A Wave of Attacks Across Turkey

Turkey is rapidly becoming one of the most interesting countries in the Middle East, and not in a good way.

A terrorist organization called the People’s Defense Unit detonated a car bomb at a police station in Istanbul. The Kurdish PKK blew up an armored police vehicle and shot and killed a soldier flying in a military helicopter.

And the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party–Front (DHKP-C) attacked the US consulate in Istanbul.

None of these organizations are affiliated with ISIS. They aren’t even Islamist. They are all radical leftists.

The People’s Defense Unit is a brand-new organization, but the DHKP-C has been around for decades. They’re hardcore Maoists of the old school variety and would be a laughing stock if they didn’t kill people. They splintered off from the Revolutionary Way in 1978, which had splintered off from the Turkish People’s Liberation Party-Front, which had splintered off the Revolutionary Youth Federation.

So yes, the United States was just attacked by communists. In 2015.

And lest you confuse this organization with the quasi-communist Kurdish PKK—which is somewhat pro-American now since we’re sort of helping their allies in Syria—the DHKP-C is not a Kurdish movement and has nothing to do with the Kurdish struggles against the governments of Iraq, Syria, Iran, or Turkey. This crowd thinks the Turkish state is an arm of “American imperialism” in the region and would therefore like to annihilate it.

It’s still 1978 as far as they are concerned—not that the Turkish state was an arm of “American imperialism” back then either.

Five days ago the English language edition of the Daily Sabah reported that 335 people were arrested across Turkey in raids against ISIS, the PKK, and the DHKP-C. Today’s attacks, presumably then, were retaliatory.

So Turkey is now at war with leftists and totalitarian Islamists simultaneously. A few years back, a Hurriyet Daily News editorial bluntly stated that “the ‘No problems with neighbors’ foreign policy strategy of Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu unfortunately evolved in the past year into a ‘No friends’ reality.” It’s even worse for Turkey today.

The Turks would be well-advised to make a no-bullshit effort to close the Kurdish file and wrap up that problem once and for all so it join the rest of the world against ISIS, but the government would rather double down and set the country on fire. It will be interesting to watch. From a distance.

Hard to believe that Turkey was once a serious candidate for European Union admission. Its largest city is mostly in Europe and much of the country feels quasi-European the way that Russia does, but it’s a crossroads nation that has all the problems of the Mediterranean region, all the problems of the Balkan Pensinula, and all the problems of the Middle East simultaneously.