The measure of success in foreign policy

What has happened in Iraq in recent days, the organization known as ISIS reaching, all at once, a level of influence capable of enveloping the whole of Iraq and having de facto dragged Iraq into a new channel from which there is no return, are developments that vindicate the position Turkey has held from the beginning. Turkey's name being mentioned alongside an organization like ISIS is, first and foremost, an Assadist tactic that from the outset has tried to stuff all the opposition into a single basket and stamp it "jihadist-terrorist."

Praise be, looking at the willing and fervent practitioners of this tactic in Turkey, we do not even feel the need to look elsewhere for the reason why the murderer Assad has been able to remain so long at the head of his massacre machine.

There is an entire Syrian people who have risen against Assad's tyranny, and millions of this people are being forced to flee this tyranny.

Turkey did not merely refrain from closing its door to those who took refuge in its country barely escaping with their lives, but openly supported the National Council, the legitimate representative of this people recognized by the whole world, and its military representative, the Free Syrian Army.

Currently in Syria it is this formation, produced by the Syrian people, whose real quarrel is with Assad, as a natural reflex of self-defense. This movement is extremely just and legitimate, a movement over which even the world could not remain silent.

Assad and his extensions in our country, in order to damage the legitimacy of the opposition, keep showing the whole world pictures of al-Qaeda or ISIS to show that this is all they are fighting. Well, the world gets confused of course, since in any case nobody knows anything about anything..

Yet everyone takes from these photographs whatever suits them in line with the politics of the day. Everyone has also seen through this process that those who appear to be concerned about Assad and his massacres either have no concern at all or have a very different concern.

Meanwhile, what is happening is happening to the Syrian people, hundreds of whom are brutally massacred every day. Every day tens of thousands continue to seek asylum in neighboring countries. The lands of Syria are gradually becoming devoid of people, either through death or through migration.

The only country that, from the beginning, wanted to prevent the problem in Syria from deepening this much and made efforts to that end was Turkey. The one that showed the highest sensitivity that the matter should not turn into a sectarian conflict was also Turkey. Unfortunately, however, those who act with sectarian reflexes did not refrain from seeing and presenting Turkey's humanitarian stance, too, through the window of sectarianism. Yet Turkey is ready to show the same attitude if the same were done to Shiites.

Indeed, the people whom Prime Minister Erdoğan addressed in Vienna yesterday and strongly condemned were those who tried to kill people because they were Shiite.

In Iraq as well, Turkey displayed from the beginning an approach that best saw the cost of sectarian policies. Prime Minister Erdoğan, during his visit to Najaf three years ago, which also created some astonishment in the Sunni(ist) world, said the words that will go down in history: "I am a Muslim before I am a Sunni." He had made this visit clearly and unambiguously to state his position against the approaching sectarian tension, and he said these words in that context.

But unfortunately, this sensitivity displayed by Turkey on sectarianism was displayed neither by Iran nor by the Maliki administration under its guidance. From the hour he came to power, Maliki pursued an obvious sectarian policy. He signed his name to practices that openly excluded, vilified and suppressed the Sunni segment. He had the leading politicians of the Sunni segment convicted on terrorism charges in courts under his own control.

For a long time he made light of the protest demonstrations continually staged in Sunni cities. He fell prey to the delusion that he could suppress these protests by force and ultimately with Iran's help. Yet those protests were also signs of a rancor that was growing and reaching the point of explosion. ISIS's being able to spread so quickly in so short a time stems not so much from the organization's own strength as from its having met up with this rancor.

From here on, there is no way other than to look for ways to calm this rancor that has exploded and invite it to common sense, and to try to find a new ground of agreement on which all sides will receive one another with respect.

In fact, this explosion is a new bill for the US's occupation policy, which had gone bankrupt long ago anyway. It is seen that it took none of the sociological and historical balances of the order created after the occupation into account.

The US, which today has made the fight against terror its first priority, needs to see that its own policies formed the breeding grounds that feed terror. Nothing but chaos and terror could come out of an Iraq that was handed over to Maliki "against the Baath" and not looked back at. Maliki's method of going after problems was no different anyway. To keep the country together he had no method other than applying a new Shiite-axis Baath regime.

Likewise, it was quite clear that in Syria, as Assad's presence in power lengthens, every kind of terror would make a home there, and as long as Assad exists that region cannot cease to be a nest of terror. This too is evident.

The developments show not the bankruptcy of Turkey's foreign policy but how right a line it has been on from the beginning.

Of course Turkey is not the sole determining actor in what is happening in the region. In essence, there is never a single determining actor in any development. But Turkey has had a clear view from the beginning on where some countries' policies are heading. Today Turkey is in the position of the only country in the Middle East that can speak with a clear conscience and with the strength of being right by recalling what it said and did from the beginning.

In the face of what has happened, this should be the most important measure of success in foreign policy.