Fearing that the Kurdish question may have ended

President Erdoğan, by saying "There is no Kurdish problem" in recent days, in fact marked an indisputably important stage of the road traveled by his own hand on the Kurdish problem.

In the Turkey he took over in 2002, there was a Kurdish problem, but it was ignored, the existence of an element called Kurdish was denied, and Kurds were being assimilated for the sake of a certain official ideological identity.

True, it was not only the Kurds who were subjected to this assimilation, and the target of the assimilation was in fact not Turkification, as is supposed. For the target of this assimilationist policy was Turkishness itself as well. What was being tried to be created from the very beginning was an entirely different identity. A Turkishness deviated from its Islamic essence was itself an assimilated identity, one distanced from Turkishness. That is why the idea that the sole target of assimilation in Turkey was the Kurds is essentially an idea that needs to be corrected. Still, it is accepted that of all these assimilation policies the Kurds' share was different and greater. Within that share there was also direct state violence, bans, oppression and torture directed at the Kurds.

On the very day it was founded, the AK Parti set out its view of these policies and its proposed solutions. The party program written at the time of its founding contains these proposals very clearly. At the point reached today, all the policies put forward especially on the diagnosis and treatment of the Kurdish problem were expressed in advance in this program.

As witnessed today by the Nevruz celebrations too, as a result of these policies, the bans, assimilation and democracy deficit that gave rise to the problem have been completely eliminated. Therefore, as a leader who has accomplished these, Erdoğan today has the right to proclaim, with all his pride and boast, that "there is no longer a Kurdish problem."

It was not at all easy. There was the risk of having drunk hemlock. It required confronting the status quo. He took it on and defeated it.

There was the risk of paying a heavy political price. He took that risk too. As a result of the struggle waged solely so that people in this country may live humanely, and may exist with their own languages, cultures, identities and freedom of expression in a manner befitting human dignity, today we have arrived at a point hard to believe.

At this point, saying that the Kurdish problem (no longer) exists has nothing to do with the meaning intended when the same words were said in the nineties or earlier years.

Selahattin Demirtaş and the HDP circles lost no time in pouncing on this statement with great appetite and seizing upon it as "here is the proof that Erdoğan has still not emerged from the statist mentality of the nineties."

Yet a statement gains meaning within its context and in the person of the one who says it. First of all, the meaning of a statement is determined within its context. There is no connection at all between this statement made in today's context and the statement made in the context of the nineties.

And it also carries entirely different meanings in the person of the speaker. When someone else says it, its meaning is truly denialism. But when Erdoğan says it, he presents, against the background, a summary of the "silent revolution" he has carried out on the Kurdish question over 12 years.

Today there is no Kurdish problem left, because this problem, which in essence is connected with a language, that is, Kurdish, has been ended through the lifting of all bans on Kurdish. Today the highest-quality Kurdish broadcasts are being made by the state, Kurdish language and literature departments are being opened at universities, it is taught as an elective course in all primary schools, and schools providing Kurdish-language education can also be opened.

When Selahattin Demirtaş asks, "Since there is no Kurdish problem, why are so many steps being taken for the resolution process?", he is in fact only revealing what kind of capital the very concept of "Kurdish problem" has turned into for him.

Yet we openly repeat: the resolution process is one thing, the Kurdish problem another. The Kurdish problem has been solved, and it was solved by the AK Parti by addressing and involving the whole nation. In the solution of this problem there was not a contribution from the PKK or its political extensions but their constant obstruction and slowing down. If anything remains of the Kurdish problem, the addressee or address of its solution is not the PKK or the HDP but, again, the people of Turkey with all its elements.

The subject of the resolution process, on the other hand, is not the Kurdish problem but the problem of violence. Today the Kurds have a problem of violence, a PKK problem. There is now, of course, a state that cares more than the PKK about the Kurds' lives, property and dignity. Demirtaş and the Kurdist politicians want the Kurdish problem to endure forever as a "problem." Even if the problem is completely solved, they will somehow try to keep up the discourse of the problem, because they know very well what kind of livelihood this problem is. They do not like the prospect of being deprived of a livelihood. The existence of the problem is also the guarantee of political gain.

That is why they see how the problem's being solved will turn them into fish out of water. Moreover, that the problem was solved not by them but by Erdoğan and his political movement is not something they can accept easily at all.

Perhaps not anyone else, but Erdoğan has every right, from earth to sky, to say "There is no Kurdish problem." Those who are part of the problem see their own annihilation in the problem's ending. That is why they keep looking for ways to deepen the problem.

It must be admitted that the only subject on which they are creative is producing original problem areas.