Turkey should avoid lynch culture
In any civilized country a governor cannot advice people ‘If you do not hunt them, they will attack you’ and remain in office.
Important developments are taking place in Turkey nowadays. First the National Security Council (MGK) met under the chairmanship of President Ahmet Necdet Sezer for over four hours on Wednesday. On Thursday Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül paid a visit to the office of Gen. Yaşar Büyükanıt, the Chief of General Staff, for what was disclosed to be a “planned and routine” briefing on terrorism.
I have difficulty in understanding why the officials are making such emphasis that it was a planned and routine briefing. Is it not normal for the prime minister and foreign minister of a country to visit any government office, including the headquarters of the Turkish Armed Forces and attend briefings? The only reason behind such an emphasis might be an effort to avoid people from jumping to a conclusion that since the premier has attended a briefing on terrorism, a major operation on the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party terror group inside Turkey, and perhaps on their hideouts in northern Iraq, might be imminent.
Naturally we will hear and learn more in the days ahead why there was such a sensitivity. What we were told by well-placed sources so far – no statement was issued after the briefing – was that Erdoğan and Gül were presented with a detailed and graphical presentation on the capabilities of the Turkish Armed Forces that it might use in an operation on the PKK and the “scenarios” regarding how an operation might be conducted. We were told, as well, that the premier and foreign minister were briefed in detail about border security issues with elaborative technical details of the issue.
The meeting lasted about two hours… But, more important than the meeting itself was the identity of the guest of the prime minister at his office at the Prime Ministry shortly after he returned from a visit to Büyükanıt’s office. The prime minister met for about half an hour with Emre Taner, the undersecretary of the National Intelligence Organization (MİT).
As is “routine” with such meetings, no statement was released and government officials were “unavailable” to comment on what the premier discussed with Taner. Intelligence gathering and analysis are of course crucial in any anti-terror struggle.
Nation’s support in anti-terror fight
What worried us because of the existing alarming signs in the country was a remark made by a top source regarding yesterday’s visit of the premier to Büyükanıt’s office. He said the premier and the top commander of the country were in full understanding that in the fight against terrorism Turkey would remain resolute and “all required steps will be taken with the support of the Turkish nation.”
There was a similar appeal in the statement released at the end of Wednesday’s MGK meeting.
The appeal to the “nation’s support” in the fight against terrorism was first made by the military in an e-statement last month. There is nothing wrong of course in our people staging demonstrations and condemning terrorism or attending funeral of fallen soldiers in demonstration of national solidarity against the threat aimed at the national integrity of the country. On the contrary with such outpour of support for the anti-terror struggle, the morale and vigilance of our security personnel fighting terrorism will be boosted.
However, if a governor of one of our cities tells a group of workers who survived a terrorist attack that “If you do not hunt them, they will attack you.” If in two cities of our country people attempted this week to lynch a captured terrorist wounded by the security forces, it must be obvious to everyone that we are facing a serious problem.
Irrespective of how serious the problem we face might be, as the MGK statement underlined, Turkey ought to stage its anti-terrorism fight within the limits of democracy and the rule of law. We just cannot tolerate people to start pursing their own justice because if we allow the culture of lynching to spread in this country, soon we will have a far serious problem than the separatist terrorist menace we have been facing. After all we should not forget that over the past year there have been over one hundred lynching attempts in this country.
People at responsible positions must weight their words and for the sake of fighting terrorism more effectively, we should not compromise from the rule of law and norms of democracy.