Has press freedom fallen victim to AKP’s Syria policy?
Has the Turkish government once again tried to silence a journalist, this time one who has drawn links between the AKP government's Syria policy and terror attacks by Islamic State in the country?
On June 5, two days before Turkey’s general elections, four people were killed and 50 injured in a bomb blast at a rally for the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) in Diyarbakir. The perpetrator was identified as Omer Gonder, a 20-year-old native of neighboring Adiyaman province who had joined the Islamic State (IS) in 2014 and had just returned from Syria.
On July 20 in the border town of Suruc, a suicide bomber blew himself up in the midst of some 300 leftist activists who were en route to Kobani, just across the border, to help in reconstruction efforts. Kurdish resistance had broken the siege there by IS in January. The bomber was identified as Seyh Abdurrahman Alagoz — again, a 20-year-old from Adiyaman who had joined IS in Syria last year.
Hours after the Suruc attack, which killed 32 people and wounded more than 100, I tweeted, “It was obvious that all this was coming. The responsibility for the massacre of these young people rests with those who designed and implemented the Syria policy of the AKP [Justice and Development Party].”
The following day, I sent another tweet, “IS terror is a convenient product of the AKP’s ‘open door for jihadists’ policy. Now it allows its sponsors to make use of it in domestic politics as well.” Then, on the morning of July 22, I shared a third tweet: “It’s a disgrace for foreign leaders to send condolences over Suruc to the very person who is the primary reason for IS terrorism in Turkey.”
