Erdogan's security dilemma
The 20 July bomb attack in Suruç made it clear that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is facing a long battle. The Daesh bombing of a leftist youth centre took 32 lives; it has not only shown that Turkey is now becoming increasingly vulnerable to such attacks, but also that the domestic political situation in Turkey is becoming very sensitive.
The best way to view the challenges facing Erdogan's presidency is to picture him trapped inside a triangle. One side is the threat coming from Daesh, which is slowly but surely infiltrating the country; a second is the threat from the secularist HDP party; and the third is coming from the PKK. Although the latter is one of the strongest factions fighting Daesh, giving the Kurdish movement and the government a common enemy, it has one fundamental disagreement with Erdogan; the PKK is ultimately fighting to create an independent Kurdistan.
To understand the context behind the Kurdish question in Turkey, the history of the problem must be considered. Was there ever a Kurdistan? Or are Turkish Kurds, as it has been declared for the past 100 years, "mountain Turks who have forgotten their language"? Are the recent PKK attacks on Turkey's infrastructure, which have been condemned by the UN, symbolic of the Kurdish struggle as a whole? In Turkey's case, this all goes back to the fall of the Ottoman Empire.
Turkey as a state was formed in 1923 when the Treaty of Lausanne replaced the Treaty of Sevres. It not only symbolised the complete collapse of the Ottoman Empire, but the rise of a man called Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the leader of a secularist group called the Young Turks. When he was in his political infancy, Ataturk spoke of creating a community between Turks and Kurds, but he was also careful to use the word "Turkey" in describing the post-Ottoman state for this purpose.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/articles/europe/20156-erdogans-security-dilemma
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