Is Öcalan aware of his own role?

The DTP members' abandoning their decision to withdraw from the bosom of the nation and making their decision to return to the Parliament contingent on Öcalan's advice has produced a rather strange situation. The statement confirmed the justice of the Constitutional Court's closure and the "links with a terrorist organization" ground it put forward. Without even feeling the need to hide what God knows from His servant, making this forbidden relationship so public despite the closure decision, hot on its heels, undoubtedly has some consequences, or some meanings before those.

As has been much stressed, the DTP politicians whom the closure decision preferred to put under a ban represented this relationship at a lesser level and alluded to their ties with İmralı or Kandil through much more indirect routes. By contrast, it is as if those who devoted their entire political mission to representing this relationship have, in a way, received from the Constitutional Court by this very attitude a visa to continue in politics. The highly loaded decision of the Court, which banned the doves and released the hawks, therefore seems to have been perceived by the DTP members as an encouragement to make this relationship public from now on.

Whether the Court truly wanted this we of course cannot know, but if not, the situation is even worse, for then it is revealed how far the Constitutional Court's decisions are from realities and from practicability.

As luck would have it, the party for which the Constitutional Court gave its closure decision, whose validity can be disregarded, was a party that had already deemed itself politically unnecessary. The DTP, which, with so many roles to play at the political level, had withdrawn itself and entirely let the PKK or Öcalan come to the fore, had long since closed itself down in this way. In a sense, the Court's decision has also been an invalid decision in terms of its consequences. A Constitutional Court whose decisions are invalid and a political party that has invalidated itself by its own judgment fit each other well, don't they? It is a fit that further increases their meaninglessness within politics and reduces predictability more with each passing day.

The street demonstrations we witnessed in recent weeks and the PKK's subsequent claiming of the Tokat-Reşadiye attack had been perceived as a message that the real interlocutor of the process should be İmralı. Yet Öcalan's words about Reşadiye, published yesterday in the newspaper Taraf, reveal that he too cannot make sense of what is going on. What kind of message can the Reşadiye attack or the street demonstrations, which he cannot place anywhere within his own understanding of strategy, be writing about taking Öcalan as an interlocutor in the process?

This situation in fact reveals one more very interesting aspect of the debate long conducted about the real interlocutors of the process. The language of communication chosen by the process's real interlocutors is not a language understood or shared by their interlocutors. Öcalan, whose having said "my room is narrow" set hundreds of thousands of people in motion in an instant, is heard to say "this is done through politics, there is no need to withdraw from the Parliament," and the demonstrations stop as if cut by a knife, yet it turns out that he is not even aware of what is going on. There is no doubt that İmralı is the sole and most effective interlocutor in stopping terror and bringing down those in the mountains, but is İmralı aware of this?

It is certain that an Öcalan authority of absolute degree over the masses has been established. Today it is impossible to travel the cities of the Southeast and not see the reality of Öcalan. But it is also increasingly drawing attention that this authority is largely an authority established outside of him. How the messages reaching from İmralı through lawyers are delivered to the masses with what recomposition or selection was shown with a perfect example in the report published yesterday in Taraf.

Thus it must also have been seen how Öcalan, pointed to as the sole interlocutor and authority, is not to be found at the address where he is shown to be.

Is it truly possible for Öcalan, who could not make sense of the Bingöl attack earlier either, but who for a long time did not hold back from (could not help) playing the role written for him through that attack, to draw a road map on his own? When Öcalan decides to act in the name of peace or any independent politics, is he fully authorized to play this role? If only he were. In that case things would be very easy.

The name Öcalan is an extremely useful brand because of its effect on the masses. What we are expected to understand from the message written with the latest events is that Öcalan is the sole authoritative and effective authority over Kandil, the streets and all Kurds. Yet even if we set aside the difficulties of taking him as an interlocutor in terms of legal discourse, how much capacity Öcalan has to do what he says is doubtful.

Who is the real subject of the Öcalan authority created outside of him, even in spite of him, where is it, and what does it want? That is what we really need to know.