Ihsan Bal Head of Security Studies USAK printable version send your friend message to author add comment ()

Thursday, 12 November 2009

‘Combating terrorism’ is falsely restricted to arresting terrorists or keeping them under detention. The reason for this is that both governments and people lean too much on armed combat against terrorism, which gives the wrong image that combating terrorism consists solely of the combat between security staff and terrorists. However, considering the history of terror in the modern age, terrorist acts are a method terrorists use to impose their demands and propaganda on the state and society.

While terror implies a chain of terrorist acts, terrorism means more a philosophy to substantiate terrorist propaganda in societies struck by the fear of terrorist acts. This is why every terrorist act is claimed to have been done to advance rhetorical claims. Whereas the PKK claims to be acting in the name of Kurdish people’s rights, other radical organizations claim to be acting in the name of their followers. Democracy, none the less, constitutes a counter-thesis against combating terrorism only by force and it rests on the faith a society has in its state and system in an environment of security.  Viewed from this perspective, democratization and creation of an open society are the best solutions to refuting the claims of the terrorists and breaking the monopoly of propaganda that terror creates by striking fear in society.

 It is a well known fact that terrorists are not open to free competition on the level of ideas. Hence, the bolstering of democracy and freedom of discussion and expression constitute perhaps the most important leg of combating terrorism. It is through democracy that individuals will defend their state, to which they have citizenship ties, in the face of the threat of terror to freedom.

Democracy demonstrates that combating terrorism is not a duel between security staff and the terrorists and it urges a society to start defending the environment of freedom that terrorists try to destroy. The time when an ethnic, religious or political group arrives at the conclusion that ideas cannot be realized in a circle of fear that violence creates, is the point at which such groups are closest to defeat. When the methods advanced democracies adopted in combating terrorism are considered, parliamentary initiatives and works on the democratization leg of combating terrorism are observed. The parliaments in liberal democracies both open the way forward for and get the support of their society by taking initiatives at such critical moments when the society faces a circle of violence. Thus, they help the voluntary social contract between citizens and state and societal solidarity sit on a new, more sustainable and firmer grounding.

Unfortunately, even the parliamentary initiative related to the ideological phase of combating terrorism has been met by skepticism in Turkey. The democratic guarantee and the belief in democracy’s power to solve problems that the Parliament, which showed great success in managing the process during the Turkish war of independence, wants to give to society have been associated with conspiracy theory-like scenarios.

It is our sincere hope to see that the Turkish Grand National Assembly will demonstrate its belief that decades-long experience with democracy will help Turkey solve its bleeding problems under the roof of the parliament and that conveys this message to Turkish society. It is our right to expect the Turkish Grand National Assembly, which is the locus of representation of its people, to persuade our people that it is determined to solve the problem of terror with more democratization at the meetings on November 10 and 12. At a time when the field of combating terrorism has shifted from armed combat to combat over ideas, Turkey is expecting its parliament to manage the process with wisdom, virtue and courage, not wrath. 70 million people will be watching carefully who will be the part of the solution and who of the problem during these meetings.

Ihsan Bal
The Director of Center for International Security, Ethnic Studies and Terrorism, USAK/ISRO