as the strategic partner in the USA’s moderate Islam project, may be removed from public discourse as well as the settling of accounts for its responsibilities in terms of its alliance with FETÖ. Questions as to why Assad’s name was respelt when he fell out of favour and then reverted to the old spelling are unimportant and open to bargaining. Perhaps people will be made to forget to hold those to account who were responsible for dragging Turkey into the Middle Eastern quagmire with an air of having assumed the leading role in saving the world. What else is to come? The electorate could well be made to assent to the adversity and vacillations engendered by a governing power that is entering its fifteenth year, is untrammelled by coalition and essentially amounts to a civilian dictatorship thanks to the thesis that there is no space for debate on the agenda over the dark prospects and fresh array of vital problems facing Turkey and to prompting by the media that has all at once been usurped in its entirety. With the only solution for Turkey to avoid being shattered in a spiral of terror lying in assuming as a political imperative a humanitarian role on the Syria-Damascus tangent and the role of being the world’s most mistreated country, is there even any place for questioning the loss of sixteen soldiers’ lives in Al-Bab?

ŞÜKRAN SONER