It was asked that the Americans cooperate more with the Turkish side. How Turkish! What did the Americans fail to do?
Did they fail to arrange a deal between Turkey and Iraq so as to redraw the border along natural lines? Did they fail to move our border post, which has been attacked five times in the past, to a more secure place? Did they fail to inform our soldiers that a border post shouldn't be positioned in valleys, but on peaks? Did they fail to install video cameras around the Aktütün Border Post, where this nation lost 15 sons? Did they fail to detect 350 terrorists walking five kilometers inside Iraq, crossing into our country from various directions, speaking to each other with various means of communication and carrying easily detectable weaponry?
Down with Americans, if they did all these things!
But what if all these were Turkey's own mistakes? What if it was our army that failed to establish necessary early-warning mechanisms? What if it is our security establishment that spends the bulk of its energy on domestic political issues and spares very little of it on its real duties? What if we could have one more security camera at the Aktütün border post instead of having one next to a private school run by pious religious people? What if we could have one more intelligence agent within the terrorist organization's lines instead of having one officer busying himself with labeling state officials? What if we could have one more teacher, one more doctor or one more psychiatrist in the Southeast reaching out to the general public, instead of turning them into untrained gendarmes and sending them to the mountains to monitor the same public?
Down with whom?
Even the new chief of general staff had agreed that terror cannot be overcome by military means alone. It is unacceptable that there are still no "non-military means" in the area. I remember some $13 billion in investments being discussed. I remember talk of hundreds of thousands of jobs being created in the region. I remember hearing that mine fields in the border regions would be turned into organic farms. I remember talk of a general amnesty being declared. These non-military means to combat terrorism were not put into effect. But there is more than that. The Aktütün border post incident showed that even the military means are not in the area.
Turkey has been fighting terrorism for over 25 years with military means alone. The army of such a combatant country should be expected to have developed supreme means of detection, pursuit and neutralization. That army should have established its means of penetrating enemy lines; its ways of monitoring the mountains; its culture of minimizing combatant casualties. It is unacceptable that Turkey is still fighting terrorists with a non-professional army. It is unbelievable that Turkey's military establishment is still an Ankara-centered one.
In the recent past, the Israeli army received a blow to the face from the soldiers of Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. Israel established a commission that would detect the parties responsible for the fiasco. The commanders of the northern army were found guilty and all were sent into retirement. The chief of staff followed them.
The Aktütün border post incident was an unfortunately early event for the new chief of general staff. He should be given more time and more support, I believe. But he should also know that he is not unaccountable. His deputy should know that accountability is the basis of the army's power.
The deputy chief of general staff does not like this A-word: accountable army. He told journalists after the incident that the army wouldn't be able to give an account of the Gallipoli Campaign if it started to question its losses. Does this mean that he regards the army as unquestionable to the point that the death toll reaches Gallipoli's 250,000?
What do you think? Down with whom?
