AKP, a threat to itself

And all of a sudden, one day, those you believed you knew are gone, replaced by some completely different people.

They come and raise an issue that is not an emergency at all, just because it sounds nice and will cause a commotion.

There is nothing logical about the adultery argument. A matter that has not been considered a crime for years has been introduced again. Their attitude reflects their religious conservatism and the ideology guiding the party.

This party implemented the toughest reforms in order to harmonize with the European Union and took significant risks in matters that were very sensitive. And then it goes and causes a storm about something that could be considered at most a detail.

The AKP had pursued a similar policy for the imam-hatip schools and headscarves but had backtracked at the end.

It was not necessary.

Couldn’t they have waited?

Couldn’t they have prepared the nation?

I don’t know what this party aims to do by starting arguments one after the other.

It’s either that the AKP leadership governs the country in a very different way, or that the rest of the country and the European Union don’t know what’s going on.

US is a bull in a china shop
The United States never was a superpower that took much time to listen to what its allies said, but the war in Iraq made it even more aggressive.

The incidents at Tal Afar are a most obvious example.

Everyone knows that U.S. forces are not bombing Tal Afar just for the sake of it. No one can think that the operation was launched in order to ethnically cleanse the Shiite Turkmen living there and place them with Kurds or to prevent Turkey from opening a new border post. Such conspiracy theories are ridiculous.

But why, then?

How can one explain the United States totally ignoring what Ankara says in a region that is very sensitive for Turkey?

1. The state of affairs is so dangerous that there is no other way to eliminate al-Sadr’s militants in the city. They ignored all advice and launched an armed operation. Innocent people were killed and Turkmens suffered.

2. A limited operation was initiated, but it later got out of hand.

Both these excuses could be true. We can’t say much about them because we don’t know what happened in the city.

However, no matter how U.S. military officials look at the matter, their behavior towards Turkey was impolite. They openly showed that they don’t care. While handling matters concerning the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK/Kongra-Gel) very slowly and ignoring all calls for action, they could have at least have taken Ankara’s sensitivities on the Turkmens into account.

This affair should at least make one fact clear: Our alliance with the United States won’t be like it was in the past.

Note: This article was written before final developments concerning the adultery issue had taken place.