Erdoğan's Comeback Strategy

It seems that the defeat in the general election held on June 7 has not deterred President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan at all from pursuing his ambition to become a head of state like Russian President Vladimir Putin and to run the country as if it is a joint-stock company.
As a first step in his comeback strategy, he has declared what he called the “resolution process” -- that is, secret talks with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) to end the armed insurgency by the latter -- to be over, and has ordered the Turkish air force to bomb PKK bases in the Kandil Mountains and elsewhere, with the PKK responding by killing soldiers and police officers.
It has become clear to everyone that this “process” he himself initiated two and a half years ago aimed at nothing more than reaching a deal with PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan, imprisoned on the island of İmralı for the last 16 years, which would grant Öcalan his release in return for getting Erdoğan to fulfill his ambition by calling on the Kurds to support the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in elections. It is now perhaps better understood why Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç remarked “Are you people trying to discredit Mr. Öcalan” when the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) disclosed its decision to participate in the June 7 elections. It is perhaps also better understood now why Deputy Prime Minister Yalçın Akdoğan, referring to the leaders of the HDP, said “Öcalan would chase you with a stick if he could lay his hands on you” and claimed that the statement “We shall not let you [Erdoğan] become an executive president” by HDP Co-chair Selahattin Demirtaş during the election campaign was a provocation against the so-called “resolution process.”
It has become crystal clear that Erdoğan's “resolution process” was nothing but a project aimed at getting him elected as an executive president by enlisting the votes of all citizens and particularly of the Kurds, who wanted the country to achieve a lasting domestic peace. He now believes that by overcoming the parliamentary threshold in the June election, the HDP has blown up that project. It is now clear to everyone that what was dubbed the “resolution process” never aimed at a solution of the Kurdish problem and securing a lasting peace. Erdoğan in fact confessed this by asking last March: “What Kurdish problem? What more do you want? What is it that you don't have and we do, for God's sake?”
Erdoğan's recent snap agreement with the United States to allow the long-denied use of Turkey's air bases against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) appears to be related more with Erdoğan's logic of considering the Democratic Union Party (PYD) to be more dangerous than ISIL. The main objective seems to be to strangle the aspiration for autonomy of Syria's Kurds, who have long suffered under the dictatorship of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and now are threatened with ISIL attacks. What logic can there be, on the other hand, in declaring war simultaneously on four fronts against the Assad dictatorship, the PKK, the PYD in Syria and ISIL?
The AKP government, which is controlled by Erdoğan, seems to have a single objective now: Enable Erdoğan to become a de facto executive president by winning at least a majority in Parliament in a snap “repeat” election conducted with a campaign fanning nationalistic fervor. It has also become clear that Erdoğan has no intention of allowing a coalition to be formed between his party and the Republican People's Party (CHP), which many people have called for. He has openly declared that coalition governments are no good and that it would be best to hold what he calls a “repeat election” with an AKP minority government in charge.
A policy conducted via Turkish nationalist discourse with an Islamist dressing that claims there is no Kurdish problem, escalates armed clashes with the PKK, aims to ban the HDP and demonizes the Syrian Kurds is bound to come to a dead end. Such a policy was tried in the 1990s and grossly failed, causing the deaths of at least 30,000 citizens. Insisting on such a policy is likely to usher in the end of Turkey as we know it.
Democrats who believe in freedom must unite to resist such a policy.

ŞAHİN ALPAY (Cihan/Today's Zaman)