The massacre by Hamas on 7 October of well over 1000 Jewish men, women and children is often referred to as "Israel's September 11". After September 11 [2001], there was a worldwide debate about what to do next. There were those who cheered the success of the attacks and claimed that the US had been exposed as a "paper tiger" due to the weakness of its intelligence services. However, 9/11 had far-reaching consequences that continue to shape the Middle East, including Turkey, to this day. To understand the current discourses on the Hamas massacre, it is worth looking at this history.

The world after 11 September

After the September 11 attacks, new wars broke out, especially the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq. Radical Islam was declared the enemy, which led to the AKP and Erdoğan's regime coming to power. This group was used as the supposed representative of moderate Islam against radical Islam, which shifted the political coordinate system in Turkey. Those who had previously been in the service of the USA suddenly became anti-American. The project of "moderate Islam" led to new roles and functions in the political landscape, mainly of Turkey and Egypt. The AKP and the followers of the Gülen sect joined forces and set a new Turkey against the old Turkey. The Turkish state took its attacks on the Kurdish people to a new level in the slipstream of the "war on terror". The policy of hatred towards the Kurds, which began a hundred years ago when the Republic of Turkey was founded, continues to this day without deviation.

Erdoğan holds on to power through hostility to the Kurds

Erdoğan has done everything to keep power in the new Turkey. He himself was brought to power by the coup of 12 September [1980], pretending to fight the dictatorial order that has prevailed since then. However, he has never stopped playing internal forces off against each other and forging unreliable alliances, including with external forces. He has kept himself in power until today by playing different groups off against each other. But he never gave up his hostility to the Kurds. While he won the supporters of secularism as his allies, he fought the CHP circles with the Fetullah supporters, and the others with the MHP. As a man of projects, he became the co-chair of the greater middle east initiative on occasions, and a “local and national” on other occasions. He presented himself as a defender of Muslims and pretended to be anti-Israeli in Davos. In negotiations on democratisation with the EU, he turned the Hagia Sophia into a mosque and drove refugees to the border fences. He brought together ISIS mercenaries from all over the world and deployed them in Rojava. He revived the Islamist death squad Hezbollah. He praised Hamas and gave it a social veneer. He used Hamas and will continue to do so.

Erdoğan's power opportunism is known worldwide

He had streets in Ankara decorated with pictures of Menderes and Özal, he claimed to have "crushed nationalism under his feet" and the next day joined forces with the ultra-nationalist MHP to launch the biggest war-mongering campaign. He gained support, from Perinçek to Barzani, and attacked all democratic, socialist and patriotic forces. He tried to isolate the Kurdish freedom movement. He had political rivals targeted or arrested. He tried to suppress all opposition. Sometimes he called them "bitches", sometimes he told them to "take your mother with you and get lost". Pointing at the border, he said, "If you don't like it, get out". There were assassinations, spying and the massacre in Roboski ... He did everything in his power. As a fascist with many faces and disguises, he proved his ruthlessness countless times.

The cruelest of all reactionaries

The AKP and Erdoğan have built a one-man regime by eliminating, expelling, binding or buying all the leaders of old Turkey and their allies one by one. They wanted to drown the people of Kobanê, Sur and Cizre in blood. They have created new cases like Madimak and burnt the most valuable patriots of Kurdistan in tunnels and cellars. They have attacked Rojava more viciously and brutally than any reactionary force in the Middle East before. They have dropped thousands of tons of bombs on the mountains of Kurdistan and almost completely destroyed the best youth of this country.

Will Turkey give up on Israel?

The AKP is an apparatus of capitalist modernity that was not created after September 11, but already after the coup of September 12 [1980] against the revolutionaries in Kurdistan, Turkey and Palestine. It has done everything to destroy the Free Kurds through Barzani and the PLO through Hamas. As the saying goes, everyone is governed as they deserve. What kind of government rules a country where fraud, looting, land theft and child abuse take place anyway? If Palestine is no longer the refuge for thousands of revolutionaries, the garden of the world revolution and the heart of the world guerrilla, then we have to look at what the fascism of 12 September and its continuation by the AKP have done to take revenge on Abdullah Öcalan, the PKK and the Free Kurds. The war in Syria and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are closely linked with this reality. With this view, the AKP attacks as if it wants to take revenge on Palestine and Syria. The AKP pretends to be against Israel, while it is in fact on the side of Israel, who played a leading role in the capture of Abdullah Öcalan. If we look at the last 50 years of trade and future developments, Turkey has never given up on Israel and never will...

Why no third way?

The AKP is not only the murderer, but it is also the first to rush to the funeral of the victims and cry more than the relatives. It stands behind the murders and then makes propaganda with it. May the curse of all sincere Muslims and socialists be upon them. Can one not mourn both the massacred Jews and the bombed children in Gaza? Can one not love both? Can one not take a third path? Can one not free oneself from this duality that the world of capitalist modernity imposes on us?

Incessant hatred of the Kurds

Those who want to topple the AKP cannot be those who support and save the AKP every time it falters. It will be those who resisted on 12 September in the mountains, in the prisons and in the streets. They will be progressive, socialist and sincere Muslims. Supporters of Ergenekon, Gülenists, AKP, CHP, MHP and both black and white Turkish nationalists can only be servants of capitalist modernity. They cannot even conduct a courageous and open diplomacy like Rojava. These lackeys are always enemies of Kurds and the murderers of the free Kurds. They act both together and against each other. Their TV stations, banks, schools, imams and teachers all work for the same goal and fuel Kurdish hatred. They are based on the non-existence of the Kurds…

Everyone is giving up on Tayyip, but Tayyip cannot give up on himself. We should not be fooled by this clique that has unleashed ISIS on Kurds and Hamas on Jewish youth and children and claims to have compassion for Palestinian and Kurdish children. These forces that dominate Turkey, which used the September 11 attacks as a pretext to attack the Kurdish people, will today open up to Israel in order to lure Iran into the bloody trap of capitalist modernity, and they will use the massacre of the Palestinian people for their power interests and new attacks on the Kurdish people.

So, who will overthrow them?

How will we respond to this cruelty and tyrants? They say, ‘There can be no prosperity with cruelty’. While they want to imprison Rojava and execute isolation and torture, they are acting as if they were oppressed themselves. Who will overthrow them? Who will defeat this Erdogan? This lie, this fraud, this hypocrisy will continue unless those who set out saying ’Freedom for Abdullah Öcalan, a Solution to the Kurdish Question’ march to a Middle Eastern revolution by overcoming their own problems. This bloodshed, these tears will not end unless those who fired bullets on September 12, those who are in prison, those who take to the mountains, those who pour into the streets, establish the brotherhood of the Middle East with a great consciousness and love of freedom. When the sun of the Middle East, Leader Öcalan, is physically free, the Middle East will have the atmosphere of a peoples' garden, a festival. Then we will say, we fought well for peace.