"Hopes" and prayers were in vain. The Turkish government had hoped that the suicide bombers, who carried out attacks to two Istanbul synagogues Saturday, were Arabs, or Afghans, or if not, at least Pakistanis. But the reality is clear: The suicide attackers were Turkish citizens.
The roots of the attacks run too deep and wide to be connected to external currents by saying they are "barbaric attacks by al-Qaida. Although al-Qaida has reportedly "claimed responsibility," the roots of the attackers are here, in the southeastern province of Bingol.
Bingol, Hezbollah's country
Bingol is one of the birthplaces of Hezbollah. You will recall Hezbollah from a series of operations in 2000, in which its leader Huseyin Velioglu was killed and the "tomb houses," were discovered. Hezbollah aims to set up an Islamic tate in Turkey. After splitting into two under the names "Science," and "Range," the "scientists" started wiping out those belonging to the "Range," in the form of serial killings, tied them in a "pig ties," style and buried them in these tomb houses.
You will remember one more thing: Hezbollah, that essentially organizes the Islamist Kurds, attacked with chopper knives to the Kurdish rebels of PKK in the provinces of Bingol, Diyarbakir, Van and Batman and committed over 500 homicides.
Writer Hasan Cemal of the Milliyet newspaper had quoted Liutenant General Hasan Kundakci, who was a commander at the time of the bloody clashes.
"As we went after PKK with full force, they saved their power. This is the main principle of the strategy. We were aware of Hezbollah. They first tried to seize the mosques that were in the hands of PKK. After seizing them, they became active around the mosques. But they did not try to confront us."
Human resource of Islamic violence
So what happened to Hizbollah's human resource? What happened to this human resource's devastating potential?
The following is a "police investigation" which had been published in newspapers:
"An investigation conducted by security officials on the filed information on 2,000 Hezbollah members shows that the terrorist organization is mostly made up of youngsters between the ages of 15-24. Two percent of the organization is made up of people between the ages 35-65. Two and a half percent of the organization is made up of children between the ages of 10-14."
"40.5 percent of the Hezbollah members are high-school graduates; 1.5 percent of the terrorists are illiterate, 19 percent are elementary school graduates, 14 percent are middle school graduates, and 22 percent are university graduates."
"Hezbollah conducts 97.5 percent of its activity in the city centers. 27 percent of the militants are students, 28.5 percent are self-employed, 14 percent are workers, and 1.1 percent are farmers. Civil servants make up one percent of the militants, and women make up 2.5 percent."
Tolerating Islamic violence
Are the suspects of the synagogue bombings any different from this profile?
All are high-school graduates. They could not continue with their education, and they are between the ages of 20-25. All of them have turned to cults and organizations as a result of their hopelessness. All of them took up a religious mission and joined activities outside of Turkey under state protection or direction.
The models created by those who joined the terrorist groups in Chechnya or Bosnia, those who lost their lives there, those who kidnapped ships, occupied hotels, and at the same time, those who were treated like heroes by the state officials, kissed on their foreheads, and released or allowed to "run away."
Three countries in one country
Turkish commentators, looked at suicide bombers in Palestine, the Middle East, or elsewhere, as a "different type of people" who did not have alikes in Turkey.
"A suicide bomber" could only be an Arab or someone from the Middle East.
We forget easily...We forget easily that Turkey is not a homogenous society, that people in Turkey are drifting away from each other also with the pressure of globalization, that many countries with separate "worries, sorrows and prides," are being created within this country.
We forget that Turkey has never been the country of tolerance between cultures that our politicians take pride in. We forget that non-Muslims had to pay "protection money and head taxes" for centuries, forced to "emigrate," required to pay "property taxes," sent to "working camps," and lived through the September 6-7 looting.
We forgot the "Bloody Sunday," and the "Sivas," "Maras," and "Corum" massacres. We forgot the Madimak slaughter. We forgot the "Kurdish War," that killed 30,000 people...And we shout all together, "These cannot be Muslims, these cannot be Turkish Republic's citizens, ours would not attack synagogues."
It would be good if we did not forget where we live. We are citizens of a state that deploys Islamists in secret operations against leftists, Kurds and Alevites. We should not forget that we live in a land where an Islamic movement, that sees "jihad" as legitimate to seize power, is growing. We should not forget that we are individuals of an intolerant society. If we don't forget these, we will not be surprised.
Our prime minister will not be surprised either. The Islamist militant who yesterday was shouting, "mosques are our bayonets, domes are our helmets, mosques are our barracks," may have become a sensible today with the crown he is wearing. But he should not forget that he is among those who pushed these young people, whose one and only hope was to be martyrs by blowing the world up, to chose "jihad."
But not every Islamist is the same. If Tayyip Erdogan's pro-globalization "moderate Islam" does not reflect the rage of the poor, are the poor to blame, or is the inequality, injustice, poverty, intolerance and cruelty also going on in Tayyip Erdogan's government to blame.
This is partly why the government saw the synagogue attacks as attacks against itself. Because it can see that it no longer has authority over those whom it encouraged for "jihad" yesterday. And because it understood that: The same way anti-Jewish Erbakan had to be the one to cooperate with Israel, the same way anti-Kurd Bahceli had to be the one to lift Ocalan's death sentence, and the same way anti-Europe Ecevit had to be the one seeing Turkey become an EU candidate, the system is now leaving it up to Tayyip Erdogan, who is pro- Islamic law, to clean up Islam!
Erdogan will either go along with this, or give up. (EK)
