France, in whose sights and why?

After Turkey, which last month faced the bloodiest attack in its history at the hands of DAESH, France too has faced, again at the hands of DAESH, one of the bloodiest terrorist attacks in its own history. The timing of this attack, in which 130 people lost their lives and many were wounded, and the locations where the attacks were carried out are quite interesting. A very violent explosion takes place a few hundred meters from the Stade de France, where the French and German national teams were facing each other in a friendly match. A day before the match, a tip is given that there is a bomb in the hotel where the German national team is staying, and the hotel in which the German national team is lodged is changed. A day after the tip, an attack takes place very close to the stadium. French President Hollande is among those watching the match.

As far as can be understood, French security forces had received tips that some attacks might occur. The tip about the hotel where the German national team was staying is the part of the matter that has reached the public. In the part that has not reached the public, there is a weakness of French intelligence and security forces. On the other hand, it does not seem plausible that such a complex attack could be carried out by a terrorist organization without the support of one or more intelligence organizations. As for why France was targeted, there is almost one answer on which everyone is allied: that France is at the very front line of the fight against DAESH and, on a global scale, against all "jihadist" organizations.

France has recently been following a highly active policy in the fight against "international terrorism." Around 10 thousand French soldiers have been deployed in Iraq, Libya and West Africa to fight international terrorism. France's 2013 intervention in Mali to fight al-Qaeda remains fresh in memory. France, which is also an active member of the coalition fighting DAESH in Syria, strikes points it has identified inside Syria from warships in the Eastern Mediterranean. All of this seems to present convincing data in answer to the question of why France may have been chosen as a target by DAESH.

In this framework, it is commented that with the attack DAESH carried out it gave France the message that if France continues to bomb its positions inside Syria, it will carry out similar attacks in many places in France and create a chaotic situation there. Almost all of the Western researchers and the intellectuals whose window is always open to the West who have voiced their views on the subject treat the matter from this perspective. This approach is being used to defend the correctness and legitimacy of France's fight, worldwide, against DAESH and against "jihadist" organizations; for example, of its intervention in Mali to fight al-Qaeda. In other words, this attack is being handled and interpreted at a level that shows how correct was the identification of DAESH as the element threatening international peace and security in Syria, to France and world public opinion.

Truly, the fact that this savage attack is being interpreted in this way is the result of a highly conformist foreign policy process. It is the result of a sick mentality that sees the fight against terrorism merely as bombing some locations with guided missiles sent from the sea, that does not go beyond interpreting the tragic situation emerging in Syria within the framework of DAESH, and that, as a consequence of this distorted understanding of struggle, under the simulation of fighting the terrorist organization DAESH, develops relations with and supports the PYD and organizations linked to it.

When, after French President Hollande, whose country has a perspective similar to Turkey's on a solution in Syria, received PYD terrorists in the presidential palace, we warned that there is no good or bad terrorism, and that such moves, which can be perceived as support for terrorism, could both damage the law among allied countries and provide motivation to international terrorism, our French friends acted as if they did not understand what we meant. The point reached has been this abhorrent terrorist attack, which can in no way be accepted. Even so, it is hard to say that French and Western public opinion have made an analytical analysis of the matter.

Nevertheless, the matter is still being interpreted as a DAESH matter and motivation continues to be provided to French foreign policy with this argument. Yet DAESH is only one of the flies flying around in the swamp created by the Assad regime. It is never understood that unless the swamp is drained, fighting the flies will bring only temporary relief. Moreover, Syrian refugees who have escaped this swamp and are trying to secure the most basic human right, the right to life, are held responsible for the attacks. As if they had accepted millions of Syrian refugees, European countries announce that they are halting the acceptance of refugees. I stated in my previous article that the stage before this approach was the Progress Report blackmail. At this rate it is not hard to predict that in the next stage Islamophobia will be turned into a systematic, deliberate policy by the governments of European states.

The French documentarian Henry Levy, who saw scenes of war during the Bosnian War, had said "Europe died in Bosnia." The development confirming this finding of Levy is really about to take place in Syria. Europeans, as if seized by a terrible fever, continue to rave a dangerous rote formula, dealing with the flies of the swamp. The owner of the swamp, meanwhile, cheerful and merry, is about to create a new human tragedy by marching on Aleppo. After turning one's back on these tragedies, by what reasoning can one explain the finding that the swamp's flies are what created the problem?

In closing, I will not pass over without mentioning the obvious differences from Turkey in the way this attack was received by the public, which undoubtedly draws everyone's attention. Unlike ours, French public opinion in the first days never accused its own government of intelligence weaknesses, nor blamed its own government on account of this event. They even condemned terror without displaying so much as a difference of opinion among themselves, and showed complete unity against terror. This is undoubtedly a difference that will be a trouble to some and a lesson to others.