An exultant, jubilant climate has suddenly swept Anatolia. The Turks had been hoping for such a moment, but it had begun to seem so far away. Then, without advance notice, they awoke to the joyful news of the release of their fellow citizens after a hundred days held hostage in Mosul, which, incidentally, was an integral part of Anatolia in its distant Ottoman past. The people cheered and relatives of the released hostages sent their prayers of gratitude to the heavens for the safe return of their loved ones. Their release had even come in time for everyone to celebrate the Feast of Sacrifice (Eid Al-Adha), which is only a week away. Last Saturday, Prime Minister Ahmed Davutoglu interrupted a visit to the Azerbaijani capital, Baku, to return to Turkey for what he described on his Twitter account as a day of celebration for Turkey. His plane brought him first to Urfa Airport in southeast Turkey, where he received the newly released hostages before accompanying them back to Ankara. The Turkish premier congratulated his people on this victory. But his triumphant remarks revealed nothing about how the 49 hostages — who included Turkish diplomats and their family members — were released. “We took the hostages and brought them back to Turkey,” he said. There was no indication from Davutoglu that the hostages had been rescued, which could suggest that the Islamic State (IS) group released the hostages after winning certain demands. The statement issued by the president's office, on the other hand, did use the term “rescue” and gave the impression of a “victory” after a gruelling battle, about which it offered only sparse details. “The rescue of the hostages was the product of a successful operation that had been planned in advanced and carried out with total secrecy throughout Friday night and ending in the early hours of the next day,” the statement said. To compound the mystery, Justice and Development Party (JDP) parliamentary representative Şamil Tayyar announced that the operation was a raid that had been designed, commanded and carried out by the CIA. Naturally, such contradictions further piqued the curiosity of a public eager to learn the details of the story of the hostages' release. Here, however, we will not discuss the narratives about the release of the Turks who were kidnapped or “detained” (to use the Turkish authorities' preferred term) on 11 June. We will leave this to the Turkish dailies that will compete to unearth every thrilling detail, although it is doubtful that they will be able to arrive at anything totally solid. What is of greater concern here is not the hostage crisis, per se, but its repercussions, especially on the Turkish government. The presidential elections were held two months after the hostages were seized (or “detained”). At the centre of those elections, and with the most at stake was then-prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. At the time, he and the ruling JDP were sweating under the public glare that followed the collapse of a coal mine at Soma. The JDP machine struggled to defuse the negative media coverage and contain the fallout from that disaster, which was considered the product of gross governmental negligence. The declining popularity of the party and its leader in the run-up to the presidential poll made it all the more urgent to end the hostage crisis, or at least to prevent it from growing worse and increasing the risk to the lives of the hostages. The foregoing helps explain Ankara's silence or restrained rhetoric with regard to IS's crimes and atrocities. Some 49 Turkish citizens, including women and children, were in the hands of an organisation that would not hesitate to kill them. This is why Ankara voiced reservations about taking part in the US-led coalition against IS. The position, tantamount to a refusal, was harshly criticised in the international press, some commentators going so far as to charge that Ankara was no longer acting as an ally of the West. Ironically, that position was welcomed by the opposition, which has long opposed the ruling JDP's policy of dragging Turkey into the Syrian quagmire that created IS and its jihadist and takfiri sisters. The release of the hostages did not come in time for the presidential elections (Erdogan only won by a very narrow margin). But now that the hostages have been freed, the question is whether or not the official position towards Iraq and Syria will change. The signs so far are that it will not. Ankara will most likely avoid direct involvement in the current campaign of air strikes, confining itself to fulfilling its pledge to provide logistic support for humanitarian purposes. In spite of his opposition to the JDP, Ali Yurttagül, a columnist for the Zaman newspaper, which also has no great fondness for the ruling party, has defended the government's policy of caution. Turkey was already suffering the consequences of the horrifying deterioration in the Fertile Crescent without receiving true support from the West, he wrote. After opening its doors to a million Syrian refugees, Turkey now finds itself receiving thousands of Iraqi refugees fleeing the horrors of IS. How is Turkey supposed to cope with that flood which will not only cause social tensions and strife in Turkey but may also be the source of grave security problems? But there may be another reason behind Turkey's reluctance to lend a hand to the international coalition that is fighting IS jihadists. It could be a form of protest against Washington and the EU countries' decision to arm the Kurds of northern Iraq in their fight against IS. From the perspective of many in Turkey, arming the Kurds in northern Iraq is tantamount to arming the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which is considered a terrorist organisation. What will happen after IS and its allies are defeated? What will happen to the weapons that have been handed to the Peshmerga fighters and other Kurdish factions? Will they lay down these arms or turn them to other ends? Such are the questions that many Turks have been asking themselves in the context of the Turkish-Kurdish peace process that the JDP government set in motion earlier this year. Many are growing increasingly pessimistic on this matter. They believe that what may have been possible yesterday is out of reach today, and that peace has become a mirage.
