TURKEY rarely does anything by halves, and this includes mistakes. Its response to the Daesh (so-called IS) suicide attack last week in the border town of Suruc, which slaughtered 32 people, was to launch airstrikes against Daesh position in Syria, roll up what it said were local terrorist networks and finally grant the US air force permission to use the key Incirlik airbase for its own attacks on Daesh. So far so good. But then came the colossal mistake. The Kurdish PKK, outlawed internationally as a terrorist group, launched an attack on a Turkish army convoy, killing two soldiers and injuring others. In the eyes of Ankara this broke a two-year truce. Therefore not only did Turkish warplanes bomb Daesh targets, but they also assaulted PKK camps in northern Iraq. Moreover, a closer examination of the people picked up in police raids, particularly Istanbul, shows that in among the Daesh sympathizers said to have ferried fighters and arms to their masters in Syria, was a significant number of Kurds who were arrested on the basis of their alleged support for the PKK. Now it is not a question of the legality of this swoop on suspects connected with two terrorists organizations. It is, however, an issue of strategic common sense. The Turkish government, fronted by Premier Ahmed Davutoglu but in reality led by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has chosen to start two separate battles at the very same moment. As one Western diplomat in Ankara commented at the weekend “I think they may have gone mad”. It was one of Erdogan's significant early achievements when he became prime minister a decade ago, that he effectively made peace with the rebellious Kurds, granting them long-denied minority rights, including the teaching of their own language and political freedoms. Not everybody liked the deal he cut. Turkish nationalists were furious. And a younger generation of PKK members was uneasy at the cease-fire order issued by their imprisoned leader Abdullah Ocalan. But the majority of the population, be they ethnic Turks or Kurds, was extremely grateful that a long and debilitating civil insurrection was on hold and showed every sign of ending permanently. Fast forward to last week's Suruc massacre. The majority of victims was Kurdish. The meeting that the suicide bomber blew apart was in aid of the rebuilding of the largely-Kurdish town of Kobane, just across the border in Syria, which had been devastated in fighting to drive out Daesh terrorists. The Turkish government's assault on Daesh would therefore have served to unite the country's Kurds behind it. It might even have opened the next chapter in reconciliation, bringing the Kurds to accept a position as a respected minority within the nation and further defusing pressure for regional autonomy in the east. It would almost certainly have caused Kurdish fighters in Syria and Turkey itself to assist Ankara's attack on Daesh in Syria. The PKK attack on the army convoy was a cunning provocation, which succeeded in spades. Instead of using them as allies Turkey is now embarked on a conflict with the Kurds, as well as the terrorists of Daesh. The goodwill and sympathy generated by the Suruc massacre has been thrown away. Unless the government rows back quickly and cuts a new ceasefire with the PKK, it is faced with a war on two fronts. It knows how tough it is to beat the Kurds. It has just made it even tougher adding Daesh at the same time.
