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ANKARA: Political assassinations and biological attacks

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  • ANKARA: Political assassinations and biological attacks

    Today's Zaman, Turkey
    Nov 1 2009


    [Unconventional Warfare and International Relations]
    Political assassinations and biological attacks as a means to
    destabilize Turkey

    by MEHMET KALYONCU*

    A remembrance card for Ahmet Taner KıÅ?lalı, a professor who was
    murdered in 1999.
    Turkey's relations with its neighbors have been rapidly evolving over
    the last few years. Some are improving unexpectedly well, and some are
    deteriorating unexpectedly fast.


    One can argue that Turkey's relations overall as such are evolving for
    the better. However, the historical characteristics of some of the
    neighbors which Turkey has been severing ties with requires Ankara to
    be extremely vigilant and to prepare accordingly against the damage
    that those particular neighbors may inflict upon it.
    In line with the Justice and Development (AK Party) government's `zero
    problems with neighbors' principle, Ankara has improved in a very
    short span of time its relations with Damascus, from the brink of
    waging war to the level of removing visa requirements between the two
    countries and holding joint ministerial meetings. Similarly, it
    secured Baghdad's substantial cooperation in dealing with the outlawed
    Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), the terrorist group that has long used
    Iraqi territory to launch attacks on Turkey. Moreover, Ankara gained
    Baku's critical support in fulfilling the Nabucco pipeline project,
    which many critics used to view as a pipedream named after an opera.
    In addition, Ankara has become a champion for an immediate and
    sustainable solution in Nagorno-Karabakh, where Armenia's continuing
    occupation has turned 1 million Azerbaijanis into homeless refugees.
    Finally, Ankara has managed to accomplish the unthinkable and recently
    signed the protocols that officially started the process for the
    normalization of its relations with Yerevan.

    However, at the same time, Ankara's relations with Israel have been
    dramatically worsened over a series of issues, which included, as the
    American journalist Seymour Hersh revealed, Israel's clandestine
    military assistance to the Kurds in northern Iraq; Israel's apparently
    intentional delay in delivering the `Heron' unmanned aerial vehicles
    (UAV) Ankara agreed to buy from it in 2005; Israel's recent military
    operation against Gaza where some 1,400 Palestinians, mostly women and
    children, died; the Davos incident in which Prime Minister Recep
    Tayyip ErdoÄ?an walked out of a panel discussion after he had fiery
    quarrel with the Israeli president, Shimon Peres; and finally the
    Turkish TV series called `Ayrılık' which depicts the Israeli
    occupation of Gaza and which Israel is not so comfortable with.

    In light of these developments, Turkey's increasingly active posture
    in regional affairs brings to the fore an urgent need for Ankara to
    improve its ability to counter possible threats that such prominence
    may engender, especially when it challenges the regional status quo.
    Turkey's military might and strategic importance for global energy
    security minimizes the prospects of it facing any threat of
    conventional warfare waged by its neighbors. However, unconventional
    warfare by those states which are not so fond of Ankara's regional
    policies is always likely to be waged against Turkey. As a matter of
    fact, Turkey may have already been exposed to such warfare, especially
    by those states that are so used to manipulating Ankara through their
    influence over a small number of the ultra-secularist elite, be they
    businessmen, judges or generals.

    Unconventional warfare: Bringing a nation to its knees

    The US Department of Defense defines unconventional warfare as `a
    broad spectrum of military and paramilitary operations, normally of
    long duration, predominantly conducted through, with, or by indigenous
    or surrogate forces who are organized, trained, equipped, supported,
    and directed in varying degrees by an external source. It includes,
    but is not limited to, guerilla warfare, subversion, sabotage,
    intelligence activities, and unconventional assisted recovery.' More
    practically, unlike the conventional warfare where the parties
    involved aim to maximize the damage inflicted on each other's military
    capabilities, unconventional warfare targets the civilian population
    and political bodies, thereby making the military might of the enemy
    irrelevant in due process.

    The state waging the unconventional warfare tries to propagate the
    belief within the targeted country that the deteriorating
    socio-economic, political and security conditions are merely caused by
    the sitting government and that everything will be better once the
    government is replaced by another, or agrees to make concessions in
    certain policy areas. In a way, the perpetrator of the unconventional
    warfare (UW) manipulates the fears and sensitivities of the society to
    affect the political dynamics in the targeted country. In order to do
    that, the UW perpetrator may utilize both military and non-military
    means. By definition, it may provide military assistance, training and
    funds to groups within the targeted country which would in turn create
    military and security problems. Similarly, the UW perpetrator may seek
    to destabilize the targeted country by playing one or more groups
    against each other by exploiting the fears and sensitivities of those
    groups. The most efficient means of doing this is certainly through
    the exploitation of the mass media, and the best example of this is to
    mobilize the so-called secular military against the so-called Islamist
    civilian groups or civilian government.

    Turkey at war

    >From this point of view, a quick look into Turkey's republican history
    may suggest that the country has always been a target and victim of a
    never-ending unconventional warfare waged against it. The country has
    long suffered from the ultra-secular center versus traditional
    periphery divide, the military's dominance over politics, the paradigm
    of being surrounded by sea on three sides and by enemies on four, the
    idea that the Turks are not capable of accomplishing anything and that
    the only way to prosperity is through an unconditional mimicking of
    the West and finally the fear that Kurdishness or the manifestation of
    any other ethno-religious identity poses an existential threat to
    Turkishness. Improvements in areas from the legal system to
    domestic/foreign policy and to the economy throughout the past seven
    years indicate that Turkey has learned quite a bit about how to
    counter these types of unconventional warfare tactics.

    However, with the advancement of technology comes new ways and means
    of unconventional warfare, and therefore it becomes ever more urgent
    for Turkey to improve itself in order to cope with the evolving
    threats. Two of the most effective tactics of contemporary
    unconventional warfare are political assassinations and biological
    attacks, which can be disguised as accidents and as natural disasters
    or pandemics, respectively. In the recent past, Turkey has experienced
    the seemingly `natural deaths' of a number of its political leaders.
    For instance, former Prime Minister Adnan Menderes, whose coming to
    office marked Turkey's transition to multiparty democracy, was
    sentenced to death and duly executed after a seemingly normal judicial
    process. Former Prime Minister and President Turgut Ã-zal, whose dream
    was the unification of the Turkic world, is believed to have passed
    away because of a heart attack, although there has been speculation
    that he had been gradually poisoned over a long period of time, which
    led to the heart attack. Former Governor Recep YazıcıoÄ?lu, who stood
    against the foreign corporations that sought to explore for uranium in
    Denizli province, was seemingly killed in a tragic car accident while
    on his way to Ankara to investigate the deaths of engineers who had
    been killed in mysterious car accidents as well. In addition to these
    political figures, many journalists and academics such as UÄ?ur Mumcu,
    Ahmet Taner KıÅ?lalı and Hrant Dink have also been killed in such
    mysterious ways that these deaths eventually fanned the animosities
    between different segments of society.

    Similarly, the deliberate spread of certain infectious diseases and
    viruses constitutes another dimension of unconventional warfare. One
    historic example of that is the mass death of the American Indians in
    the 17th century caused by the Europeans who migrated to the New World
    and considered the spread of smallpox among the American Indians as an
    effective way to vacate the land where they intended to settle. Today,
    although they are not nearly as deadly, the outbreak of such
    contagious diseases as bird flu, swine flu and many others yet to come
    poses a grave danger to the countries that are not capable of
    producing their own vaccines against these diseases, but instead are
    dependent on the mercy of the other states that are able to produce
    these vaccines. This exemplifies the current situation that Turkey
    finds itself in. Although Turkey recently secured the purchase of
    500,000 doses of the swine flu vaccine, it does not eliminate the
    country's vulnerability to the threat posed by swine flu or other such
    pandemics that are likely to emerge in the near future. Accordingly,
    the fate of a government that may seem unable to protect the
    population against epidemic diseases would also be at stake.

    As Prime Minister ErdoÄ?an becomes openly critical of a particular
    state in the neighborhood, and as such, Ankara defies an almost
    century-long status quo that its relations are built upon with this
    unconventional neighbor, the AK Party government is likely to be
    challenged time and time again in the near future by the ever evolving
    tactics of unconventional warfare. It is not something to be afraid of
    in itself, but a critical challenge to be prepared for as Turkey
    gradually rises to become a regional leader.

    *Mehmet Kalyoncu is an international relations analyst and author of
    the book `A Civilian
    Response to Ethno-Religious Conflict: The Gülen Movement in Southeast Turkey.'
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