Turkey now says no hostage crisis in Mosul

“This soft approach by the government even makes one wonder
whether there is any conspiracy behind this tragedy,”

Seizing diplomatic missions and taking diplomats
hostage is no ordinary event. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan’s government, however, has been doing its utmost to play down
the seizure of the country’s consulate in Mosul on June 11 — by radical Sunni extremists on the day they took control of the city — and the hostage taking of 49 consulate workers including the consul general.

Naci Koru, Turkey’s deputy foreign minister, for example, argued on June 15 that the Turkish diplomats are “no hostages.” 

“We do not believe that [our diplomats] have been taken hostage,” he
said. “If they were taken hostage, there would have been negotiations
over the conditions to take them back. They are not asking for
anything in return [for safely releasing the Turkish diplomats].”

Since the seizure of the US Embassy and the 444-day hostage
crisis during Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, this is the first time a
diplomatic mission has been seized and such a large number of diplomatic
personnel have been held against their free will. It has now been
five days since 49 Turkish consulate workers were taken hostage by the
Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), with no foreseeable end in
sight.

Hasan Unal, head of the department of international
relations at Atilim University, told Al-Monitor that if ISIS — the
al-Qaeda spin-off group — has not actually taken the Turkish
diplomats hostage, it could choose to release them without further
delay.

 “This soft approach by the government even makes one wonder
whether there is any conspiracy behind this tragedy,” he said.

Turkey has come under international criticism for its
alleged support of the Sunni radical groups in Syria fighting against
the Bashar al-Assad regime. With the onset of the Arab Spring, Turkey’s
desire of having zero problems with neighbors was quickly replaced with
an assertive tone aiming to have a direct say in who should be in charge
in countries such as Syria and Iraq. Erdogan declined to host Iraqi
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki
in Ankara before the April elections. “The prime minister did not want
to portray an image of supporting Maliki,” a Turkish official, speaking
on condition of anonymity, told Al-Monitor. “All their bets, however,
failed, and Maliki was elected again,” he said. 

While Maliki has not
been re-elected prime minister, his coalition won the most seats, and
many expect Maliki to put together enough votes to secure himself a
third term.

Unal told Al-Monitor, “ISIS will never be able to take
control of Baghdad or move toward the majority-Shiite populated parts of
Iraq, but it certainly significantly weakened Maliki’s authority. It is
difficult for him to take control of the whole country under these
circumstances. This is a problematic image for Turkey as it seems to
have supported a group that now destabilizes Iraq, and all the more, has
taken Turkish consulate members hostage. This only makes an already
complicated situation even more complicated.”

Questions swirl regarding why the consulate was not
evacuated in advance, why Consul General Ozturk Yilmaz was allowed to
return to Mosul after consultations in Ankara just a week before after
he was targeted in an ambush and whether critical diplomatic documents
at the consulate were safely destroyed before the ISIS takeover.
Nevertheless, Erdogan criticizes the opposition and the media
for putting the lives of those Turkish citizens in ISIS’s hands at risk
by talking about it.

“About 100 of our citizens are under ISIS control,” Erdogan said
on June 15. 

“While we’re trying to safely rescue them, (the media and
the opposition) is trying to provoke them. Please, I ask the print and
television media to not write or talk about this issue. These
provocations are giving tools to the other side that may risk the lives
of our people.”

Many in Ankara’s beltway in opposition and critical of the
Erdogan government’s Middle East policies agree that the prime minister
is simply trying to hush all kinds of criticism of his failed policies.

Erdogan is refusing to give any ground, even after a
conciliatory gesture was extended by his critics. The main opposition
Republican People’s Party (CHP), for example, withdrew its request of
inquiry into Erdogan’s role in the December graft probe and his
accusations of a parallel state, stressing that such discussion
in parliament would weaken the government at a time when national unity
was imperative in resolving the hostage crisis.

Yet, Erdogan in speech after speech continues to fire
at the opposition, accusing it of siding with Assad and being involved
in treason and terrorist activities. This approach is even more
interesting as Erdogan blames the Maliki government for its exclusive
policies against the Sunnis as a reason for groups like ISIS
finding local support. Yet, Erdogan’s accusatory tone against
the opposition, using such unprecedented aggressiveness — even at a time
when the opposition showed goodwill by withdrawing a parliamentary
investigation into his involvement in the corruption and bribery ring
— is exactly what he describes as Maliki’s mistake in Iraq. And one,
therefore, can’t stop but wonder whether he is choosing for chaos to
prevail in Turkey.

Hence, Erdogan’s harsh accusations
of the opposition and ISIS means there is a threat to Turkey, but
whether the Erdogan government considers this a threat is a different
question. “Since the Syrian civil war began, it is more evident that the
Erdogan government has pursued policies favoring these radical
extremist groups trying to achieve their goals through violence —
starting with Hamas,” Unal told Al-Monitor. 

“ISIS was in uniformity with
the Erdogan government before on Maliki and Assad, but they now turned
against Turkey by taking our people hostage. The government’s
failure for not considering that they could take our people hostage is
worth deeply thinking about.”

Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/06/daloglu-isis-turkey-hostages-iraq-syria-consulate-al-qaeda.html#ixzz34qKNhmm0