Let’s hear from you, TAK!

Three days ago, on Saturday evening, a bomb attack was staged in Istanbul next to Dolmabahçe Stadium targeting rapid-reaction force police officers who, the crowd having just dispelled at the end of the match, had now assembled and were boarding or were about board the buses that would take them away. Forty-four citizens lost their lives there, thirty-seven of them police officers and seven civilians. Some 150 citizens were injured. Some of these are seriously injured; some of them sustained injuries that will leave them maimed for life.

Your organisation calls itself TAK. This is the acronym for the Kurdish: ‘Teyrenbaze Azadiya Kürdistan’. In English, the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons.

There is no end of speculation over what your organisation is and is not. Some consider you to be a ‘subordinate organisation’ through which the PKK stages actions that it does not want to claim responsibility for but supports, others say that you are a formation set up by people who broke off from the PKK, finding it to be ‘soft’, and which knows no other form of activism apart from pushing violence to the limit.

Such details do not constitute the subject matter of this article. I have no intention of listing and dwelling on your past deeds, either. I am simply discussing your latest ‘action’ involving the detonation of a car bomb right next to Dolmabahçe Stadium.

You claimed responsibility for the ‘action’ on the next day. In doing so, you made an announcement. I cannot quote from it here because of the possibility that a prosecutor will come to the perfectly fitting conclusion that I would be engaging in indirect propaganda for terrorists and launch an investigation. Your aspirations can easily be gleaned from your announcement that anyone who wants to can easily find and read on the internet.

You apparently define yourselves as being an organisation with political aims and goals.

And you have listed your aims:

You want Öcalan to be freed.

What did you do to achieve this?

You detonated a car bomb right next to Dolmabahçe Stadium at the end of a match and took the lives of 144 citizens and injured around 150 citizens.

Do you wish to bring turmoil to people’s lives in Turkey because of the immoral and senseless military tactics the state is employing in Kurdish provinces?

What did you do to achieve this?

You detonated a car bomb right next to Dolmabahçe Stadium at the end of a match and took the lives of 144 citizens and injured around 150 citizens.

Do you propose that, “The peoples of Turkey must finally call a halt to this fascism”?

What did you do to achieve this?

You detonated a car bomb right next to Dolmabahçe Stadium at the end of a match and took the lives of 144 citizens and injured around 150 citizens.

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Now, contemplate the aims and results of your most recent action and answer these questions.

Not for my benefit. Ask yourselves.

First: You want Öcalan to be released.

Has the AKP government said, “Help! This TAK will eat us alive. We must release Öcalan immediately”? Is it likely to? Or is there a contradiction between your aim and your action that borders on the nonsensical?

Second: You have suggested that, “The peoples of Turkey must finally call a halt to this fascism”?

In the aftermath of your ‘action’ at Dolmabahçe, have the peoples of Turkey primed themselves for struggle and said things like, “The time has come for the peoples of Turkey to call a halt to this fascism”? Or, has the mentality begun to prevail that, “The AKP may well be right in proposing a purely military response to terrorism. There’s no other way of taking care of this business. What good is the law? String ‘em up.”?

Third: This week we were about to discuss the democratic disaster that will be inflicted on this country by the headship system in the guise of an ‘executive presidency’ that embodies the AKP’s fascistic tendencies and its drive towards an oligarchic system. This topic has now been overshadowed, and all thanks to you.

You have done Erdoğan and his buddies a huge favour and bolstered their position. You have served up the AKP with a ‘gift from God’.

With these, and only these, being the results, do you still and once more boast of your ‘action’? Or (but I do not hold out much hope of this) are you going to take a good, hard look at yourselves and address the question of whose interests you are serving?

AYDIN ENGİN 

Anlat bakalım TAK!..