ANKARA
If Turkey had not launched simultaneous operations against militant groups, the country would have descended into chaos, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Sunday.
Addressing representatives of nongovernmental organizations in Ankara, Davutoglu said: "[Militant groups] would have colluded to drag Turkey into a spiral of violence if we didn’t foil their plot."
He said that the Turkey had seen “this game” before.
“If we didn’t react simultaneously against Daesh, the PKK [Kurdistan Workers’ Party] and the DHKP-C [Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front] in and out Turkey… they would have caused disturbance in all our cities,” he said.
Davutoglu also accused Gezi Park protesters of disrupting the ongoing "solution process".
The “solution process” refers to talks to end the 30-year conflict between Turkey and the PKK militants. The process began in 2013, but has stalled since the recent murders of police officers and soldiers in the country.
"Those who do not want brotherhood, national unification, development of common fate in Turkey, they are the ones who carried out the biggest strike on the solution process when they, through their provocative acts, turned the [2013] Gezi incidents, which began as an environmentalist issue, into a huge social anarchy," he said.
The 2013 Gezi protests began as an environmental demonstration in Istanbul and quickly mushroomed into a nationwide anti-government protest over plans to replace the Gezi Park in Istanbul with a shopping mall.
Davutoglu also accused the co-chair of pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) leader Selahattin Demirtas of calling on people to "get armed and go out onto the streets".
“If [in the June 7 elections HDP] they had been under the [electoral] threshold, then they would have said ‘injustice was done’ and another spiral of violence [would have occurred],” he said.
The HDP is the first pro-Kurdish political party in the Turkish parliament which has succeeded in passing the 10 percent threshold in the June 7 general election.
Tension has increased in Turkey after a string of deadly attacks in the country.
Security forces have come under attack across the country since the July 20 Suruc bombing in southeastern Turkey, which killed 32 people. The bombing was believed to be the work of Daesh.
Turkey has responded to the bloodshed by arresting more than 1,300 suspected supporters of outlawed groups, including Daesh, the PKK and the DHKP-C.
