The possibility of building a society in Iraq on opposition to ISIS

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu's visit to Iraq after the government formed by Haider al-Abadi will undoubtedly not only allow Turkey-Iraq relations to resume from where they left off, but is also a new beginning that will re-establish mutual trust and relations among the actors in the region. It is clear that this visit of Prime Minister Davutoğlu has a historical importance and meaning. It is also clear that this visit and the talks held during it, within the atmosphere of dialogue achieved, are a visit that will affect many balances in the process we are going through. The personal dialogue Davutoğlu can easily establish with all the actors in Iraq, and his personal friendships with almost all of them dating from long ago, are a great opportunity both for Turkey and for Iraq. All Iraqi politicians are aware of this and everyone approaches Davutoğlu with a distinct respect in this light.

However, in re-establishing relations in Iraq, one must see that it is not possible to return to "where relations left off" five years ago under Maliki. For the developments in the region over the past few years have led to irreversible changes in many fields.

The greatest and worst consequence of war, especially of the kind of war taking place in Iraq and Syria, is the drawing of irreparable borders between people who have lived together for centuries. Meanwhile, in Iraq the parties fight one another, but they often end up being the direct and primary victims of a war they conduct by proxy for other actors trying to gain influence in the region. Moreover, the actors waging the war of influence in these places are not actors coming from far away. All the parties met in Iraq have almost reached a consensus that, once they have brought a problem of dialogue among themselves to the point of war, outside interventions become inevitable.

Therefore, with what has happened lately, everyone no longer neglects to prick themselves with the needle, if not the bodkin. Everyone knows that they need to be able to talk to one another more easily in order to prevent the intervention of external actors, but unfortunately not everyone is troubled by foreign interventions, because some find themselves a space thanks to these interventions.

Looking at Iraq's situation today, one feels like going back to the question of the social thinkers of the Enlightenment, who started from the question of how a society is possible. In an environment where no one trusts anyone and everyone is trying to undermine everyone else, one feels what a blessing trust is and how great a human need security is.

Being unable to trust the people around you is one of the greatest disasters that can befall a society. Because what brings a society into being and makes it possible lies in being able to trust the people you live together with. The expectation that danger may arise at any moment from the people around you turns life into a paranoid cage of precautions, and if one can even call that life... Especially when the danger is no longer a mere paranoid delusion but has become a real possibility, people begin to look for a savior wherever it may come from.

It is therefore somewhat interesting to see that in Iraq, where every cause plays a divisive role, ISIS has brought all the parties closer together. Will the possibility of becoming a society again in Iraq be possible through opposition to ISIS?

Although ISIS may be understood as another outburst of Sunni rage, through its later practices it is turning into an interesting phenomenon that has almost entirely lost the support of the Sunni tribes as well, and that is increasingly isolated and has even granted an exceptional opportunity for unity and joint action to all the Iraqi segments it has set itself against.

ISIS's discourse and methods remain entirely alien to the whole cultural and social fabric of the people of the region, including that of the Sunni world. That it does not hesitate to open a front against everyone while trying to impose such a contrary discourse at gunpoint also suggests that it is subject to a rationality other than merely its own. Without leaving room for any possibility of conspiracy, I am making an assessment solely on the basis of the results it has caused.

Although opposition to ISIS unites in one respect, it is also voiced that it creates a ground of pretext for all sorts of injustice by other actors. The armed Shiite militias number nearly a hundred thousand, and their methods of violence, terror and massacres by no means fall short of ISIS's. Within the framework of a serious strategy of sectarian cleansing, they kill people en masse or force them to migrate. But in the name of terror, only ISIS is currently in the shop window of Iraq.

In the Shiitization policy that everyone in the region complains about, both ISIS's practices and all the measures developed against it appear to have an important function.

The interesting aspect is that Shiitization policies are in no way based on the free propagation and promotion of Shiism in an open environment, but rest entirely on upending demographic balances through war and violence. Meanwhile, mass population movements arise from migrations opened up by war machines, and the total result of this is the Shiitization of the geography.

Of course, the main actor for whom opposition to ISIS provides an important field of opportunity is Assad and his regime. As opposition to ISIS gradually becomes a discourse and ideology, it makes people forget the massacres Assad has been carrying out against his civilian population for 4 years; his place within the front mobilized against the ISIS devil is even being prepared, and at the end of the day, an Assad who is whitewashed and laundered remaining in hand will stand as ISIS's gift to the world.