TURKISH DELIGHT. Knocked off its perch

For some time now, Turkey has been ignoring increasing ISIL activity on its porous border with Syria. Instead, President Erdogan has targeted the Kurdish separatist movement, headed by the Kurdish Workers Party, or PKK.

For over 40 years, the PKK has fought for a separate homeland. Turkey has watched as ISIL fighters and Kurds battled in Syria, and also as the US mobilised its coalition against ISIL, content to let other people do its dirty work.

Last week, Turkey was finally pushed off that fence it has been squatting on. On July 20, 31 people were killed by a suicide bomber in the border town of Suruc.

Even more poignant, most were young volunteers who were taking relief supplies to the Syrian border town of Kobani, which was the scene of a fierce battle last year between Kurds and ISIL fighters. Ankara swung into action against ISIL, for the first time ever.

In the space of a frantic few days, Turkish forces bombed ISIL positions in Syria, allowed American jets to fly from Turkish bases, and called an emergency NATO meeting. Six hundred possible terror suspects were also arrested across Turkey. Meanwhile, angry protestors clashed with police in Istanbul, demanding that more be done against terrorism.

In what must rank as the understatement of the year, a US government official called the new US-Turkish alliance a game changer, brought about by a hasty phone call between Erdogan and President Obama.

Game changer it surely was, after years of Turkey backing the war against Syrian president Hafez al-Assad rather than that against ISIL.

“Any terror group that threatens Turkey’s borders — which are being watched closely — will be met by “the most ferocious response,” said Prime Minister Ahmet Davotuglu.

But observers hoping for determined action against ISIL were to be disappointed. By the end of the week, the Turkish government returned to its old ways. Turkish jets bombed PKK strongholds in Iraq, breaking a two-year-old ceasefire. The PKK retaliated with the killing of two policemen in southern Turkey.

And just like that, the Turkish government now finds itself in battle on two fronts. Angry Kurds argue that the Turkish government is using the ISIL attacks as an excuse to go into battle against the Kurds, once again. They claim that most of the 600 arrested were Kurdish, not ISIL sympathisers.

“It is unacceptable that Erdogan and the AKP government have made a fight against the Kurdish people part of their struggle against Islamic State,” the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) said in a statement. There’s bad blood between Erdogan and the HDP too.

The ruling AKP party lost its majority earlier this year when, for the first time, the HDP won the 10 per cent it needed for representation in parliament.

Meanwhile, the White House issued a statement that Turkey had the right to defend its own borders, in a tacit support for its action on Kurds.

Clearly the US is willing to overlook Turkey’s bombing of Kurds as long as it gets support for its war on ISIL.

So far, Turkey has been reluctant to be the stage for a US fight against ISIL, with some justification. Turkey, with its long border with Syria, and 1.5 million Syrian refugees, has the most to lose of any country in the US alliance.

But with ISIL now in its backyard, it has no choice.

The writer is a journalist based in Bengaluru and Istanbul

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