The US-based international democratic and human rights NGO Freedom House has slammed the recent operations against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) by the Turkish government, claiming that it appears like a cynical ploy meant to benefit the Justice and Development Party (AK Party).

In a blog article published on the Freedom House website, Senior Program Officer for Eurasia Nate Schenkkan evaluates the events in Turkey ever since the July 20th Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) suicide bombing in Suruç which killed 32 pro-Kurdish activists and the subsequent killing of two Turkish police officers by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) as ‘revenge for Ankara’s support for ISIL.’

“It is hard to avoid the conclusion that Erdoğan and the AK Party have opportunistically used the Suruç bombing and the PKK’s revenge attack as a pretext to crush the party that has threatened their hold on the parliament and government,” wrote the piece, referring to the pro-Kurdish, leftwing People’s Democratic Party (HDP), which by successfully passing Turkey’s prohibitive 10 percent election threshold for the first time in the June 7th general election effectively ended the one-party rule enjoyed by the AK Party since it first took power in 2002.

Suggesting that the ongoing crisis was one heralded by “AKP mouthpieces” who had “warned loudly that the election results will lead the country to chaos,” Schenkkan notes, “Diving headlong into a renewed conflict with the PKK is a breathtakingly cynical ploy to make this prediction come true and thereby win the AKP a parliamentary majority when the coalition talks fail and fresh elections are called for the fall.”

Reminding that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had declared dead the settlement process with the Kurds, launched in 2012 by Ankara to reconcile with Turkey’s Kurdish minority, and called for the prosecution of HDP lawmakers, “The frightening fact is that the ploy could work. If a suppressed HDP loses around 3 percent of the popular vote and falls below the threshold, and if the AKP can poach a larger number of Turkish nationalist votes from the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), the AKP could return to a parliamentary majority only a few months after losing it.”

Schenkkan adds that while an excellent tactician, Erdoğan belies a “strategic myopia,” noting that his attempt to shut down the Kurdish movement is less likely to succeed than ever before.

also published on BGNNews.com