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Türkiye’s Interior Minister Mustafa Ciftci said the Terror-free Türkiye process is advancing successfully and that the country is “very close” to its end, pointing to safer streets across the east and southeast as evidence.
Ciftci spoke to Türkiye Daily in an interview with Volkan Ormanli, General Manager of Digital Assets at Ihlas Holding, after returning from a visit to the southeastern province of Batman.
He also addressed the risk of sabotage, a planned anti-drug project and the nationwide stray dog roundup.
Asked what he would tell a citizen wondering whether the terrorism issue is over, Ciftci said the process was proceeding successfully and the end was near.
He said state institutions were each carrying out their roles, naming the presidency, parliament, the foreign and defense ministries and the national intelligence agency, and he included Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahceli among those contributing.
Ciftci said the process has continued for two years. He said he sees its effects in his provincial visits, having recently traveled to Diyarbakir, Sirnak, Hakkari, Van, Bitlis, Agri and Batman, and that he will keep visiting.
He said streets and cities in the east and southeast are safer than before and that people can travel freely. Recalling his earlier postings in the region, he said that while serving in Erzurum, officials would make day trips and avoid staying out after dark.
“Today you can go wherever you want, whenever you want,” he said. Because of the improved security, the Interior Ministry has removed 2,063 checkpoints, he added.
Ciftci said he last visited Batman in 2017 or 2018, while working in parliament, and found a transformed city.
He said the terror-free process had made streets safer and residents more confident, and that people now are looking for jobs and a future.
He argued that years of violence cost the city investment and hope. “Capital is timid,” he said, adding that investors look for security and calm.
He said the state had to spend on counterterrorism money that might otherwise have gone to infrastructure and employment, and that other eastern and southeastern provinces paid the same price.
On drugs, Ciftci said young people without jobs or prospects are more vulnerable to harmful paths, and that young people in Batman are now asking for work and a safe future.
He said the ministry is preparing a project called Compassion Shield, which will be announced in more detail soon. He said an earlier initiative, “Best Narcotics Police Mother,” rested on the idea that police measures alone cannot defeat narcotics crime without the support of families.
Ciftci said the biggest risk to the process is provocation and sabotage, as in the past. He said groups that profit from terrorism and outside forces that do not want a stable Türkiye would not welcome its completion.
“We will not leave them to their pleasure,” he said, adding that the ministry, the intelligence agency, the defense ministry, police and gendarmerie are monitoring the process closely.
“We do not have time or energy to waste,” he said, adding that the process must succeed and that the state and the nation need it.
Asked how he would explain the process to a martyr’s mother, Ciftci said Türkiye has lost tens of thousands of people over four to five decades so that no other family would suffer the same loss.
Many bereaved mothers say their own hearts are burned and they do not want others to share that pain, he said.
On stray dogs, Ciftci said the nationwide effort has reached 99.9 percent of the initial counts reported by provincial governorships.
Only Diyarbakir remains and is expected to finish soon, bringing the figure to 100 percent. He said the ministry accelerated work begun under his predecessor.
He cautioned that the figures are the initial estimates requested from governorships and were revised after fieldwork.
In Erzurum, where he served as governor, an early estimate of 12,000 dogs fell to 6,000 to 7,000, he said. Because animals give birth and some owned animals become strays, he said, the process is ongoing, and occasional attack reports do not mean the effort has failed.
Ciftci, in office for about eight months, said the ministry aims to stand beside citizens when they need the state.
He said the gap between state and public has closed since 2002, calling it a “silent revolution,” and credited ruling AK Party governments and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Reflecting on his career, he said he served about 15 years as a district governor before heading a personnel department at the ministry, then moved to parliament as chief of staff to veteran politician Ismail Kahraman.
He called those two and a half to three years a turning point. He said he now feels the weight of responsibility more than at any earlier post, as the ministry’s first person responsible for security. His advice to his younger self was patience and listening more, and his main regret was never telling his father he loved him.
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