The reaction of politicians to the execution of 13 Turkish citizens by the PKK terrorist group demonstrates the challenges Turkey faces in its counterterrorism efforts. It is deeply saddening that opposition parties would rather look for a scapegoat than join the nation in condemning the terrorists who shot abductees in the head.

Political parties and their representatives should be expected to respond differently to an act of terrorism, as Turkey has been fighting some of the world’s most sinister organizations – including the PKK, Daesh and the Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ) – simultaneously for the last six years.

Opposition leaders, for example, should have been more hesitant to believe the PKK propaganda that the 13 victims died "during the air bombardment." Those who disseminated the terrorists’ lies ought to have been made to regret it.

Fighting terrorism is a question of national interest, on which the government and the opposition are supposed to agree. There is a very thick line between subjecting anti-terrorism policies to democratic scrutiny and undermining the nation’s efforts. There is arguably no country where that line is as thin and easily crossed as in Turkey. The main reason behind that problem is that the fight against the PKK has been ongoing for nearly 40 years.

Some commentators are keen on accounting for the failure to end terrorism with exclusive references to public policy. That shortcut becomes particularly unseemly when it is taken in pursuit of short-term political interests.

The war on terror must not be subject to exploitation in order to prevent the securitization of politics to the extent that it infringes on democracy.

Unending PKK struggle

Over the last 19 years, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) has explored every avenue to combat PKK terrorism – including two attempted reconciliation processes.

Why then, is Turkey having such a hard time fighting the PKK? Why is that separatist organization, rooted in late nationalism, still claiming innocent victims after 37 years – assuming that it became an operation in 1984?

The cases of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and Euskadi ta Askatasuna (ETA), or "Basque Homeland and Freedom" in the Basque language, teach us that four conditions must be met simultaneously in order to permanently defeat terrorist organizations with ethnonationalist motivations: