In fact, Erdogan is fighting a war against the Kurds, who have shown their power in the last elections in Turkey and in the fight against ISIL militants.
With pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) winning 80 parliamentary seats, Erdogan was left with no option but to negotiate with other parties to form a coalition government.
So the combined threat of Kurdish political and military ascendance is what basically pushed Erdogan to launch a military operation against them. “It was, therefore, not so much Turkey’s covert support for the ISIL that might have prompted the former to wage war against Kurds; it was rather the question of pre-empting the making of an independent Kurdish state on the borders of Turkey,” Salman Rafi wrote for the journal New Eastern Outlook.
Erdogan has decided that the destruction of the Kurds is the only way to prevent the creation of an independent Kurdistan, but the violence only complicates the already difficult political situation in the country.
ISIL is, therefore, not Turkey’s main target. In fact, given the history of Turkey-Kurd conflict, there is a possibility that Turkey might prefer ISIL to an independent Syrian Kurdish state on its border, anxious that it could further motivate Turkish Kurds to reignite their campaign for Kurdish sovereignty on Turkish territory.
Under such circumstances the author noted that Kurds are quickly adapting to the new realities — around most Kurdish villages in Turkey there are several rows of trenches and ditches, and the men in them are on the lookout with weapons at all times.
