Attack on Ankara Police Station Leads to New Questions for AKP

On Friday evening, Sept. 20, national police headquarters and its guest house in the heart of Ankara were attacked by rockets. It was after business hours and no casualties were reported.

As soon as the news of rocket explosions broke, Emre Uslu, a prominent journalist from Taraf daily, tweeted, “This rocket attack to the police headquarters must be the work of leftist organizations, such as DHKP-C (Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front). They have attacked the police headquarters in the 1990s also.” DHKP-C, with its new name, was formed as a leftist, Marxist-Leninist political party in the 1970s. The party is considered to have been the culprit in several assassinations; hence DHKP-C is classified as a terror organization in Turkey, the US and EU. DHKP-C recently made international news with the suicide bombing of the US Embassy in Ankara on Feb. 1, 2013.

Subsequent news confirmed Uslu’s prediction. Within hours of the attack two suspects were tracked down, and engaged fire with the police force. One was shot dead and the other was wounded and captured. The suspects were armed and the dead one was identified as the man who had attacked AKP (Justice and Development Party) headquarters previously.

This is quite sad national news, and one would image it would generate a rally-around-the-flag moment with solemn feelings amongst Turks. That was far from the case.

Indeed, on social media within the first four to five hours of the attack, the most trending topic in Turkey became #PoliseviSaldırısınaİnanmıyoruz, reading, “We do not believe in the attack on the police guest house.” We can interpret this hashtag as public mistrust of the government. While pro-government pundits and government officials were all assigning blame to “illegal left-wing terror organizations, DHKP-C being one of them,” opposition to the government kept finding inconsistencies in the news reports and simply mocking the mainstream media statements. One tweeter sarcastically said, “I now understand why the government shut down the national theater, because the government is the theater itself.”

Many tweets questioned “where is the Turkish intelligence agency (police intelligence) how can people with rockets approach such a high-security zone with such ease,” while others were suspicious how after each DHKP-C attack suspects were caught within hours. One tweeted, “Pocket rockets are now available for your convenience” with a photo of Lego figures holding rocket launchers in toy sizes.

A prominent journalist, who is no longer in mainstream media told Al-Monitor that the “public’s trust is gone. Even if there is proof, Gezi people will not be convinced. For each act of violence, the government has blamed an ambiguous illicit organization, and now the public is concerned that the next step could be the blanket accusation of being a member of DHKP-C.” Anti-terror laws, as in any country which has suffered from terrorism, are rather strict in Turkey. If charged with terrorism, one would have to pay a hefty price. In mid-April 2013, the Turkish parliament passed a law to narrow the definition of terrorist propaganda. Yet, many Turks’ mistrust of the government indicates that they perceive they can still be charged for their words on social media or over the phone.

On the other side of the spectrum were the pro-government commentators. Most were tweeting with their Rabia symbol, four fingers showing profile photo, as one wrote: “Those who don’t believe the attack to be real do not believe in Allah neither. If we ask them, there is no DHKP-C neither.” Several pro-government tweeters argued that those who tweeted under the hashtag “We do not believe in the attack on the police guest house” were traitors who hated the country, watan (motherland). The tweet from Samil Tayyar — a former journalist who is an AKP member of parliament — was particularly telling: “CHP (People’s Republican Party, also the main opposition party in Turkey) and DHKP-C have become Assad’s client organizations, one is legal, one is illegal. A lawsuit should be brought to close CHP considering its involvement in terror.” In an earlier tweet Tayyar had written that the prime suspect in the attack was DHKP-C, “the locomotive of Gezi Park protests, and Assad regime’s new tool in Turkey.”  So as perplexing as it may seem, the argument goes like this: Because Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan stood up for human rights in Syria, Syrian President Bashar al Assad started supporting groups within Turkey to protest and violently attack the Turkish state. Any MP who has supported the Gezi Park protests, (whether or not at Gezi Park) is also considered pro-Assad and hence a terror sympathizer. These are the basic allegations brought forth. One of Erdogan’s senior advisers, Yigit Bulut, went on television to state that he was embarrassed to see MPs at protests against the government. Is it not the right of an opposition MP to join in peaceful protests?

Social media, Twitter in particular, might not be an adequate representation of Turkey as a whole. However, as AKP’s latest endeavor of hiring a 6,000-strong army of tweeters to influence public opinion indicates, it does have an impact on the young, vibrant population of the country. It is the best open-source intelligence gathering method to access all views interested in speaking up. A conservative journalist told Al-Monitor one of the most disturbing hashtags for him was #MuslumanlarAKPyedireniyor –meaning Muslims resist against AKP. Tayyar, an AKP MP, also tweeted criticizing the users of this particular hashtag. Tayyar wrote, “You write Muslims resist against AKP, but you don’t know how to declare shahaded (witness to God, a core condition of being a Muslim) you break your fast with beer (alcohol is prohibited in Islam), and you do not know your qibla (when praying you have to turn to Mecca). While you are resisting, your core has shifted.” Does not this anger pouring in from the representatives of AKP toward the public raise the level of mistrust toward the government? Is this the best way to approach the public whose basic complaint is that their voices are being ignored?

The rocket attack on the police forces has shown one more time that the more the government criticizes the opposition, the more the opposition unites. Mutual suspicions deepen on both camps through events as such, and while so far the most crucial advantage of the ruling party was the unified nature of the opposition, mistrust and dislike of the government unites colorful opposing groups. These groups realize they share a wide common interest: their inability to have a credible voice in policy-making. This political suffocation makes odd bedfellows. 

Pinar Tremblay is a doctoral candidate in political science at University of California, Los Angeles, and an adjunct faculty member at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. She has previously been published in the Hurriyet Daily News and Today's Zaman. On Twitter: @pinartremblay