State funeral of colonel killed in combat with PKK, October 18. Demotix/Piero Castellano. All rights reserved. The twin bombings on October 10 at the Ankara Railway Station that left one hundred people dead were just the latest in a series of terrorist attacks that Turkey has suffered from recently. In addition, the civil war between the Kurdish PKK and the Turkish state has been renewed after a lapse of two years thus further adding to the mayhem, especially in the predominantly Kurdish populated areas in southeastern Turkey.
The failure of the Turkish political parties to form a coalition government after the indecisive parliamentary election of last June has amplified the uncertainty and instability in the country. The interim government under Ahmet Davutoglu gives the appearance of near-total indecisiveness as it waits out the time until the next elections scheduled for November 1. The Turkish currency has fallen precipitately as a result both of economic slowdown and political uncertainty thus adding to the woes of the middle class at a time when Turkey has increasingly become a middle class society. All this portends a gloomy future for Turkey at least in the short-term and possibly for the medium-term as well.
There are several interrelated reasons for Turkey’s current predicament. The first is the civil war and the anarchy prevailing in neighboring Syria. Turkey has been hosting over two million Syrian refugees. This has strained the economy; it has also added to the country’s political problems because its open-door policy toward the refugees has permitted the entry into Turkey of terrorist elements of various hues, including those owing loyalty to the ISIS. It is these latter that have been blamed by Turkish officials for the latest Ankara bombings.
