Attack on hope
A bloody terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) attack on a military outpost in southeastern Turkey that killed eight soldiers early on Tuesday has thrown cold water on the country’s efforts to solve the long-standing Kurdish question through democratic and peaceful means. Many columnists point to the timing of the attack, as it came soon after some positive developments were seen, and note that the attack is a response from the PKK to some Kurdish circles, favoring democratic means to solve the issue, as well as to the government’s recent efforts to take serious steps in solving the issue.

We have learned by now from bitter experience that every time we take a step towards peace, provocative acts are carried out to undermine the positive process, says Star’s Şamil Tayyar. And yet, he maintains, with the latest Dağlıca attack, it has become clear that the earlier positive developments such as independent pro-Kurdish deputy Leyla Zana’s remarks favoring peace and senior PKK leader Murat Karayılan’s statements in which he promised there will be no attack on police stations are no coincidence. “Zana, who has been staunchly supporting the view of an independent Kurdistan state and the armed struggle of the PKK, cannot have found the true path all of a sudden after all. Both Zana’s and Karayılan’s recent statements must be part of a larger plan,” Tayyar says.

Zaman’s Mehmet Kamış draws a parallel between the Dağlıca attack and a well-known torture method, saying that following long hours of tortures, prisoners are told that they are going to be released. And after making them believe that they will be set free, torturers use a simple excuse to jail them again. In this way, the prisoners receive psychological torture as well as physical and their strength of psychological resistance is broken. The Kurdish issue and terrorism problem have turned into something like this method of torture.

Bugün’s Erhan Başyurt, on the other hand, focuses on the state’s negligence in not taking adequate measures to avoid such an attack. What this attack has revealed is that we have not learned a single lesson from previous attacks. We still keep placing about 40 brigades along the border in the east; or in another way of saying the same thing, we keep presenting our soldiers to terrorists as targets by putting soldiers in inadequately guarded police stations and supplying them with poor weapons. And secondly, Başyurt says, although it is a known fact that southeastern Turkey perpetually faces threats from terrorists, we keep sending inexperienced soldiers, mostly privates, to this region.

2012-06-20