Building w/ green roof: Turkish Parliament
Another deadly bombing in Ankara, a van type of vehicle was blown up as military service busses passed by. It left 28 dead and more than 60 wounded.
I was what Americans call “military brat” who grew up in Ankara. I took those military service busses all the time: the base we lived on was way far from the city center and public transportation was rare and limited. Even if I could catch a bus, I had to cross a major highway with no red lights or over/underpasses. Like many high school students, I attended test-prep courses for university entrance tests. These were held in the evenings after school or on the weekends, in Kizilay (shopping/business center in Ankara). The easiest and safest way to get home was sprinting all the way to Sihhiye or Anittepe and catching the military bus. The military busses ran on a schedule and missing it -especially in the evening- was very undesirable. This was in the early 1990s.
Early 1990s was of course the time of the first Gulf war and the heyday of the conflict in the Southeast. I rode home in military service busses through the city center and to the (then) outskirts of the city. I never felt unsafe. What happened today brings back those memories. Military busses destroyed in a blast, smack in the middle of the capital city. The location of the bombing as symbolic as the recent Sultanahmet bombing. The bombing site is walking distance to both the Parliament and the headquarters of military branches, it is at the heart of Turkish government and military (Think National Mall in DC). This was a very bold attack and a terrible failure in security measures.
I feel sad for the lives lost. I am sure those military members did feel death breathing on their necks when they were on their “şark/east” duty and I am sure they never felt insecure in Ankara. I am sure they or their families didn’t think they would be killed while returning home after work in the middle of the capital city. What a terrible shock.
I will say out loud what everybody has been whispering: No place in Turkey is safe anymore! This past summer, in Istanbul, people thought we were crazy to take the subway, people feared ISIS would plant bombs there. In the gossip vine + concerned mom warnings, the fear that conflict has been brought to the West, to urban centers like Istanbul or Ankara featured even in Summer 2015. Then came Suruç, Diyarbakir, Ankara, Istanbul/Sultanahmet, and now this. What conflict has been brought to the West you ask? Violence breeds violence and the Turkish government has been sowing seeds of violence within and across the country’s borders for a while. The bombers may be the PKK or the YPG or ISIS -Turkey has made lots of enemies and alienated many friends in a relatively short period of time. I hate to say this but Turkey has brought this violence onto itself with the government’s miscalculated policies and the people’s acquiescence or support.
It’s amazing that this government has used previous bombings to incite more hatred among the people, to mobilize the “rally behind the flag” effect and to suggest them as a pretext to intervene in the Syrian conflict (Erdogan’s response to Ankara attack, where the perpetrator was allegedly a YPG militant from Syria: Turkey will use its right to self defense). It is very discouraging that this government has demonized those who spoke up against war and called for peace: A great majority of the academics who signed the “Peace Petition” are currently going through administrative/disciplinary or legal/prosecutorial investigations. It’s depressing that a majority of people in Turkey support these risky and undemocratic actions of the government.
Will the people of Turkey please wake up? Wake up and speak up for all good things’ sake! Stop watching Survivor for a night, shed your nationalist skin for a day, drop your blinders and see that this is not right. The path the government set us on is destroying the country. It has already destroyed whatever brotherhood there was between Turks and Kurds: I don’t remember any other time in my lifetime when there was this much hatred towards Kurds, not even the 1990s. We are practically involved in the Syrian conflict -as the latest Turkish bombings into the Syrian territory suggests. The opposition parties in the government obviously do not have the power to put the brakes on. Only public discontent may make a difference, and the public has to realize that all of Turkey has effectively become a war zone. This is the meaning of blowing a bomb at the heart of the capital city.
I feel very desperate watching all this from afar. My desperation stems from my sadness for the dead and from how powerless I feel. I have no power to stop this madness. I joined forces with the colleagues who called for peace and still we have no power to stop this madness. I was lamenting that Turkey is sinking deep into authoritarianism; now I am fearful that it’s sinking into war and out of control violence. And of course, these two are related. In the absence of magic wands and deux ex machinas, only the people can break this vicious cycle. That is why I am so desperate for them to wake up.
Ebru Erdem Akcay 