The Kurd of the Turkish Left

Some time ago the HDP Co-Chair stepped up to the podium and, in a way that will go down in the history of group meetings, delivered a very clear message in just a few sentences. The message was so important that it should not have been overshadowed by other words, no lack of emphasis should have been felt, and no opportunity should have been left for anyone to interpret it as they wished. The message cried out: "As long as the HDP and the Kurds exist, you will not become president, we will not let you become president!"

Although the violence and wrath loaded into the message were addressed to Erdoğan, it was quite obvious that the show was being put on for someone else. There is no question of any noteworthy message reaching Erdoğan, who has so far buried in political history how many people far more seasoned in politics than Demirtaş, through this impudent and presumptuous address. It is surely impossible for the speaker not to know this.

With all its clarity, the message was going not to Erdoğan but to the circles who hope for the "service" of Demirtaş preventing Erdoğan from becoming president. For quite some time now the Turkish Left, the CHP, and Pennsylvania have pinned all their hopes of stopping Erdoğan, with all their appurtenances, on the Kurds. The Kurds, whom they have for years assimilated, denied, ignored, and subjected to every kind of cruelty, they are now calling, in the person of Demirtaş, to "alavere dalavere guard duty."

Whatever path they tried in earlier periods did not work. In the new period they said Gezi, it did not work; they said December 17-25, it did not work. Not only did it not work, all their tricks got tangled around their own feet. When they make a damage assessment at the end of their immoral attacks, they see that very little remains in their hands.

Against Erdoğan and the AK Parti, the "coalition of the perpetually defeated" keeps adding newly defeated ones to its ranks each time and pursues new moves. They evidently think the new trump card on this front is the Kurds, and that Demirtaş and Kandil hold absolute dominion over the Kurds. During the presidential election process they embellished and dressed him up and brought his vote close to 10 percent. If, with a little more effort, they embellish and dress him up together a bit more, he is now the most useful instrument for blocking Erdoğan's path.

Thus they will have had those same Kurds block the path of an Erdoğan who has stood closest to the Kurds in the history of the Turkish Republic, who wrested all their usurped rights from the mouth of the status quo and gave them back, and who dared to enter the resolution process even at the risk of drinking hemlock. In other words, they will write for the Kurds the role of faithlessness to a pledge, the role of denying all these breakthroughs, and the Kurds will play this role, is that so?

This role-writing comes from a mindset that does not truly know the Kurds, that ignores them, that has itself assimilated and denied them. The mind that sent the Kurdish Mehmet on "alavere dalavere guard duty" is now speaking through Demirtaş's mouth.

The whole "coalition of those not yet sated with defeat," left, liberal, Parallel, goes on prompting this voice. All the written and visual publications of the Parallel seem to be enjoying having just discovered the HDP as a great opportunity for Turkish democracy. Ali Bulaç, an Islamist of so many years, is giving the HDP all kinds of wisdom and tactics for success, in an air of "all of it free." But of course, I still consider it a duty to warn, if not the HDP members, then our Kurdish brothers: These people do not give even their sins for free, take it from me.

The circle around Birikim Dergisi, which I generally regard as a moral responsibility to leave out when we say the Turkish Left, also seems to have leveled quite a bit its differences from the Turkish Left when anti-Erdoğanism is at stake. I would say it is the effect of the iftar feast that Murat Belge and Ömer Laçiner attended at the GYV's table, but evidently that table has a prehistory too; anyway, let us not get into matters of the gullet.

The inferences dear Tanıl Bora of Birikim Dergisi has drawn by relaying my words to the effect, "Our history with the Kurds cannot be reduced to 1915 or 1925; on the contrary, our relationship has a deeper rootedness such as 1071, 1189 and 1515," seem like a jealous reflex displayed on behalf of a left-socialist strategy that feels it has appropriated the Kurds.

I am trying to make sense of this privilege that Bora, working like a nationalism detector, grants to the Kurdish identity, which has increasingly become the subject of a far more intense nationalism and chauvinism. I am questioning how permissible the left-socialist strategy in general considers the working up of an ethnic identity to this degree.

Of course, I am not going to remind Bora of "real socialism." But when I recall Manzikert, Jerusalem and Saladin, İdris-i Bitlisi and Sultan Selim, I am speaking precisely of the common ground, that is, I say peace, I say unity, I say brotherhood. If he immediately interjects the things that divide us, should we not be the ones to ask what kind of Kurd he envisions?

It was Nureddin, a Turk, who raised the Kurdish Saladin. Both were subject to the Abbasid caliph, an Arab. But neither the caliph's Arabness, nor Saladin's Kurdishness, nor Nureddin's Turkishness was even an issue among them that day. All of them were rejecting servitude to anything but God and striving to act together as Muslims against Crusader imperialism.

They found fame and honor not as Kurds, Arabs or Turks, but through this mission.

Those who instill nationalism in the Kurds today are pursuing not their liberation but, like all the other little nation-states, making them a plaything of imperialism.

Our message and mission, on the other hand, is one and whole: to be strong against imperialism and to be honored as human beings.

We invite also those within the Turkish Left who can still listen: There is room for everyone in this honorable cause.