Will this news be good for the MHP or the HDP?

In the coalition talks, whose second phase begins today, the resolution process appears to be one of the most important issues. The MHP says it is wholly against the resolution process and that, for this very reason, the coalition should be formed among the other three parties, which it claims have acted together on the resolution process from the beginning.

Yet its attempt to remain outside the process in this way is extremely odd, for if it is against the essence of the resolution process and thinks it harms the country, it should try to prevent it. And the only option before it for doing so is to be more open to a coalition with the AK Parti.

Yet it is doing everything it can to ensure that the resolution process, which it regards as a kind of treason against the homeland, continues precisely within the scope of that treason. How we can conclude from this that the MHP is against the resolution process is quite hard for us ordinary people to understand. For that, it seems we will have to strain our ways of thinking a little to think like Bahçeli.

Yet there is another fact here: it is also hard to believe, from the attitudes and stances of the HDP, which regards the resolution process as the most important condition for any coalition that will be formed, whether it takes part in it or not, that it truly supports the resolution process. There is an extremely odd situation here that is very hard to explain within the bounds of political reason.

From the outset the HDP resisted any coalition with the AK Parti by establishing an openly "language of hatred and hostility," yet at the same time it demanded that the AK Parti form a coalition with whomever it should, and that in this coalition it must by all means look after the resolution process. So does the HDP have any effort, any proposal, any work for the resolution process? No. We are in a strange situation in which everyone continues to expect everything from the AK Parti.

Orhan Miroğlu, in his column in the Star newspaper, very clearly drew attention to this oddity. From the beginning of the resolution process, only the AK Parti, and, timidly, the HDP, had a hand in it. Not only did the MHP and the CHP never put their hands under the stone, but the HDP too soon withdrew its hand from under the stone, and now everyone advises that the hand of the AK Parti, crushed under the stone, be left there alone. Yet as Miroğlu pointed out, the AK Parti has now ceased to be the sole interlocutor of the resolution process, or has been removed from that position by the election coalition that has been displayed.

The AK Parti has been made to pay the bill for the resolution process alone, and is now expected to go on paying that bill alone. Demirtaş is busy explaining how they, as the HDP, cannot make the PKK lay down its arms, yet at the same time he wants the government to take more effective steps in the resolution process.

It is clear that they do not realize that the habit of expecting everything from the AK Parti will, after a while, sideline them completely and leave them alone with their touristic souvenirs from the Imrali trips.

The AK Parti entered the resolution process with all its sincerity, knowing full well that it would drink hemlock, at the cost of paying the heaviest political bill. However, its expectation in this process, from the armed organization and, because of its relationship with the organization, from the BDP-HDP, was the achievement of disarmament.

Frankly, disarmament was the sine qua non of the resolution process. Yet since the very days when the resolution process began, the organization, far from laying down its arms, drew more and more members into its mountain cadres with each passing day, armed itself more, and, abusing the advantage provided by the environment of non-conflict, tried to achieve a terrifying dominance over territory in the region. Today, with this territorial dominance, it rules over the lives of ordinary people, and with the courts and enforcement gangs it has set up, it collects extortion money almost in excess of the taxes the state collects. Moreover, while the state spends several times the taxes it collects back on the region as services, where the extortion money collected by the organization goes is unknown.

It is evident that the organization seems to have grown very fond of this situation and does not want to give up this political economy that has emerged. Moreover, thanks to this territorial dominance, it can also bring out for the HDP the vote share it wants and thereby keeps it eternally indebted to itself. That is why, by the very nature of their relationship, we cannot expect the HDP to be able to make the PKK do anything.

The summary of the resolution process in its present state is nothing but a blatant exploitation, by the HDPKK, of a process that began in good faith and has been carried forward by the AK Parti with great sacrifice. They did not shy away from portraying, with their dirty propaganda, a leader like Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who was willing to end, at great risk, the assimilation and denial policies imposed on the Kurds in the history of the Republic of Turkey and who devoted himself to this process with great sacrifice, sincerity and compassion, as an "enemy of the Kurds."

Their consciences did not twinge in the least as they did so; the only thing they focused on was to slaughter, in the eyes of the Kurdish people, the image of "Tayyip Erdoğan, the true friend of the Kurds." For this they did not shrink from resorting to every kind of trickery and slander. They managed to turn the sentence "Look, Kobani is about to fall," which Erdoğan said purely to express concern, into a tone of glad tidings before everyone's eyes, and to make the Kurds believe it. It is said that this sentence alone was influential in leading many Kurds who had previously voted for the AK Parti to turn to the HDP; and to whatever extent that is true, to that extent those votes are the product of lies and slander.

So whom do those votes based on slander benefit now? In the end, the AK Parti has reached a point where it can never carry the resolution process forward as before. From now on, even if it were wanted, the resolution process will not be able to go on in this way.

Whether this is good news for the MHP, or for the HDP or the PKK, we honestly can no longer tell.