Ersel Aydınlı
(Interview with Assoc.Prof. Ersel Aydınlı, Head of International Relations Department , Bilkent University) (June 2007)

TERRORIST TRAP

Introduction and Question : Ersel Aydınlı, we are going to discuss terror in Turkey. Prof. Aydınlı is a Turkish expert on terrorism. He will be telling us his conceptions of terror in Turkey, its sources, its implications and its extensions. As we all know, terror is a an inseperable part of life in the Middle East. It should not be so probably in Turkey but no country is immune to terror. So, I will pass the microphone to Prof. Ersel Aydınlı, who is the Head of the International Relations Department of the Bilkent University.

Turkey’s experience with terrorism and counter-terrorism

Ersel Aydınlı : First of all, thank you for giving me the opportunity to express my views on some of the rather sophisticated kind of understanding of  terrorism. You know, the interesting thing about relationship between Turkey and terrorism is that Turkey probably is the only country that has almost gracefully received the lion’s share from every type of terrorism throughout history. This is really interesting as terrorism comes in waves in global politics and use different motivations. Then there is ideological terror which was largely based on the Marxist-Leninist premises. Turkey received its lion’s share. Than, later on in 1980’s when that ran out of steam and when ethnicity became the primary motivation of terrorism or the terrorist wave started to utilize more like racial kind of references, again Turkey ended up probably receiving ever larger share, almost the lion’s share, out of it, too. Than religion came in 1990’s and 2000, as one of the primary motives for terrorism and we all worried that Turkey would get again some share from that and it was true, we also got it. The Istanbul bombings and Al Qaeda’s extension in Turkey proved to be. So it is a very interesting phenomenon. There are some countries which have never experienced these. But Turkey appears to be a very fertile ground for some reason with respect to many of these waves. The other thing, I should say right at the outset, Turkish experience with counter-terrorism is also very interesting. Again because counter-terrorism is also full of traps and pitfalls those countries keep falling in and Turkey, again, has had the full experience with this counter-terrorism dynamics, too. In the past, with the early experiences, Turkey kept probably falling into several of these pitfalls. But now, we know that, how we realized recently Turkey also showed in learning out of these experiences not falling into these traps. So, much experience with terrorism, also lead to full experience with counter-terrorism. In that sense, I think, it would be useful for terrorism students to read and study the Turkish case. Because it has a lot to teach everybody else in every aspect of terrorism.

Dealing with terrorism in a democratic country

Before I forget, I want to say this now: There are very, very few countries on the earth that somehow has succeeded in dealing with terrorism in a democratic country.  And Turkey has learned to do so. I will get into details of why I believe that. But Turkey has really learned, recently, that dealing with Istanbul bombings and with Al Qaeda terrorism, how to deal with religiously motivated terrorism in a predominantly Muslim country. It is a very unique experience. If you remember the Istanbul bombings, just for a week or so, there was a huge debate in the country on how we should treat this issue. There were people basically saying that this was against the infidels, therefore should be kind of sympathized. But very soon the Turkish public put everything together and said that this was pure terrorism, there is nothing to sympathize with, it has to be treated so and the whole Turkish nation should do things so and the Turkish Government was after the executors, they found the connections, they identified everybody and there was one single sentence. This does not happen everywhere. For example, if a bomb explodes in Pakistan, you may find that 70% of the society is probably feeling good about it. There are lots of such countries. There is only Britain, Londoners for example, they have also learned how to deal with this. If  IRA does something against the civilians, that is considered as terrorism, people take it as terrorism and they say, “ we are going to continue with our lives and we won’t give in”. So, that is one of the very nicest things we can say about the Turkish experience with counter-terrorism.

Cold War factor

But I want to go back to the Turkish experience with the terrorist challenge itself rather than counter-terrorism. It is one of the things why Turkey has been prone to terrorist waves was the fact that we were part of the Cold War.  We were part of the Cold War, we never waged a war but Turkish territory was a front. Sometimes students tell me, “You know, we never went to war. We were not part of it.” We were part of it, of course. How were we part of it? In the 70’s we lost almost 6 thousand people. Anarchy, Right Wing – Left Wing, all that agitation. That was almost like civil war and that was the extension of the Cold War in our Turkish domestic context. So, obviously, Turkey is located, both historically, strategically, geographically, in a manner that it is our destiny to get our share of every type of global development. If there is an international confrontation at systemic level between 2 major parties Turkey gets its share and sometimes because we have a strong army that people don’t attack us, they attack us in a different way. And this is called asymmetric warfare. Obviously, it is part of the general warfare. Terror has always been utilized particularly in our context in Eurasia, in the Middle East. It is seen not only in our country but in many countries in the Middle East as part of the political struggle. Violence is seen as part of the political struggle. If you cannot do something against very strong dominant power either internally or externally, you would find someone who would do the job for you in an asymmetric manner. So, that is the style. And we are in a place that several countries, our neighbours, even non-neighbours but those who have some kind of animosity against us, they at least give a blind eye to this type of irregular challenges against us. Nowadays, it is a cliché “again you are referring to foreign powers” and you know what? There is a truth in it. Not a popular thing to say, but it has been that way most of the time. Now we know that it was a Cold War concept then, Syria was working with the Soviet Union and we were considered agents of the US.

Intervention: Don’t forget, Romania, East Germany were the seats of anti-Turkish terror movements and broadcasting!

Ersel Aydınlı : Exactly. But had to do a lot with the international confrontation. That is what I am trying to tell, there was a reason why. For example, Bulgaria was involved in some of the activities because it was the perfect place for Soviet agitation. Syria was a perfect place for the Soviet agitation. And we were seen by the Soviet block, obviously, as the unsinkable aircraft carrier of the West. Therefore, they had to do something against us. They would not wage a war since we had one of the largest armies, regular army sitting there. So, what would you do? They went for something else. These are understandable. I am not presenting this as something else. But what I am trying to tell is this: For that long period Turkey could not help but receiving these terrorist challenges, because it was part of the game. But the problem with this analysis is this. Later on, when the Soviet Union collapsed and the Cold War ended, when ethnicity, ethnic kind of resurgence became the principle of the day Turkey got caught in the midst of the storm unprepared. There I would like to acknowledge our deficiencies. We could have done better, we could have seen what was coming towards us. We could have predicted more about what type of a share we would get from the ethnic terrorism and all that. We did not do probably well as a country in terms of assessing that and we let for a very long time almost every type of foreign actor to utilize the terror card against us. I personally regret that. I wish that the Turkish statesmen did better on that one.

Trap of Terrorism

But I am going to say something else and then I take another question. What happened? First, the experience of Left Wing terrorism and than our counter-terrorist activities and than ethnic terror and PKK terror and our response to it, I think. Have built up some culture that now the Turkish public, Turkish statesmen, Turkish police, Turkish counter-terrorism institutions and all that, they have built up this culture that they know that terrorism is a trap that smart people should not fall into. Terrorism is a trap because  a weak body, I think this is crucial, a weak body prepares a condition for you to fall in. If you fall in with your response, than you are doing exactly what they want you to do. Which would mean, for example, they hit you in the middle of the street, give you a small black eye and you get upset and you start hitting everything around and a little later everybody forgets who started the fight and they start to thinking that you are really a tough person. You are blamed! And that is a trap. For example, Britain learnt it and Turkey appears to have learnt it. Once a terrorist act happens, there are two things you have to do. You immediately have tı show a  short term response and you have to go find the perpetrators and show the people here are the perpetrators, here are the motivations, they are terrorists, no societal segment has anything to do with them, these are really criminals and they in jail and will be tried soon, so, be comfortable, do not worry, you are safe, because we have  a strong state apparatus. Second thing you would have to do, you would have to think about what exactly the motivations are, whether there are root causes to that issue, so that you could take some long term measures. I think Turkey has learnt that and as I earlier said, the Turkish response with respect to the Al Qaida related bombings in Istanbul have clearly indicated that Turkish society and the state have not fallen into that trap. Because the trap was  to force us to reexamine our thinking about our relationship wit religion, with Islam and all that. The trap was to force us to take a side. And Turkish society has not fallen into that trap. That is a very nice thing to say.

US Has Fallen into the Trap

But the US, I don’t know if this is politically correct to say, but the US has fallen into this trap. 9/11 was a trap for US to react in a much harsher way. And that is exactly what the US did and look what it is getting. It is a very divided world! Technically, what US wants to do is to pursue the people who did that first and find them and not to use this rhetoric for other larger projects and operations. But now that has proven that the US thinking that it could utilize counter-terrorism euphoria for other purposes, made other  mistakes and suddenly we have a very different outcome. The real perpetrators are out there. Everybody knows that they are not caught and they went after all kinds of other people they know had no direct links with 9/11. That is not  very proper in terms of responding to terrorism. That is what I am trying to say. Counter-terrorism should be exactly careful in terms of not manipulating the terrorist challenge. You should be saying that “I got hit, now I got the right to hit anybody.” You have to be very focused and specific, than the society will appreciate what you are doing. In this case, the world society would have appreciated better if the US was more focused and careful.

Northern Iraq and the escalating PKK terror

Question : Let me turn for a moment to what is happening in Northern Iraq and the ethnically based terror in Turkey. Of course, the source is in Northern Iraq and we have a problem of pursuing the terrorists into Iraqi territory. There is a big frustration. This frustration is probably helping to what, one may call, distancing between Turkey and Iraq and Turkey and the US. That may be one of the traps that you mentioned. Are we going to fall into it?

Ersel Aydınlı : That is a very nice question, but that is also an extremely difficult question. The trap is very clear again. One more time, terror is being utilized for the countries to fall into it. And in this case, very much so. Why? I think, at this point, I have to say a couple of things about the PKK, the current format of the PKK at this stage. The PKK has become very openly a tool for everybody. And that is a very unfortunate thing for everybody else. Why? In the past, at least the PKK claimed certain things. Now in an extremely internationalized area it is basically offering its services to whoever would like to purchase them for all kinds of prices. And that is a very bad thing. Not only for the countries, since it can suddenly be used against anybody but particularly for their supposed constituents for whom they claim they are fighting for. These are nor good news. The reason that this is not a good news is that such a complicated nature make it more possible for the countries to fall in that trap. We don’t know why PKK is attacking us. So many positive developments have been taking place in this country, with the EU accession process and all that. Even the people and the states were very skeptical. We took so many measures, we took so many steps that the PKK should be basically completely irrelevant under normal circumstances. But they are still attacking and killing Turkish soldiers on behalf of what? That is not being redefined at all, it is not answered. Therefore, one asks automatically, who are you working for, if you are nor working for yourself?  Because it is obvious that you are not working for yourself in this case because these are nor serving your interests. These are nor serving the Kurds in this country. These are not serving anything that might resemble anything like novelty at all. So, in that sense, I am worried that it has become the tool of everybody. And that complicates things for Turkey because we will never know who is behind it, who are their bosses. And that kind of worries me. And in this case, with respect to Iraqi development, the fact that the most tragic development in the region with respect to PKK is this: the fact that this emerging entity in Northern Iraq even tries to copy what was done in the past in terms of utilizing PKK against Turkey, that is really overwhelming development. Why? In the past Syria, even Western powers, Iran, Iraq maybe utilized the PKK against Turkey but now it is the first time that a Kurdish entity with a claim of kinship, kin based relationship is trying to use PKK and “Kurdishness” against Turkey. It looks like this: emerging entity is setting up its defense lines in Diyarbakır, well inside Turkey. Its external defense lines are in Diyarbakır. That is again a tragic development. Why? Because if something is going to emerge in Iraq and when you look at the world history in a comparative manner, there are new entities emerging and a state. They always have an “other” around themselves. That would be very tragic if that entity’s “other”, its eternal enemy would be us. We again not only loose the near future but we also loose the long future, if such a development takes place. And I am worried that the current PKK is serving to that interest. Being the tool of the entity of Barzani, whoever that person is at the head of that entity. It is basically like telling us, “Look, I have a fifth column everywhere in your country.” That is sad, very sad. We can’t say the same for the Turkomans in Iraq. Can we? We would never do that. We can’t even say it. They are openly saying it, “Istanbul is the largest Kurdish city! If you are thinking to do something with me, you better think what will happen in Küçük Armutlu, for example, right next to Sarıyer.” Is this too radical?    

Concluding remarks : It seems to be a very good definition of the subject. I am not asking you what we should do on this particular case. Because that would be up to the Turkish body politic to respond but what you have told us is that we have to be very careful not to fall into an escalating trap. That would require sanity, but at the same time firm stand against both the activities, the symptom and also the root of this terror.