For the first time peace looks more profitable than war

We are passing through a new political climate regarding the solution of the Kurdish question. This climate seems to be introducing to Turkey one of the new generations, unfamiliar to us, brought by global warming. All the areas of the problem, which has been going on for 25 years and has created within itself insurmountable red lines and zones, are being recolored. In this recoloring, the new colors produced by paints spilled on the ground are as decisive as the repetition of old rote formulas.

The changing meaning and dynamics of politics in the world teach us that no problem can be left to the old style of politics. Just as the cost of feeding on the existence of problems is increasing, the value of the gross product to be obtained from solving the problems, in terms of both economic and social health and happiness, appears more attractive. Frankly, thanks to the maneuvers of politics, peace looks more profitable than politics for the first time.

The ugliness of the attitude of the lobby for continuing the war in Turkey, setting the whole country on fire in order to cook its own eggs, has begun to grow larger in people's eyes. No argument put forward today for continuing the war can escape being compared with the unreasonable costs of this war, nor can it point to any price that would cover these costs.

The people of this country are beginning to wonder, with each passing day, where the martyrs they give are going.

Since this problem began, even Turkey's demographic and sociological characteristics have changed to a great extent. Until yesterday the soldiers who fell as martyrs were probably one of five or ten children of their families, mostly villagers; today a significant portion of the children who fall as martyrs are one of one or two children of urban families. In the eighties, when the problem began, only 50 percent of Turkey's population lived in cities; today the population living in cities has reached 75 percent. The urban population of Diyarbakır, which was 250 thousand when the problem began, has today exceeded one million. The situation is no different in other parts of Turkey, but it must be seen that one of the greatest effects of the environment of terror experienced was the great momentum it gave to the urbanization of the Southeast. The urbanization of people who until yesterday lived in their villages also results in their making their citizenship qualities felt more. As they urbanize, people become more open to modern ideologies and political discourses, and the speed and traffic of social movements can become quite congested. This is a reality that shows itself not only in the Kurdish question but in Turkey's politics as a whole, and whose effect is felt in all problems.

Without doubt this too is only one face of the problem, but together with its other faces it is a very important face that must certainly be kept in view. The problems of a changing Turkey can no longer be brushed aside with old-style politics, old-style theories and approaches.

Even so, there are still party leaders who appear oblivious to where the world, and Turkey within this world, is heading. Devlet Bahçeli's recalling of the "mountain option" in the event of a solution unacceptable to himself, frankly, can have no result other than legitimizing the PKK or armed actions in reverse.

In this case Bahçeli urgently needs to face this question: If "the mountain" can be recalled as an option in the face of unacceptable developments in politics, what is the PKK's fault? They too try to justify themselves by stating that they find the political option "unproductive, yielding no result," and strangely they meet Bahçeli at an address that he described at a certain level of heat, that is, in the mountain.

The attitude Baykal displayed against the meeting of Prime Minister Erdoğan with DTP leader Ahmet Türk is also, interestingly, a dangerous attitude that undermines his own legitimacy still further. Setting aside the "informer" mission he has taken on by counting Erdoğan, who met with the DTP, as having met directly with the PKK, someone needs to remind him that he himself is the parliamentary representative of another terrorist organization, Ergenekon. Moreover, the horizon of intrigue of the organization called Ergenekon is, on occasion, also under the suspicion of being the highest-level nourisher of, and responsible for, the PKK's physical existence.

In that case, if Erdoğan should happen to meet with Baykal, with whom would he in fact have met?

Personally, I am ready to withdraw even such a question, which might quite rightly come to mind, in the interest of making the process easier rather than harder. Because, when it has emerged that today peace is perhaps for the first time more profitable than war, one must also keep away from every kind of bickering that would push the process into an atmosphere of revenge and provocation.