Trade union and civil society groups protest teh massacre in Ankara, October 13. Demotix/ Recep Yilmaz.All rights reserved.Three
days after the bomb attack in Ankara, which killed at least 99 people when 2
suicide bombers detonated themselves early on Saturday, October 10 at a peace rally, a large portion of Turkey's football fans booed the
minute's silence that was dedicated to the lives lost in the attack. Deciding to express their disregard to the Kurdish and leftist victims, a sizeable minority chanted nationalist and religious slogans.
What
was meant to be a moving tribute of national unity in the face of such a
tragedy, instead highlighted the very real divisions that constitute a stark
polarisation of Turkish society. AKP and government officials have been
noticeably absent
at all the funeral ceremonies held, possibly out of fear of angry crowds.
Erdogan himself, whose speeches usually dominate Turkish media, has yet to make
a public appearance since the Ankara bombing. A sole statement released from
his Presidential Palace stated, “Like other acts of terror, the attack at the
Ankara Train Station is taking aim at our unity, brotherhood and future.”
The
attack took place as people were gathering before a peace rally under the
slogan “Savaşa Inat, Barış Hemen Şimdi” (Stand Up Against War, Demand
Peace Now) that was organised by various leftists groups and Unions alongside
the pro-Kurdish HDP party. The bomb attacks targeted leftists and Kurds who
were demanding that the government end its campaign against the PKK in the
south-east of the country, which has killed hundreds since the peace process
broke down, back in July.
The
twin bomb blasts went off at exactly 10.02am on Saturday morning, two hours
before the rally was due to begin. A video shows the exact moment the blast
went off, whilst the protesters were dancing the “halay”, a traditional dance
across Turkey for Turks and Kurds alike. One friend on facebook posted this
description of the dance following the explosion:
“The halay. A simple
dance. It is equality. It is equality because anyone can participate — young
and old, Turkish and American, Kurdish and Armenian. It’s equality because it
is a circle: no one dominates. It is equality because it can be danced to any music.
It is free. You can come and go as you please, and no one is excluded. It’s
equality because everyone links their pinky fingers together joining for a
moment in harmony."
What's
more, the song they were singing at the very moment of the explosion was a
famous resistance song by Ruhi Su, a renowned political folk singer in Turkey.
The group dancing halay were singing, “Bu meydan kanlı meydan”, which
translates as “This square is a square full of blood” and comes from the song Ellerinde
pankarklar (“Placards in their hands”), a reference to the bloody mayday of
1977 in Taksim.
The
symbolism of the dancing protesters singing such a song could not be more
suggestive – creating as it does an implicit link between the Ankara massacre
and the long, dark history of the Turkish state’s involvement in attacking its
own citizens.
Turkey's long history of unresolved massacres
In
1977, 36 people were killed during a May Day rally called by various unions,
most notably DISK, who were also involved in the peace rally in Ankara last
weekend. Shots were fired from a hotel above Taksim Square onto the packed
rally, which created chaos in the packed square. In the ensuing chaos,
eyewitnesses described how most exits were blocked, which led to many people
being trampled to death.
Despite
the clear evidence of shots being fired by snipers, none of the perpetrators
were caught or brought to justice. The snipers were supposedly ‘arrested’, but
such arrests didn't appear on the police records. After many years, the court
case was shelved due to the statute of limitations expiring, leaving many
inconclusive answers to a massacre which undoubtedly had some form of state
involvement.
Taksim’s
was not the only massacre where justice has not been delivered. In fact, the
history of the Turkish republic is one of horrendous massacres taking place
without justice ever being found. In 1955, Turkish nationalists attacked the
Greek population of Istanbul, burning their property after it was wrongly
circulated that the house where Atatürk was born in Thessaloniki had been
bombed.
Once
again, police were noticeably absent from the pogrom, and it is widely believed
to have been orchestrated by some elements within the Turkish state as a means
to further ‘turkify’ Istanbul.
Another
example is the Maraş massacre in 1978, when Turkish nationalists targeted
mostly Alevis, but some leftist Kurds too. In 1993, a group of Alevi writers
and scholars met at a conference in a hotel in Sivas. An Islamist mob set upon
the hotel where they proceeded to attack and eventually subject it to arson for
over 8 hours, without any police interference. In total, 33 notable Alevi
intellectuals were killed, and although some of the perpetrators were caught,
no prosecutions were ever made against the police force who failed to
intervene.
In
all these examples, the exact perpetrators of the massacres were never fully
brought to justice. So the Ankara massacre should be seen as another massacre
in a long list of massacres whose ambiguous nature leaves little doubt in
people's mind over the state's complicity. In Jadaliyya, Simen Adar explains
this paradox: “the past ill-doings of the state only
imply that the main responsibility for the deadly blast in Ankara falls
primarily on the state actors and institutions unless otherwise proven” whilst
also explaining the paradox of Turkish politics, that “it is almost never
possible to find the perpetrator by resorting to hard evidence because loyalty
to the state far exceeds the sense of justice.”
What is the evidence of state involvement
in the Ankara massacre?
Many
have claimed that police did not arrive on the scene until fifteen minutes
after the bombing. When they did, the protesters' horror turned to outrage: the
police, attempting to clear the area, fired dozens of rounds of tear gas into
the crowd.
Turkey's
health organisations have criticised the medical response to the tragedy.
Ambulances taking casualties to the hospital were prevented from passing
through police cordons. Across Ankara, hospitals struggled to deal with the
sheer number of casualties and made a desperate call for blood donations, which
flooded social media. This was followed by a TV announcement from the Health
Ministry, declaring that blood donations were not needed.
Furthermore,
the government announced a blanket gag order on reporting and investigating the suspects of the Ankara bombing until
all suspects were arrested by the state. State-run media continues to report
that the PKK may still be behind the bombing, in a co-ordinated attack with
ISIS. Although dozens of HDP activists were amongst the dead in Ankara, AKP
politicians, along with pro-government media outlets, quickly accused HDP of
being guilty. However, the brutal reaction of the state to the massacre through
the action of the police, along with the blanket ban on reporting, points in
many people’s minds in a different direction. The question remains, though, why
would such a massacre benefit Erdogan and the Turkish state? And what, if any,
is their relationship with the perpetrators, ISIS jihadists of Turkish origin?
ISIS, the state and the Dokumacılar Adıyaman cell
The
AKP government, after first suggesting it could have been the work of the PKK
or other leftist groups, have recently announced that they have found the two
suicide bombers, one of whom is Yunus Emre Alagöz, the brother of the Suruç
suicide bomber, Seyh Abdurrahman Alagöz. These two brothers were also known
friends with Orhan Gönder, the bomber of the pro-Kurdish election rally in
Diyarbakır in June, which killed 4 and left dozens wounded.
Together,
these three friends have now killed over 130 people between them, and are part
of a group known as the Dokumacilar group, or Adiyaman cell. In
Adiyaman, the Alagöz brothers ran a tea shop, known as the “Islam Tea House”.
It quickly became notorious as a place where radical Islam was preached, and
was only closed down after families repeatedly complained to the police.
Shortly
after, the Alagöz brothers left for Syria. Orhan Gönder is also thought to have
left at a similar time. The Dokumacılar group is estimated
have around 60 members, all Turkish citizens who fought with ISIS in Syria.
Hailing from Adiyaman, a conservative city in Turkey's south-east, reports have
suggested that this group has a relationship
with Turkey's border officials, allowing them to cross between Turkey and Syria
easily.
However,
the truth regarding this group remains shrouded in mystery. Orhan Gönder, who
is currently in jail awaiting trial, was arrested
by Turkish police just 2 days before he detonated two simultaneous bombs at the
Diyarbakır rally in June. Although there had been an arrest warrant for Gönder
since 2014, after his family had informed the police that he had joined ISIS,
the police simply released him in Diyarbakir after searching his hotel room and
questioning him over his failure to do his military service.
As
in the case of Gönder, Turkey's security services must have known about the
Alagöz brothers. “I went to the police many times to try and get my son back
from Syria,” the father of the second Ankara bomber is reportedly quoted as
saying by the Turkish Radikal
newspaper, “I told the police: 'please take him and throw him in jail.' They
took his statement and then let him go.”
In
the immediate aftermath of the Suruc massacre, journalist Ezgi Basaran wrote
about Yunus Emre Alagöz in a column entitled, “Another bombing attack is closer
than we think”. The column served as a warning to the public on the likelihood
that Alagöz would follow in his brothers’ footsteps, a prediction that has
sadly been proven right. The Turkish authorities were clearly aware of this
brother, but simply failed to act. The question remains: can such an oversight
on the part of Turkey's security forces in failing to tackle this cell simply
be explained as negligeance on their part? Or, is it instead a cynical decision
on the part of the state as a means of targeting opposition groups?
Davutoğlu,
who has been subjected to a barrage of criticism over the last week regarding
the Ankara massacre, has responded in a bizarre manner. First, he claimed that
they had arrested Abdurrahman Alagöz after the Suruç bomb, clearly forgetting
that he had in fact blown himself up. This was followed by a statement
regarding the difficulty of arresting potential suicide bombers, “We have the
list of potential suicide bombers, but we can't arrest them until they go into
action.”
Such
a statement was heavily criticised, especially considering the increased
security powers the government has which are regularly used against Kurdish
activists connected to the pro-Kurdish HDP. Demirtaş steadfastly underlined the
hypocrisy of the government: “They can throw people in prison for a single
sentence,” he said after the explosion, in reference to the crackdown on HDP
members since July, “but when we loose 150 in attacks there are no perpetrators
to be found.”
To
most people, Erdogan seems to have deliberately allowed the presence and
mobility of ISIS cells in Turkey to exist as a means to foment fear and chaos
across the nation. For many, the fact that journalists, politicians and lawyers
have demanded further investigation into ISIS's presence, and that the
government has refused to advance any investigations, shows the true face of
Erdogan and his AKP government.
Within
the state, there are clearly dark forces present. Ever since the war resumed
between the PKK and the Turkish government in July, a crackdown has been
under-way by Turkish police eager to suppress the restless Kurdish population
in the south-east. Led by the YDG-H, the youth wing of the PKK, Kurds have been
busy defending their neighbourhoods, often leading to armed clashes against
Turkey's security forces.
What's
more, accounts have been emerging about the political infiltration of ISIS
cells within the Turkish police. In Silvan, which was the scene of a violent
siege and crackdown in August after locals declared autonomy from the state,
there were eyewitnesses who described police entering the neighbourhoods and
declaring “Allah Akbar”. Such religious cries are something which we associate
with ISIS, not Turkey's police force. Such suspicions increased this week, when
special forces entered the volatile old city of Diyarbakir and scribbled on the
wall an ominous warning: “Allah says enough to everything! You will see the
power of Turks”.
Below
such graffiti was the name “Esedullah Tim”, thought to be an ISIS cell within
the police force. Recently, the HDP parliamentarian Çağlar Demirel asked,
“What is Esadullah's link to the state and the temporary AKP government? Has
the State produced a counter force under the name of Esadullah?”
These
are chilling times. If such groups, with clear links to ISIS, are now within
Turkey's police force, it shows the length the state may go to to instil fear
and suppress its own people. The long list of previous
massacres committed show how far the Turkish government has gone in the past to
maintain power, and set their agenda. It appears, with three bomb attacks this
year, two of which amount to massacres, that the dark days of the Turkish deep
state have come back to torment Turkey.
A haunted nation
Turkey's long history of massacres, and their
failure to resolve the questions surrounding them, make them guilty until
otherwise proven. In this, the failure to heed the advice of concerned citizens
aware of the real dangers of ISIS cells that breed jihadism among many of
Turkey's youths, whilst simultaneously cracking down so brutally on the Turkish
left and Kurdish political movement, will ultimately be sighted as a major
cause of the Ankara massacre.
Looking at the historical framework of Turkey's
past investigations into the many massacres that have taken place, it appears
to many a foregone conclusion that the Ankara massacre will remain unresolved.
Unless Erdogan and his interim AKP government break from this historical
continuity by seriously tackling ISIS cells, as well as any cancerous
relationship with such cells, justice will never be served for the Ankara
massacre. Otherwise Ruhi Su's words that This square is a square full of
blood will forever ring true, leaving a haunted nation struggling to come to
terms with its massacres.
