The Meeting with Clinton and Terrorism

The “Global Counter-Terrorism Forum” is a very interesting formation. It was started on Sept. 22, 2011 in New York, through the initiative of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and its second meeting will be in Istanbul today with Clinton’s participation. This is because the Turkish Secretary of State Prof. Dr. Ahmet Davutoğlu and Hillary Clinton are the “co-chairs” of this initiative, which has already had an influence on the global fight against terrorism. Because some circles become uneasy right away when they hear that Turkey is a co-chair of a development with global significance, allow me to list the 30 countries that make up the forum so that they can relax somewhat: Aside from Turkey and the U.S., Algeria, Australia, Canada, China, Colombia, Denmark, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Morocco, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the European Union are also members of this forum.

In other words, it is an organization made up of states and institutions that are “the most sensitive” to global terrorism and come from all regions of the world. Turkey and the U.S. will be co-chairs for two years, and then they will hand the flag over to other states.

The significance of the Global Counter-Terrorism Forum is that it is the most important and determined formation to date against the “political cancer” that is terrorism. The “big powers” of the world will come together at this forum for the first time to form “the architecture of the collective campaign” and do not exclude “the world’s rising powers.”

Now, Changing Concepts

We must accept that during the course of time from the 1970s to today, mankind has not been successful in fighting terrorism. The most important point in this failure was the “sneaky presence” of the “your terrorist is my freedom fighter” approach.

It was evident that especially as long as the bigger powers supported their own foreign policy interests with the development of terrorism in countries that they saw as “competitors,” it would not be possible to overcome the global terrorist uprising.

This forum, for the first time, has an attribute that will end this approach. Because when it comes to the curse called terrorism, it is very likely that everyone will get lost in the ensuing black hole. After the military adventure that the George W. Bush administration started in Afghanistan and Iraq using the “global threat of terrorism,” the U.S. knows this well.

But, There Are Some Who Must Change

When it comes to relations between states, the subject rapidly becomes complicated. The following words belong to Israeli Secretary of State Avigdor Lieberman, “In a world in which the U.S. government does not apologize for the 24 Pakistani soldiers killed as a result of a mistake, no one can wait for an apology from Israel for the Gaza flotilla.”*

Just a few days prior, the U.S., which had proudly declared that it had killed Abu Yahya al-Libi, who was called the number two man in al-Qaeda, in a drone strike, martyred 24 Pakistani soldiers on Nov. 28, 2011 as the result of a “mistake.” Obama had merely expressed that “they were upset”* about the incident.

Lieberman, in associating this incident with the killing of nine unarmed innocent civilians on a boat in international waters, showed that perhaps the biggest problem is “the state mechanisms that show a tendency to engage in terrorism.”*

Here, it is useful to remind [people of] a point that Pakistan’s first female secretary of state, Hina Rabbani Khar, made at the founding of the Global Counter-Terrorism Forum in New York last year: “It is also a moment to reflect where do we stand in the struggle against terrorism ten years down the line? Pakistan alone has suffered casualties of 35,000 men, women, and children including 5000 personnel of security forces.”

I believe Turkey would be at the top of the list of countries who sympathize with Pakistan, who “more than the realities of its domestic affairs, has faced a wave of terror as a result of global dynamics and revenge.”*

PKK… Where?

“News of martyrs” flowing from “sensitive areas” are tensing Turkey. Evidently, the terrorist organization is uneasy with Turkey’s “determination to democratize.” It realized that it does not have a place in the global equation and that a democracy will rapidly make the use of arms unnecessary. What is happening is a result of the panicking.

But it hurts.

*Editor’s Note: The following quotes, while translated correctly, could not be verified in English.