Turkey’s Hardest Times
In the past few years, Turkey has gone through many events which have put the security of its people in danger and have increased tension with the international community.
Picture of President Erdogan
The country was a few steps away from entering the European Union when, in 2013, ISIS emerged and took control over major parts of Iraq and Syria. Turkey, as a bordering state of those two destabilized nations, became one of the opened doors for the European jihadist to join the radicalized Islamic group of killers and for those ones to cross the borders to the Western territory. In 2016, the number of European who fought for the terrorist organisation and entered the region through Turkey was between 3,000 and 5,000. Also, following the birth of the Islamic state, refugees started coming in astronomic numbers to Europe in a wish of a better and safer life. Many of them were crossing the Turkish land with a hope of joining the western and wealthy countries such as Germany, France and Great Britain. As the borders of those are temporarily closed, the refugees would stack up in camps in Turkey, approximately 3 millions in the camps in 2016.
This huge population of moving asylum seekers is now giving fear to Europe as terrorist attacks have happened in astronomic numbers in Turkey, leaving the European dream far away. Since 2015, PKK and other organisations have killed 565 civilians and soldiers in about 18 attacks in total. An event that has particularly shaken up the Turkish people is definitely the Putsch organised by more than a hundred soldiers of the national army. The plan was to take over the power in Turkey by overturning the government in place in Ankara and its actual leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. However, their wishes to knock over Erdoğan miserably failed and all of the traitors were captured; they are now held prisoners, waiting for the justice to punish them. The death toll of this horrific night has been set to 250 deaths.
Following the Putsch, more than 26,000 people in the civil services, public sector, judiciary and police have been formally arrested and taken into custody. They are believed to have participated in any way into the failed coup attempt. Those facts are starting to disturb western governments and further more since Erdoğan proposed to its people the decriminalization of the death penalty. In fact, it is not the first time the Turkish Head of State seems to be shifting from democracy and human rights. In 2017, 191 journalists were still being detained in jail in Turkey, some because of their controversial membership with the extremist Kurdish group PKK, but, overall, most of the journalists held are just in prison for being opposed with the executive power. The president is now trying to pass a bill that will change greatly the actual Constitution of Turkey and will give to the head of state more power to rule. This is what is alerting human rights organisations. The bill will be voted by referendum the 16th April and will be watched over precisely by occidental leaders. So in fact, president Erdoğan has some kind of "bad reputation" beside the European Union and those last moves which he has performed leaves Turkey outside of the Copenhagen criteria to be eligible to enter the Union. But tensions are not only present between him and Brussels, but also with Russia. On the 24th of November 2015, a Russian military aircraft was knocked down by Turkish army air forces as the Soukhoï24 was flying over Turkish territory. This event has seen one Russian soldier die, killed by Syrian rebel forces on ground after jumping out of his plane. Then in 2016, Andreï Karlov, the representative for Russia in Ankara, died of his wounds after being shot several times in the back by a security member during a private viewing. Those two major events have definitely increased the already-existing tensions. The two leaders of the countries, even if they try to reduce the impact, know that there is a hidden conflict between the two nations.
Arnaud.T