Understanding the will of the Kurds correctly

Among the conclusions drawn from the election results, I think the most hasty and the ones that are becoming generally accepted wrong conclusions are the interpretations about the attitude of the Kurds. First of all, it is not true that the Kurds did not vote for the AK Parti or that all of them voted for the HDP. It is seen that a significant portion of the Kurds voted for the AK Parti even in the current distribution. The countless messages that have come to me from our Kurdish brothers show what great discomfort these generalizing discourses cause.

It was precisely for this reason that in my previous column I said it would be more correct to ask not why a significant portion of the Kurds who did not vote for the AK Parti did not, but why they could not. The distribution of votes that emerges in the region in the shadow of arms has never been a healthy reflection of the Kurdish will.

Unfortunately, the HDP reflected the electoral threshold pressure on itself to the voters as fascistic pressures that are hard to bear, and got the result it wanted in this way. There are countless statements and cases from the people living in this region about these fascistic pressures. If even one of them had been committed in favor of another party, a national and international campaign about those parties would have been inevitable.

However, the HDP's displaying of every kind of terror and pressure during its election campaigns was seen as almost a normal right. From the so-called intellectuals who immediately sprang into action over the attacks organized against the HDP in a few provinces, we did not hear even the slightest criticism of the terror the HDP displayed to collect votes in the region, of the actual attacks, kidnappings, killings, and practices of open voting and secret counting.

In truth, looking at the leftist background of those who later make idle democracy talk from Nişantaşı cafes, we have no difficulty understanding this negligence. The intellectual despotism of the left in Turkey has always seen a tolerable, even necessary, relationship between violence and the desired change: The people are not in a position to see the truth, therefore it is necessary to bring them into line by force. The democratic process, which requires obtaining their vote and consent, is a damned process, but if this process is obligatory, there is no harm in imposing this obligation on that stubborn people. That is why, for the Nişantaşı leftists who, as they stand now, would refrain from giving a Kurd even a janitor's job in their apartment building, the Kurds are nothing but an instrument sent on a rescuer's watch through shady dealings.

On the HDP front, the situation has entirely different dimensions. Even without the threshold pressure, it already has a propensity to purge the region of every kind of difference other than itself. The result it got from the elections shows that they are afflicted with an enthusiasm belonging precisely to the democracy model of Ba'ath regimes.

In all Ba'ath regimes the outcome of elections is known beforehand. Results in favor of the ruling dictator usually come in above 95 percent. An appearance of democracy is given to others, but the appearance is guaranteed that the whole people stand behind the dictator without any difference of opinion.

In the same way, now, the HDP wants to give the appearance that the whole region is Kurdish and that all Kurds are in unanimous alliance on the side of the HDP. For that reason it wants no different color or voice in the region. As far as can be seen, in many places it has risen above the 80s, but it is not content with this; it must also reach the 90s. That is why, as they did after the previous elections, they are now again going after people who voted for different parties. They resort to excluding them from society through heavy neighborhood pressures such as "traitor," "enemy of the Kurds," "pro-enemy-state," which they apply to them.

If there is a modicum of sincerity in the defenders of democracy and human rights, they would now focus on how people's lives are being darkened in the region because of these pressures. The issue has now gone far beyond demands such as securing usurped rights or a people's struggle for existence, and has come to the matter of bringing to their knees those who do not pledge unconditional allegiance to the organization. Here lies the real test of everyone who has a word to say or a stance to take regarding democracy today.

When I say that the HDP added arms, pressure and terror to its election campaign, of course we are not attributing all the votes it received to this. In sociology no development can be attributed to a single cause. Even if the HDP applied no pressure at all, there is a considerable vote it would receive.

There is a significant mass that sees the HDP exclusively as the sole party of the Kurds and will therefore vote for it. We have never ignored the HDP's claim, or reality, of representing a certain segment of the Kurds. The way every sentence we utter on this is immediately opposed with a defensive reaction is more emotional than necessary.

When I say that the HDP added arms to its election campaign and collected votes with pressure, I am not saying that everyone voted out of pressure and fear. Of course those who voted for the HDP in Nişantaşı, Küçükçekmece, Manisa, Aydın and Kocaeli have entirely different realities and stories. There have been votes that flowed, or were made to flow, to the HDP through very different channels.

One of the two most important factors is the success in getting entrusted votes (even if Kandil constructs a different discourse), and the other is the success in turning the threshold pressure into pressure applied on the Kurdish people in the region. The first rests on the success of building a discourse or alliance that is entirely legitimate on the scale of democracy, but the second is a fascistic practice that no one who calls himself a democrat can accept.

As we pointed out before, the election campaign the HDP conducted with its two faces, alien to each other and lying to each other, including the other details, determined the result of the election.