Yes, the outcome of Turkey’s election and the flood of migrants into Europe are connected

Special to WorldTribune.com

By Gregory R. Copley, Editor, GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs, and correspondents in Turkey and the Region

The resounding win by the Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi (Justice and Development Party: AKP) in the Nov. 1 parliamentary elections in Turkey relied heavily on the support given to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the AKP because of his promise to resolve the strategic challenge to Western Europe caused by the influx of illegal migration from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan through Turkey, and from Libyan ports.

But evidence is now mounting that the upsurge in the migratory wave was the result of deliberate efforts by Erdogan to facilitate and push the flow of migrants in order to blackmail and punish the EU into supporting him.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the mausoleum of Turkey's founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in Ankara, Oct. 29 / Burhan Ozbilici / AP
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the mausoleum of Turkey’s founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in Ankara, Oct. 29 / Burhan Ozbilici / AP

The election success gave President Erdogan the ability to call on Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu to form a new, single-party government in which the AKP would be able to continue its dominance.

But rather than the stability which the AKP claimed that such a victory would give to Turkey — which was the reason why some European Union members gave public support to Erdogan before the election — the win starts the process for a massive escalation in Turkey’s ongoing civil war between the Islamists, the Kurds, and ‘Alevis.

Sources within the presidency indicate that President Erdogan now feels that he has a mandate to renew major security force attacks on the Kurdish separatists, who have already been the target of major air and ground force attacks in Kurdish areas. As well, Kurdish PKK [Kurdish Workers’ Party/Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan] sources indicated that the wait to see how the election would turn out is now over, and the season for the planned rise of “unrestricted warfare” against Turkish cities is now about to begin.

In other words, the civil war in Turkey, which went into a lull briefly in the run-up to the elections, will now revive significantly.

The parliamentary victory was heavily influenced by  Erdogan’s move to get his support base motivated, but it was generally seen by the opposition — particularly the Kurds — as an implausible outcome. Certainly, the bombing of the opposition (Kurdish) HDP (People’s Democratic Party) rally in Ankara on Oct. 10, killing some 97 people and injuring more than 400, was blamed by the Kurds on the government as a means of warning the Kurds.

As it turned out, the AKP appeared to be saved by the Nov. 1 elections, which gave it more than 49 percent of the vote and 316 seats in parliament, more than the 276 seats needed for single-party rule but short of the 330 seats needed to take constitutional changes to referendum. The CHP (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi: Republican People’s Party) took the second-largest bloc of seats, 132, with 24.95 percent of the vote, and the predominantly-Kurdish, leftist Peoples’ Democratic Party, or HDP, came third with 59 seats. Next came the right wing Nationalist Movement Party with 40 seats.

The process by which Erdogan was able to coerce several European Union (EU) leaders, particularly German Chancellor Angela Merkel into giving very visible support to the AKP in the elections — and promising massive increases in financial aid, plus additional political consideration for Turkey’s rights with the EU — came as a result of the massive upsurge in illegal migrant flows into the EU, with those migrant outflows coming from Turkey and from Libya (where the Turkish national intelligence organization Milli İstihbarat Teşkilatı: MİT is operating).

Again, sources in Ankara indicated that the sudden push of the migrants out of Turkish camps was directly the result of an order from Erdogan. He then portrayed himself, and Turkey, to EU leaders as the only option to stabilize the massive migratory flow.

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