From the very beginning, Ankara’s motto has been: Every security issue on the north of the Aleppo-Mosul line is Turkey’s business. There should be no terrorist organization, no foreign country deployed on this zone, which spans the Iranian border and the Mediterranean.
The presence of either one is a primary and imminent threat to Turkey.
Map projects made to alter countries’ borders were ongoing through this zone on the day the Syrian civil war started. Everyone adopted a stance according to the intensity of the war, slaughters, and destruction. Yet, the real matter was not the freedom and will of the Syrian people.
In fact, in the broad sense, it was not a Syrian war either. It was a regional map project. This war was waged to open a hundreds-of-kilometers-long front against Turkey. As a matter of fact, Syria was being prepared as the main front of the war with Turkey.
The U.S. and Europe deploying Daesh to the region, their extraordinary support to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), opened Turkey’s eyes. It was not a terror issue. The security issue had become an international power struggle.
U.S. aid to the PKK’s Syrian wing, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), was not aid to an “organization,” but rather a “state” aid. NATO-standard positions, ammunition dumps, and fronts were being built for the PKK in Afrin, as well as other regions in Syria.
The Syrian war is a continuation of the invasion of Iraq. The West’s map project for the entire region was carried out through a single project. This project also included the “shrinking of Turkey.” In this respect, the Syrian civil war would transform into the Turkey war, a world war. It would continue!
Had the 2016 coup attempt been successful, the Turkey front would have been opened, kickstarting the operation to shrink Turkey.
Just as the terror corridor between Iran and the Mediterranean was not, in fact, a terror issue, the Fetullah Terrorist Organization’s (FETÖ) role in the coup attempt was not limited to domestic politics.
The West is recalibrating the region it shaped in the 20th century. It is redesigning all maps in accordance with its own plans for dominance, driving to the ground the organizations in which it has been investing for decades, and organizing its global discourse and military activity accordingly.
There is no difference between FETÖ and the PKK in this respect. The terror corridor in Syria and the 2016 coup attempt in Turkey were different stages of the same plan. Turkey was simultaneously fighting battles within the country as well as against the PKK/YPG and Daesh in the south, not to mention FETÖ, an organization that was striving to collapse the system internally.
If the 2016 coup attempt had succeeded, and if this scenario had been successfully manifested, Turkey would experience a collapse and disintegration “similar to the Ottoman Empire’s fall.” Thus, today we would have seen other states and maps in the Turkey-Iraq-Syria triangle.
That night both Turkey and the region were saved. Great destruction, fatal falls were prevented. The people who flocked to the streets in 2016 ended the West’s greatest plan concerning our region, its 21st-century plan.
However, the great legacy of the Seljuks and the Ottoman Republic that represents the Turkish Republic today took action. This is the milestone decision that altered the course of history and built the region. This is the breakthrough that reset all of the West’s plans.
There is now great pressure to drive Turkey out of Idlib. This pressure is being applied for the “Middle East’s new equation,” which developed after the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan.
Russia and other countries are acting in accordance with their own interests. This is understandable. However, the real pressure is coming from within Turkey.
The opposition front, including Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, is pushing Turkey to return to its pre-July 15 state in the south.
PKK/YPG attacks and our martyr numbers are increasing in line with this pressure. Take note of the connection between the internal pressure and the increase in our losses. This is treachery.
If Turkey acts in accordance with this pressure, it will never again be able to control its southern border. It will never again be able to achieve its current level of security.
This is due to the fact that it will not only be terrorist organizations posing a threat in the entire zone from Iran to the Mediterranean, but also states. It will then be impossible to ensure security in our cities, let alone on our borders.
A new game is being set against Turkey. This time, internal actors are right at the center of the stage. This game must be spoiled. Turkey must absolutely complete what it started along the Iran-Mediterranean line.
It must not end with its own hands the most serious geopolitical intervention of this century. If it does, this will weaken all the steps it has taken from Libya to the Caucasus.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan saw this “threat,” and after the last Cabinet meeting, he said, “The latest attack against our police force, and the harassments targeting our territory were the final straw. We will be taking the necessary steps as soon as possible.”
This was perceived as a “new operation signal.” It might be true. However, there is no need for a “signal.” Turkey’s political mind in this century will make the right decision, and adopt the right stance.
New interventions will be made, and no country’s “deterrent threats” will have any effect on Turkey.
The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, the weakening of its influence in the Middle East, and amassing its power in the Pacific will have consequences. Doing business through terrorism in this zone won’t pave the wave for any country. Especially when Turkey has accumulated such power.
Every development along the Aleppo-Mosul line is an internal security issue for Turkey. This is clear. It is a national security issue. When the terror corridor had just started to form, I had said, “An intervention is essential, even if it means suicide.”
