Primarily Iran and the region’s countries are in on this plan. Primarily the U.S. and almost all our allies are involved in this. As Aleppo is being buried in the ground, Mosul is being targeted with the excuse of an organization, a very dangerous game plan is being activated for the sectarian war, the Sunni organizations to resist this are being weakened, Turkey, they sole obstacle standing in front of the regionalization of the sectarian clashes, is tried to be pushed outside the region, they are making plans to eliminate whoever is close to Turkey.

Why did Baghdad target Nujaifi?After the Tariq Hashimi example, an arrest warrant was also issued for former Mosul Governor and Hashd al-Watani (Nineveh Guards) Commander Atheel al-Nujaifi. The Baghdad administration that handed a death sentence to First Vice President Hashimi is now applying the same to Nujaifi and trying to incriminate him with treachery, claiming that he is cooperating with Turkey. The issue is not his cooperating with Turkey. The issue is to eliminate everyone who may stand against the sectarian war plan.The U.S. is making this plan. Baghdad is making this plan. Iran is making this plan. A region map is being processed through sectarian identity and Mosul is probably going to be the biggest victims of this plan. Because in all the scenarios played out through sectarian identity to date, the winners were the U.S. and Iran. All the dirty plans behind the Mosul operation were revealed just as the fight against Daesh started turning into a deception, a stage.

Turkey must give very harsh responses

All attempts aimed at arresting and eliminating Nujaifi should receive a very harsh response. Military interventions targeting Mosul and Sunnis should be intervened very strongly. As the region’s central country, Turkey should respond to the identity wars, oil wars, the sharing wars over Syria and Iraq, directly and without any hesitation. Because once they reach their goal, there will be nothing left for Turkey to do.

We need to ask, weren’t the U.S., the Baghdad government fighting against Daesh together with Nujaifi and his Nineveh Guards? Weren’t Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) leader Masoud Barzani’s Peshmerga and Nujaifi’s forces going to join the coalition and prove that the Mosul issue is not a sectarian matter?

Apparently the issue has nothing to do with Daesh. It is those who put Daesh there, who withdrew thousands of Iraqi soldiers from Mosul in one night that set this game too. Mosul is going to be invaded through Iran-axis militias with sectarian motivation and Baghdad’s soldiers who give prominence to the Shiite identity and then thrown into the lion’s den. Those who advise us and the people of Mosul to just watch are also organizing anti-Turkey demonstrations in Baghdad to frighten us.

What a simple scenario, what an amateurishly prepared play!

Mosul-Aleppo line: Before that war moves to Anatolia

As soon as the map wars currently continuing on Syrian-Iraqi lands are concluded, that war is going to move to Anatolia. There is no doubt about it. Because the eventual target of all the crises in the region is Turkey. The big target is Turkey. We saw this on July 15, too. We can figure this out from the course of all the crises in the region.

Therefore, Turkey needs to expand its area of intervention and never step back until all the terrorist elements and foreign elements in the north of the Mosul-Aleppo line are eliminated. No international formula, no multinational deal is going to provide us security like these interventions will. Turkey must take military steps looking entirely at the region’s realities, at future-oriented scenarios.

Let the bargaining table be set after us

Let international law follow after us. Let multinational tables be set after we have intervened. Let there be threats and statements all over. Let there be those fussing on the inside saying, “Turkey is being dragged into a quagmire.” There is such a void, such ambiguity that whoever takes a step will make a gain.

If we want to secure this country’s future, if we feel this historic responsibility on our shoulders and in our hearts, if we have not given up on out millennium-long claim, then we have to ruin this big game. There is no alternative whatsoever. We have no luxury to seek truth or justifications beyond what is happening around us.

The active intervention policy we applied after July 15, the new defense concept, might perhaps save this country’s centuries. It will narrow the area of their global invasion plans aimed not only at Turkey but the entire region and negate their plans to turn all countries in the city states.

The Nujaifi decision is reason to intervene in Tal Afar

They know this. They know very well what Turkey wants to do, what it has to do and what it is capable of doing. Hence, they have stopped fighting Daesh and mobilized all their means to preventing Turkey. They are targeting whoever is close to Ankara; they are trying to eliminate the persons and circles we are in contact with in the region. This is the reason for the “attack” aimed at Nujaifi.

Wherever we have an area of intervention; that is where they are reinforcing. The plan to siege through the PKK/PYD failed. But they are attacking through the PYD to stop us from intervening in Afrin. They are attacking though the PYD to prevent us from approaching Aleppo. Next, they are going to attack through Tal Abyad, because they know that Turkey’s intervention there is an obligation and that it is going to be done. They know that Turkey, which they are trying to keep away from Mosul, can intervene in Tal Afar in cooperation with Nujaifi and the people of the region. They are trying to leave the Turkmens there defenseless and keep Turkey away.

These three regions should also be intervened

So what should we do, what should be our road map?

1. We must spread the Euphrates Shield model along the entire band stretching from the Mediterranean to the Iranian border. We need to conduct the same intervention that was started from Jarabulus with the Free Syrian Army (FSA) in this context from three more regions.

2. Intervention on Afrin and clearing the PKK/PYD from this region. Clearing the area closest to the Mediterranean from terror and anti-Turkey elements. This is why the PKK-PYD started attacking from the Afrin area. Airstrikes targeting Syria’s PKK the previous night are, in this sense, extremely important developments.

3. Another similar break-through operation needs to be launched from Tal Abyad. A military offensive that will hit the terror corridor from the heart and prevent demographic elimination, is mandatory both for Turkey’s security and the security of the region’s people.

4. Turkey should do the same on Iraqi territory by intervening in Tal Afar. The Turkmens and Sunnis need to be stopped from being sacrificed to a sectarian war.

The latest decision aimed at Nujaifi may set the ground for such an intervention. Even if not this, Tal Afar is under threat, there may be massacres in this region, too, like Mosul.

No country will be able to wage war against Turkey

Turkey has no choice but to make the most serious decisions since the founding of the Republic, join the most in-depth military operations and put forth its own map while the maps are being re-designed after 90 years. No element that is an enemy of Turkey should be allowed to settle or take shelter between the Mediterranean and Iran, north of the Aleppo-Mosul line.

This is our road map. Maybe the realities of today render this map obligatory more than the national oath. The likelihood of a power standing up against Turkey is very weak. No country has the luxury to wage a war against Turkey.

The Crusades are on again

I will repeat: We must intervene in these three areas. Let the bargaining tables be set after these interventions. Then, Turkey will be the one to dominate that table. Today’s history will not be written in the future based on today’s discussions. It will be written based on more integrative scenarios.

And it will be written that the attacks coming from outside in the broad sense are a “Crusades Attack.” The incidents recently happening in our region will be noted as a part of “The Crusades Wars.”

I believe that we are going to see a Turkey that makes sudden and surprising moves from now on.

 

*Ibrahim Karagül is a Turkish writer and journalist. He is the editor-in-chief of Turkish Yeni Şafak newspaper.

(Published in Yeni Şafak Turkish newspaper on Friday, Oct. 21, 2016)