Erdoğan has even argued that, in Turkey’s view, the PKK and the Islamic State are the same – mirroring Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s statement that Hamas and the Islamic State were branches of the same tree. With such desperate and unreasonable rhetoric, Erdoğan is lending credence to accusations that the entire “peace process” was simply a ploy to persuade the Kurdish members of Turkey’s parliament to support the constitutional changes that allowed him to move from Prime Minister to President.