Recently the Turkish military lifted a crushing nine-day curfew of the city of Cizre. As journalists and observers poured into the predominantly Kurdish southeastern Turkish city, they were confronted with wanton destruction and evidence of a large-scale military campaign. One foreign correspondent found that several buildings had been destroyed while others were pockmarked with bullet holes. The Turkish military maintained a strict regime of checkpoints on the perimeter of the city.   Cizre is a medium-sized city of 120,000 people. Thanks to its large Kurdish population and proximity to Iraq and Syria, it has become the focal point of the Turkish government’s drive to cripple the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Memories of the bitter fighting in the 1990s between Kurdish militants and the Turkish army are still raw.
The renewed conflict between Ankara and the Kurds is putting Turkey on a dangerous track as the US-led anti-ISIL coalition continues to ramp up the fight against militants just to Turkey’s south with the valuable help of Kurdish fighters. Closer to home, the fighting has already forced Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish president, to relinquish some of his hard-earned and carefully guarded power to an old foe, the Turkish military. How this extraordinary situation has come to pass begins with  Erdogan’s presidential victory. The former mayor of Istanbul and prime minister won Turkey’s first direct presidential election in August 2014 as part of his plan to pivot the country’s political system away from a parliamentary structure towards a presidential system.
His plan was for his Justice and Development Party (AKP) to win a super majority in the parliamentary elections, which would grant it the ability to rewrite the constitution in a manner that would privilege the president’s office. The result would essentially have been unchecked powers for the office of the presidency.
To reach a position where such an ambitious attempt on power was possible,  Erdogan has had to neutralise any and all of his political foes. With its long history of military coups throughout the republic’s existence (five, to be exact), the reach of Turkey’s military was one of  Erdogan’s first targets. Not only did he send a large number of senior military officers to jail in 2012 after an alleged coup plot, but  Erdogan took counterpositions on issues traditionally dominated by the military’s prospective.
The Kurdish issue, in particular, was an area where  Erdogan attempted to eviscerate the military’s power by engaging in peace talks with Kurdish rebels. The military has long advocated force as the best solution to the Kurdish issue, often deploying the verbose rhetoric of “red lines” and “severe repercussions”. With the outbreak of violence again, the military’s positions are back in vogue in Ankara. Additionally, last March more than 200 military officials – including the former chief of the general staff – were acquitted in a retrial of the coup plot.
Since the nationwide anti-government protests in May 2013,  Erdogan’s grip on power has slowly been loosening, despite maintaining his power base in the Turkish heartland. As the economy has faltered – contrary to the impressive economic growth his party had become synonymous with throughout the 2000s – the consummate politician has had to rethink his long-term political aspirations with an eye on short-term gains.
In 2013, for example,  Erdogan launched a vicious campaign against the reclusive Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, who lives in exile in the US.  Gulen’s followers have established prominent positions in the Turkish police and judiciary.
 Erdogan launched a widespread campaign of arrests and demotion of these Gulenists after the police released audio recordings, obtained through extensive wiretapping, of officials close to  Erdogan allegedly engaging in widespread graft.
Ironically, Gulen was once an influential ally who helped establish the AKP as a dominant force in Turkish politics. Perhaps more ironic, however, was that Erdogan sought the help of the Turkish army in rooting out and dismantling Gulen’s network.
And then there are the surprise results of last June’s parliamentary elections. Not only did the AKP fail to secure a supermajority of 367 of the 550 parliamentary seats, but Erdogan’s party also failed to secure an absolute majority thanks to a surging performance of the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP), which secured a sizeable 13 per cent of the vote from a number of Turkish liberals disgruntled with  Erdogan’s rule.
After the AKP failed to form a coalition government – an event that surprised no one – snap elections were announced for November 1. Last July,  Erdogan called off the peace process with the Kurds and effectively adopted the Turkish military line for the use of force against the militants. The PKK responded with a string of attacks that left more than 30 Turkish police and army officers dead.
In addition to the military operation, angry mobs have attacked HDP offices, and pro-AKP newspapers have called the HDP leader Selahattin Demirtas a “murderer” and “traitor”. The military, which was so recently sidelined, has returned and will probably entrench itself as this war unfolds.
It is unclear whether Erdogan’s risky gamble against the Kurds will result in a resounding parliamentary victory for his party in November. What is clear, however, is that the responsibility for this war doesn’t rest solely on  Erdogan’s shoulders. The president has engaged in limited power sharing with his former rivals in the military and the generals are acting on their long-standing desires to cut down Kurdish rebels.
While Erdogan’s iconoclastic political proclivities and bombastic rhetoric have won him few allies in the international community, he is not exclusively responsible for the dire situation that Turkey is mired in. When the dust finally settles in this round of bloodletting with the Kurds, Turkey will again be facing a powerful military. Some things are cyclical in Turkish history.
Thenation.ae