Istanbul Bombing Likely to Strain US-Turkey Alliance Due to US Support for Syrian YPG, Experts Say
17:34 GMT 14.11.2022 (Updated: 17:35 GMT 14.11.2022)
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A bomb that exploded on Istanbul’s popular Istiklal Street on Sunday has been blamed on the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a separatist group engaged in a decades-long struggle with Ankara for Turkish Kurdistan in the country’s southeast that has killed over 40,000 people.
On Monday, Turkish police apprehended Ahlam Al-Bashir, a Syrian national, on accusations of having planted the bomb, which killed six people and injured more than 80 more.
Yusuf Erim, Turkish foreign policy expert and editor-at-large at Turkish public broadcaster TRT World, told Sputnik on Monday that “The horrific terror attack in Istanbul shows how important the fight against counter-terrorism is and that terror organizations still have the capabilities to inflict harm against civilian populations in metropolises.”
“Initial findings strongly suggest that the PKK is responsible for this heinous attack. These types of attacks, which happened frequently 2 to 3 decades ago, have become very rare, with the last attack in Istanbul occurring 6 years ago. This shows the success of the transformation of Turkey’s counter-terrorism strategy, which has taken the fight from Turkish soil to across the border targeting PKK strongholds in Iraq and Syria. With the beginning of the Syrian Civil War, the PKK and its affiliates found security voids to exploit.”
Erim noted the sticky situation created by the US, a Turkish ally, also supporting the People’s Defense Units (YPG), a branch of the PKK in Syria, which it has used as its primary tool for occupying eastern Syria following the destruction of Daesh’s* territorial holdings. This, he said, is why Turkish Interior Minister Süleyman Solyu rejected Washington’s message of condolence for the attack.
“While Interior Minister Soylu's comments regarding the US have been highlighted, what's more important is that he is only verbalizing what many Turks are thinking,” Erim said.
Mourners grieve the victims of November 13 explosion at the busy shopping street of Istiklal in Istanbul on November 14, 2022.
© AFP 2023 / YASIN AKGUL
“Ankara has always voiced its concerns that arming the YPG will result in these weapons being used against Turkey. This concern has maintained a place in the Turkish psyche. Hence, when we see a terrorist attack carried out by the PKK in Istanbul, it's natural for negative sentiment aimed at the US-YPG relationship to resurface among Turks,” he explained.
Erim suggested that the “counter-terrorism operation” that was threatened in June and then postponed would likely “come back on Turkey’s agenda” amid public pressure to respond to the alleged PKK terrorist attack. It would also likely reinvigorate Ankara’s pressure on Finland and Sweden, two European states recently added to the NATO alliance, to extradite alleged PKK-linked individuals to Turkey for trial.
Ankara-based security and political analyst Dr. Hasan Selim Ozertem told Sputnik that Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AK) has long blamed the US for the country’s internal security problems, so Soylu’s reaction isn’t out of character.
“Sometimes they used the concept of ‘mastermind’ as an implicit referral of western capitals like Washington, or rather directly pointed to the US or American presidents,” he explained. “President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the AK Party officials blamed the US of supporting terrorism and sending tons of weapons and logistical aid to the US. Thus, it is hard to claim that Soylu’s statements refer to a shift in Turkish-US relations.”
“However, it is a clear message from Ankara to Washington,” Ozertem said. “The White House’s message defined the attack as an act of violence rather than a terrorist attack and Soylu’s statements indicate that such a definition is not acceptable, considering the findings regarding the link between the bomber and the PKK. Soylu also added that the alliance of a state is questionable whose senate sends financial support to Kobani,” a Kurdish-majority city across the border in Syria controlled by the YPG-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
Protesters waving giant flags of the YPG and other parties and militias, during a demonstration against Turkish threats, in Afrin, Aleppo province, north Syria
© AP Photo / YPG Press Office
However, Ozertem noted that Ankara’s hesitation to call the Sunday bombing a terrorist attack before the facts were known could explain Washington’s statement, noting that now that Erdogan has explicitly labeled it as such, it could change the Biden administration’s position.
”Moreover, there will be a G20 summit in Bali on November 16. If Biden and Erdoğan meet at the margin of the summit this is also a positive development. Still, it should be noted here that the Turkish president has not made any statements about the US or the message coming from the White House yet,” he added.
However, he predicted the attack was not likely to affect the accession of Sweden and Finland to NATO, since Turkey has already made its expectations clear.
“The Swedish Prime Minister came to Ankara last week and met with President Erdoğan. He said that Sweden was ready to honor its commitments in the signed trilateral memorandum at the Madrid Summit. Stockholm declared the suspension of sanctions on Turkey to export military goods recently. But Turkey expects some further steps to be taken by Stockholm and Helsinki regarding countering terrorism. If such steps are taken Turkey would be approving these countries' membership in NATO,” the expert noted.
“Yet, the potential impact of the attack will be on Turkish politics on the eve of the upcoming elections. Depending on the next developments, whether another attack takes place or not, or the pro-Kurdish political party HDP [People’s Democratic Party] hesitates to condemn the attack, the impact of yesterday’s attack will be stronger. Such developments will be feeding nationalist tendencies and strengthen a nationalist discourse in the campaign period. Considering the fact that there is a closure case against the HDP, waiting in the Constitutional Court, such developments have a potential to restructure domestic politics in Turkey.”
Hasan Unal, Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Istanbul Maltepe University, told Sputnik that Soylu’s comments have to be seen in the context of the immensely anti-American public sentiment in Turkey, too.
“On any issue you basically ask the Turkish public and what you get in response is that the Turkish public would, one way or the other, put the blame on the United States, particularly on things like support for the PKK, YPG or whatever,” he said. “The Turkish public is quite anti-American, there's no there's no question about that. Even on questions like who is right or who is wrong in any international issue in which the United States is involved, you automatically get the response from the Turkish public that it must be the United States, which is on the wrong, because the United States does evil things.”
Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (L) and US President Joe Biden (R) attend a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the NATO summit at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) headquarters in Brussels on June 14, 2021.
© AFP 2023 / BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI
“Now, in this particular case, the Turkish public is very angry and frustrated. There's no question about that. And the way the interior minister has put it has basically taken the anti-American feelings across Turkey to a new height. What is going to practically change is difficult to say at this moment, but the Turkish-US relations are quite strained at every level. But at the time of multipolarity this is going to put more pressure on the U.S. side than on the Turkish side. And we'll have to wait and see basically what is likely to change in the near future,” he noted.
Unal predicted that while the incident would likely put increased strain on the US side of the US-Turkey relations “at a time when it needs Turkey so much,” it was less likely to affect Turkey’s relations with Sweden or Finland, especially since the new Swedish government is “is more keen to satisfy Turkey's demands.”
*A terrorist group banned in Russia and many other countries
