The closure of the DTP: a step in the plan to finish the AKP

Judged from a purely legal standpoint, it would not be wrong to say that the Constitutional Court had no difficulty in issuing a closure decision against the DTP because of its obvious relationship with the PKK as a terrorist organization. Indeed, once it took up this situation, known to the whole world and increasingly taken for granted as a de facto state of affairs, the Court would have had to strain the logic of positive law very hard not to issue a closure decision.

The Court did not strain on this. Disappointing yet again those who expected it to make a political decision, if only for once, it did the easy thing this time and issued the closure decision, moreover unanimously.

However, it is quite clearly seen that it did not feel the same ease regarding the choice of the names it placed under the political ban. These choices alone show that the Constitutional Court expressed very specific expectations first of all regarding Kurdish politics and in general regarding Turkish politics. The question everyone will rightly seek an answer to now is this: what kind of will is displayed by banning those within the political tradition the DTP represents who genuinely intend to do politics, such as Ahmet Türk, Orhan Miroğlu or Aysel Tuğluk, and releasing the hawks with no intention of doing politics whatsoever, hands in the street and eyes on the mountain?

Even though President Haşim Kılıç vehemently rejects criticisms in this direction, the timing of the Constitutional Court's taking up the matter will not escape being a subject of debate. In an atmosphere where the wind of the opening affected everyone in some way, back to back: the street demonstrations that began because of Öcalan's prison conditions, the PKK's claiming of the Reşadiye attack, and the case at the Constitutional Court being put on the agenda and ending in closure... All these developments, none of which can be made sense of individually, yield a consistent picture only when thought of together. And that picture includes a plan to let the AK Parti, which set out on the opening, be swept away by the current of that opening...

The fact that the number of deputies on the closed party's banned list was kept at a critical point, one short of the number sufficient to form a group, does not look like a meaningless choice, whatever anyone says. This choice means that the bomb effect contained in the DTP's closure has been left to this or that attitude the AK Parti will be forced to adopt. However, the manifestation of this bomb effect depends on the DTP deputies' resigning as they promised before. Frankly, there is a comprehensive plan to finish off the AK Parti, and the role falling to the DTP in this plan will be complete with the deputies' resignation.

The acceptance of these resignations, or of their being deemed to have resigned by withdrawing from the Parliament's work, depends on the approval of the TBMM, that is, on the AK Parti's votes. If the AK Parti approves these resignations, then, seen as responsible for the immunities that will be lifted afterwards and for all the probable arrest scenes that will ensue, it will experience an emotional disconnection or break with an important target audience of the opening in the Southeast. If it does not accept, this time it will find itself in the middle of the nationalist storm that will be whipped up against it in Central and Western Anatolia. In any case, the closure has put in the AK Parti's hand a bomb with the pin pulled. Undoubtedly the ultimate aim of this plan is both to end the opening policy, seen as an adventure, and to finish off the AK Parti.

Although, by the attitude it has displayed over the last few weeks, the party has supported the plan by making no attempt to prepare any psychological barricade against its closure, rather by making the closure as easy as possible, preventing this plan from working is still, to some extent, in the hands of the DTP members. Their holding back from playing the role they have played so far in this plan also opens up a new opportunity for the DTP members to show how willing they are to do politics. Frankly, it is not reasonable to expect the DTP, which has come to this point of its own accord, to see this as an opportunity from here on. The DTP, which has already announced its decision to withdraw from the Parliament, has on the contrary chosen for now to act consistently in line with this plan.

Of course, the AK Parti's hands are not empty in thwarting this plan either. By persevering in the politics it has undertaken on the road of the democratic opening, it is still not impossible to foil this game, but its job has undoubtedly become harder than yesterday.

One last note: the closure case will have served to further consolidate the regional or social leadership position of the PKK, which appeared to have lost considerable power and support in the region. Frankly, there could have been no more effective prevention of the development of alternative political representation mechanisms in Kurdish politics than this. By an effect that will sound quite strange, the closure decision seems to have restored the DTP's representative power. The banning of the doves within the DTP, meanwhile, amounts to its being ordained by court decision that the Kurds can be represented only by DTP members, and among them only by the most hawkish.