members and sent them to
prison. It’s hard to say for sure
what went through Ankara’s
collective head. Maybe the
government only arrested ISIS
members to get Western critics
off its back. Or perhaps the
government finally woke up to
the fact that ISIS, unlike the
Kurds, is a threat to the entire
human race. Maybe Turkey
figured it could fight both at
once.
Just a few days later, a suicide
bomber killed 28 people at a
meeting of pro-Kurdish groups
in the Turkish city of Suruc,
just across the Syrian border
from the Kurdish city of
Kobane, which ISIS fought for
and lost last year. No one
claimed responsibility, but it
was almost certainly ISIS. Who
else would want to strike
Turkey and the Kurds
simultaneously?
The Kurdish militias are the
toughest foes ISIS has yet
faced anywhere. Attacking
them in Suruc was its way of
telling the Kurds that they’re
unsafe even outside Syria and
Iraq. At the same time, ISIS
sent a message to Turkey. “We
don’t want to fight you at the
moment. Our war is in Syria.
But we can strike inside your
country whenever we want, so
back off.”
Turkey would have united
against ISIS if ethnic Turks had
been killed, but killing Kurds
in Turkey did not inspire an
immediate response.
“Witnessing the controversy in
Turkish public opinion after
the attack,” Turkish analyst
Metin Gurcan wrote in AlMonitor, “and seeing that the
political elites could not even
come up with a message of
unity against such an attack—
one has to admit that the attack
has served its purpose.”
A few days later, the Turkish
government finally allowed the
United States to use Incirlik
Air Base, just 70 miles from
the Syrian border, to launch
airstrikes over ISIS-held
territory—but only if US
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