By Satuk Bugra Kutlugun / Halit Gulsen
ANKARA
The ongoing deadly protests across Turkey by outlawed Kurdish terrorist group supporters are aimed at bringing down the solution process with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, according to experts.
The nationwide clashes between protesters - many of whom showed their support for the terrorist PKK - and security forces broke out in a number of major Turkish cities on Monday after Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants penetrated the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani, also known as Ayn al-Arab.
The death toll from the protests reached 23 late on Wednesday, as protesters continued to accuse the Turkish government of doing nothing to halt the relentless advance of the militant group in the Syrian city, which has become a scene of fierce street battles between Kurdish groups and ISIL militants.
Mehmet Sahin, Vice-Chairman Associate Professor of the Ankara-based Institute of Strategic Thinking, told the Anadolu Agency that Turkey had opened its doors to 130,000 Kurds - who were fleeing for their lives from ISIL brutality - in Kobani in a single day.
He asked: "How can Turkey be accused of not helping Kobani, when the only option for these people is Turkey?
"Illegal street protests, vandalism and violence is the PKK and the Kurdish PYD's cover of failure in fighting against ISIL."
"The HDP - the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party in the Turkish parliament - is the political structure to blame here," he said.
Acts of violence
ISIL terror group elements have stormed Kurdish-populated towns in northern Syria.
The conflict between ISIL and the PYD has forced about 200,000 people to flee to Turkey since September 19.
Sahin said there was an effort to exercise pressure over Turkey through the current acts of violence when the country was being asked to fight ISIL on the front line.
Sahin said: "ISIL attacked the Turkmen people in Iraq's northwestern city of Tal Afar.
"What would be the reaction of the relatives of Iraqi people in Turkey if Ankara launched a military intervention in Tal Afar?"
The Vice-Chairman warned that, despite the fact Turkey accepts any community fleeing from terror onto its territory: "Turkey is not the military police of the Middle East."
He accused the HDP of being "dishonest", saying the party should not have voted against the motion in the Turkish parliament last week to deploy troops against ISIL, if they wanted Turkey to fight against the terrorist group.
Decades-old conflict
Turkish lawmakers last Thursday authorized the government to deploy troops to Syria and Iraq to fight any group threatening the country including ISIL, with the ruling Justice and Development Party being the main supporter of the motion along with the Nationalist Movement Party.
The main opposition Republican People's Party and the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party voted against it.
Political scientist and historian Omer Turan believes that the main target behind the protests in Turkey is the ongoing solution process.
Turkey launched what is publicly known as the "solution process" to end a decades-old conflict with the outlawed PKK which has claimed the lives of more than 40,000 people over more than 30 years.
He said: "I was in the Mursitpinar border 10 days ago. Lots of ambulances and Turkish Red Crescent trucks were there, waiting to help people fleeing Kobani.
"There was lots of evidence showing how Turkey was helping, but none indicating Turkey was helping ISIL."
"The main target (of the protests) is to sabotage the solution process. Kobani would have already been fallen if Turkey had closed the border," Turan said.
Spiral of violence
Turan also criticized the HDP for voting against the parliamentary motion, saying: "The party said 'no' just to have an adverse effect on the ruling AK Party."
According to Associate Professor Saban Kardas, Chairman of Ankara-based think-tank the Middle Eastern Strategic Studies (ORSAM), Kurdish people in Turkey were using the protests to try to send a message to the government.
"Kurds are thinking that they are not getting enough rights through the solution process, they believe that backing out of the process will create a spiral of violence in Turkey," he said.
Kardas underscored that the pro-Kurdish HDP was once again "choked" by the solution process and that "provoking people and calling on them to be violent" was not the way to do politics.
www.aa.com.tr/en
