Who should solve the Kurd's problem?

It is an undoubted fact that the point reached in diagnosing and solving the Kurdish question is considerably more advanced than in the past. Yet what is interesting is that as the will toward a solution comes to the fore, discourses on the Kurdish question have begun to be expressed in a much more mass-based language.

In a way there is nothing surprising in this. Until yesterday there was not even an atmosphere of freedom in which the word Kurd could be pronounced; that today, both in pronouncing the problem and in solving it, both expectations and testimonies about the existence of the problem can be expressed in a louder voice shows in itself how much the horizon that has opened has widened.

Expressions of impatience on this subject too are possible in part because they find courage in this atmosphere of freedom that has opened up. It cannot be said today that the Kurdish element is still denied by the state. At this point, with the many steps the state has taken, many approaches that registered the existence of the Kurdish question have been abandoned. With TRT Şeş and the establishment of Kurdish language institutes at universities, it can be said that the attitude of "denial," which is the head of the problem, has been abandoned. If this recognition is tied a little more to legal guarantees and some concrete steps are taken regarding the possibility of mother-tongue education, the problem will already have ceased to be a Kurdish problem, and what remains will be the defects of the general framework relating to democratization. These problems too will not be limited to the Kurdish question only, but will relate to the problems of a standard required by the general democratic citizenship level of the people of Turkey.

State Minister Beşir Atalay's presenting the long-awaited speech on the Kurdish question with great attention and delicacy under the umbrella title "democratic opening" is extremely appropriate in this respect. Frankly, one of the most important matters Mr. Atalay voiced in his speech, in which he chose each word with care, was the emphasis and invitation he extended to the country's intellectual accumulation. Do not all the problems in fact generally stem from closing this subject and all other subjects to every kind of democratic debate and participation?

Mr. Atalay's bringing, to a brand-new level, in the sense of "we welcome every kind of intellectual contribution," the media monitoring that those working in the name of the state carry out by profiling Turkey's speaking elements as either "ours" or "enemies" (internal or external), is a very reassuring style in terms of the maturity of the state mind.

We can say with ease that if an approach that, without any reservation, takes into consideration every kind of assessment of what is written and said on the Kurdish subject as a contribution were taken as a model for Turkey's other problems too, no force could hold Turkey back. For the one thing that has enlarged all problems until now was that subjects were kept closed to debate and therefore to politics. When the ever-widening security zones of the state also close off to every kind of debate, the subject comes to be seen as a field where only "friend" and "enemy" are understood. Those who know the subject have to swallow hard so as not to be counted as the "enemy," and in this case it is unclear in whose interest those who do speak are speaking.

Looking at the point we have reached, presenting it as a victory of a certain struggle, especially of the armed struggle, would, as Ruşen Çakır very aptly noted, be the most effective way of sabotaging this process. Democratization is a process this country carries out, and must carry out, in spite of armed blackmail. Moreover, it is by no means true that the armed struggle has made it possible to reach this point in solving the Kurdish question. In Turkey the armed struggle is useful for no purpose other than feeding this problem, delaying its solution and strengthening the war sector. If you suppose that those who run this war in the name of the state are stepping back because they are tired of it, you will be all the more deceived. This war produces death and fire for other people's children, not for their own. To the extent that others' martyrdom fattens their own pockets, this war will not make any state tired.

We must understand this. The democratic opening in Turkey is a political choice, and as a choice it is that valuable and that costly. There is a powerful war lobby that would be grateful for the PKK's armed struggle, and it is by now an undoubted fact that, far from being disturbed by rising armed reactions or protests, this lobby sees in them the guarantee of its own durability..

Therefore it is not possible anyway for those who look at the opening of the Kurdish issue as a kind of "bringing the state to its knees" to make any contribution to the solution of the problem. Those who truly and sincerely want the solution of the Kurdish question would not insist on playing the leading role in this process.

In the end, if the process is going to turn out well, it should not matter very much at whose hands this occurs. Provided only that the intention is truly a solution.