The Republic of Türkiye is 100 years old; 40 years of this have been spent under the shadow of separatist terror. Throughout all these years, I have written many times about events similar to the one that happened the other day.
I will give you quotes from my two previous articles.
Here is my article dated February 18, 2021:
When you leave 50 years behind in your writing career, every new event you encounter comes with a feeling that it has happened before. This is not a pleasant feeling. It is called ‘burnout syndrome’ , it has such an effect on people. The state of mind we call “We have seen this movie before” is also expressed with the phrase ‘Déjà vu’ , which has entered international use from French .
The massacre of 13 of our people who were held hostage by the PKK for nearly six years in the Gara area may seem like a first-time incident to many of you. However, the incident of the PKK terrorist organization taking soldiers and police hostages has occurred before. The reactions from the right and left after the Gara incident were similar; for example, after every bloody attack by the PKK, the issue of closing down a party was always on the agenda.
The most interesting aspect of this for me is that past events, which left unforgettable impressions on those who follow the subject as journalists, are met today by politicians who experienced them firsthand, as if they were happening for the first time.
This is why I have a hard time understanding politicians who always give the same reactions.
The faces of politicians are changing, but the new ones react and behave in the same way as those who sat in the seats they now occupy reacted and behaved in the past.
If you don’t mind, I won’t repeat again today something similar to what I wrote earlier.
What should I do?
I will share with you an old article I wrote about 10 years ago to contribute to the discussions that erupted after the PKK actions that went down in our political history as the ‘Çukurca attack’
. On October 19, 2011, the PKK carried out a night raid on the Çukurca district of Hakkari with 200 militants and martyred a total of 24 soldiers. 18 soldiers were also injured during those actions.
The discussions that started after the attack lasted a long time. Even a month later, the discussions were still going on. On November 21, 2011, I published my article titled “28 people died in Ireland” which I will now share with you .
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My article dated November 21, 2011 is as follows:
While the British Government was hoping that “We are making an agreement with the IRA, the end of terrorism is near” , on August 15, 1998, at ten past three in the afternoon, a bomb estimated to weigh 100-150 kg exploded in the very centre of Omagh town… 29 people lost their lives and hundreds were injured …
The action was carried out by a group that did not accept the IRA’s approach to the agreement and called themselves the ‘Real IRA’ . With a new strategy: The organization announced the action to the television in advance, but by mistaking the location; the police took people from the place indicated as the target and sent them to the place where the bomb was located…
“It was appalling,” Jonathan Powell says of the action in his book ( ‘Making Peace in Northern Ireland’ , pp. 138-141).
Powell was closest to Prime Minister Tony Blair, leader of the ruling Labour Party, and was involved in the ‘peace’ process on his behalf:
“The peace process had come to a standstill, but no one saw this as a reason to abandon peace. On the contrary, it was an opportunity to increase our efforts to prevent such an atrocity from happening again. Tony (Blair) sent a note to his aides in the Prime Ministry stating that this bombshell should not be seen as a return to the old days and that the political solution process could still move forward.”
He also says , “The Omagh action was a test of the people’s resistance power .” If the people of Northern Ireland had not been able to control their anger, the process would have ended there.
Cool-headedness worked… Blair ’s attitude that the process would continue at all costs also influenced the Northern Ireland parties and they all expressed the same views… The government used this brutal action of the organization to make the process permanent…
The leaders of the Sinn Fein party, which is not far from the terrorist organization, condemned the action, which they considered ‘indefensible’ , and said they were shocked and disgusted… Blair also asked the Sinn Fein leaders to declare the war over …
Another important detail is this: Prime Minister Blair has placed the issue of security on his urgent agenda. He has tried to make the public believe that the terrorists will be defeated at all costs…
In his book, which recounts the efforts to end the 30-odd years of bloody activities of the Northern Ireland-based IRA terrorist organization, Powell explains how the bomb that exploded in the middle of the market in Omagh and took the lives of 29 people could not cripple the peace process, while also pointing out what needs to be done in our country after Çukurca.
We will not lose our cool, the terrorist organization will be isolated while instilling confidence in the public, and the democratic initiative will continue… We do not know what doing the opposite will bring, but we see that the common sense attitude displayed by politicians is working in England.
Only 15 days had passed since the action when US President Bill Clinton came to the region; the Clinton-Blair duo appeared before the people and explained why terrorism had to end. The statement of the leader of the USA, where more Irish people live than Ireland, must have been perceived as an announcement that the money and weapons aid the organization had received from the Irish in America up until that day had ended.
Of course, no country’s experience can be an exact example for another country; but we still need to know how to draw lessons from what happened around the IRA…
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You’ve read my two articles, one inside the other. I hope I don’t have to quote them again.