Military intervention of Turkey to Syria to remove “precious” Suleyman Shah Tomb attracted a lot of attention from Turkey and abroad. Foreign commentators tend to analyze this intervention as a point of no return in Turkey-Islamic State (ISIS) relations and pointed out that Turkey can more freely act against the ISIS and support the international coalition.

In Turkey, discussions were much more intense and colorful. For the government and its supporters, this intervention was a kind of military victory, since Turkey could keep its “sacred” heritage without giving any losses. It was a case in which Turkey showed its power to the region and the government proved its competence. Moreover, according to the government perspective, it was a clear rational act, a kind of chess move which strengthened the government’s hand in the game in the Middle East.

On the contrary, this “retreat” is accepted as a defeat by the opposition. The leader of the opposition party, Kilicdaroglu, “the government sold the territory” while the nationalist party deputy leader framed this action as “abandoning a piece of soil”. Although the government repeatedly declared that same amount of soil was under the control of Turkish army and Turkey didn’t lose any soil, opposition continued to criticize the government from this point of view. Many from the opposition accept it as a sign of military weakness contrary to the government’s declaration.

These two different perspectives, “military victory” versus “selling the soil” conflicted during yesterday, in the conventional and social media. Today’s (Monday) headlines reflect this deep division in the Turkish public opinion makers.

Although such a big divide may be surprising for foreign commentators and may be attributed to the unbridgeable partisan polarization in the country; all these declarations have something in common, much deeper than “we” versus “you” discussions: First, both perspectives underline importance of the military force and try to use the case as an indicator of power/weakness of Turkish military. Secondly, none of these perspectives reject “sacredness” of Suleyman Shah and his tomb, which is probably a fictitious character invented by Abdulhamid II during the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Both the government and opposition advocate symbolic importance of “old ancestors”. Third, both parts are putting an almost imperialist stand by accentuating “Turkish soils”. For the government, Turkey has still soils in foreign countries; and for the opposition it does not; because of failure of foreign policies of government. Importance given to the military force, “sacredness” of Suleyman Shah Tomb and desire to have soils in foreign territories; all of them are indicating an important backbone in Turkish politics: nationalism. All political parties –including “Kurdish” nationalists- are branches of the same nationalist tree.

Practically we know that foreign policy issues are very complicated for ordinary citizens and they tend to take positions parallel to their partisan choices and they try to use leaders’ speeches as clues. Foreign policy issues don’t easily change partisan positions. Moreover the last Transatlantic Trends survey showed that three quarter of the Turkish public is against a military intervention to Syria. There is only one explanation of how Turkish political parties competed in a militaristic concourse in the case of Suleyman Shah Tomb: consolidating their positions in the nationalistic stands for forthcoming discussions, especially during the general elections. All these discussions of yesterday may be accepted as clues for how Turkish nationalism –aka Kurdish separatism- will play an important role in the general elections of July 7th.