"During a joint press conference in Paris with French President François Hollande on Oct. 31, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan used the acronym DA’ISH, instead of ISIL to refer to the fundamentalist organization of the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant," an article by Murat yetkin published by Hurriyet Daily News reads.
"It is actually the Arabic way of abbreviating the name of the organization: “Ad-Dawlah al-Islāmīyah fīl-ʻIraq wa ash-Shām,” DA’ISH," the author writes. "The first one to call the organization DA’ISH instead of its acronym in English was French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius. But Erdoğan’s use of the Arabic acronym was more than a good will gesture to his French host. Erdoğan is also uncomfortable with using the name of Islam in public to describe a new-generation terrorist organization. He has a point, but that is the name of the organization that justifies all of the violence that their members perform, from raping and enslaving girls to cutting throats in the name of an orthodox version of Sunni Islam."
"So from a political-psychology perspective, it might be a safer way for world leaders to call it DA’ISH, in order to distance themselves from its abuse of Islam and avoid further antagonizing the believers of the religion," Yetkin writes.
"But whether we call it ISIL or DA’ISH, the organization was not born yesterday. It was not only an outburst reaction of obedient Sunni Muslims against the Shiite-origin oppressive Nouri al-Maliki rule in Iraq, neither did it only emerged out of the blue because of the chaos created by the civil war in Syria by the rebel forces against Bashar al-Assad, who were unable to find enough support from the West," the article reads.
"Its original name was the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), or DA’I if you prefer, when it was first founded in 2004, a year after the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq. Its base was predominantly the Sunni al-Anbar region of Iraq, and soon it was accredited as “al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia” by Osama bin Laden, who was fighting a war against another U.S.-led coalition (Turkey, France and others were included) in Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda was experiencing its heyday after their 9/11 terrorist strikes in New York and Washington D.C.," the author wites.
"Islamic fighters in Afghanistan were considered “good boys,” “moderate fighters” and the “moderate opposition” by the West, as long as they resisted the Soviet invasion there and served the military interests of the West. When the West understood that not all of those boys were good, after they started to turn upon Western targets after the withdrawal of Russian forces, it was too late," the article reads.
"The good news so far had been that DA’ISH and al-Nusra were fighting with each other, as well as with everyone else. But the latest reports suggest a rapprochement between the two factions. That is why Hollande and Erdoğan agreed yesterday that the fight against DA’ISH is not limited to Kobane; it also involves Iraq, and the weakest link in Syria is Aleppo, not Kobane. It may well be too late, but we’ll see," Yetkin concludes.
