Democratization and the violence paradox in the Kurdish question

The assumption that tension in society diminishes as democratization advances, that different segments of society are drawn into politics as rights and freedoms are recognized, and that social peace becomes easier to establish, is one of the most widely accepted approaches in the sociology of democracy. In truth, this approach has been an assumption that explains all the tensions that have existed in Turkey with the republican regime and because of its style of politics, and that has also given rise to the solutions proposed to remove those tensions.

The fact that the religion problem in Turkey has been largely eliminated with democratization and the securing of rights and freedoms is a situation that reinforces this assumption and confirms the theses developed in light of it. Many examples showing that this thesis works can also be found in many parts of the world.

However, we must accept that there is also a possibility that this thesis will not always work. For instance, in an environment where religious freedoms have been secured to an advanced degree, radical religious movements may well emerge. In Israel and in Europe, far-right movements with fascistic demands are able to flourish precisely in these democratic environments. In Turkey, too, it is an interesting example that structures similar to DAESH existed under a government that secured freedom of religion to the greatest degree among all of Turkey's governments to date, even though they remained utterly marginal.

In fact, the most striking example that democratization, instead of eliminating violence or radicalism, gives it more room and speed to develop is seen in the Kurdish nationalist movement in Turkey.

For years it has been an adopted, even memorized, thesis that the Kurdish movement turned to violence because it could not express itself in a democratic political environment, and that therefore the way to deal with it is more democratization. This thesis, which the PKK voiced as an excuse for itself while addressing its target audience, also found a strong body of supporters among people who believe in democracy and politics. More democracy, more recognition, more human rights were inevitable things. But how naive an approach it is to think that securing all of this would make violence unnecessary and that those who express themselves through politics would no longer need to express themselves through violence has, I think, been thoroughly understood in the developments that have taken place together with the resolution process.

Frankly, the resolution process continued with this naive approach, persistently maintained by an AK Parti that believes in democracy, freedoms and human rights, and ran into the ill will of an organization that has ruthlessly instrumentalized democracy, human rights and even the lives of its own people for the sake of its power.

The resolution process was an expression of the AK Parti government's confidence that the chance it gave to politics and democracy would drive violence out on its own. That is why the AK Parti, from the very beginning, carried out a series of reforms that it rightly regarded as a "silent revolution" on the path of democratization. It did not merely end the policies of denial and assimilation against the Kurds; it created the democratic political ground on which Kurds could express, as Kurds, every issue concerning Kurds and pursue their cause. It opened the way for freedom of expression all the way. It trusted that all these reforms could by themselves neutralize violence.

Democratization was, in fact, what the AK Parti meant by the "resolution process" as a broader process concerning all segments of society. Yet for an organization that has held arms for years to lay down its weapons with all of its cadres, a separate approach was needed. That is why the resolution process also had to find an interlocutor in a narrower framework. It was entirely natural that this interlocutor should be the organization and the person on Imrali who is the authority over it.

The President's remark "There is no longer a Kurdish problem" carried, in a sense, the self-confidence and rightful pride of having solved the Kurdish problem. Yet this statement was distorted by the HDP members themselves, who forcibly included it in the denialist discourse of the old Turkey.

In the resolution process, what remained was the laying down of arms, which, given that there was now this much democratization, should have lost its necessity and rationale. Yet it became clear that, where the PKK is concerned, democratization was seen as nothing other than an opportunity that allowed the power established through arms to spread and consolidate a little further.

Before the broad segments of the people could obtain the necessary benefit, peace and air from further democratization, the PKK, with its armed force, occupied the entire space it opened. That is why the environment of democratization provided by the AK Parti government was usurped by the organization before it even reached the Kurds. Moreover, the further the reforms in the field of democratization and human rights advance, the more the capacity of armed force to pull everyday life away from democracy and to place a mortgage on people's wills grows.

For that reason, the organization that both the PK as an armed organization and the HDP, which works like its political arm, are trying to build over the Kurds reaches the dimension of totalitarian influence, leaving no gap whatsoever. That is why, even at ballot boxes where 97 percent of the vote came out for it, it goes after the 3 percent who voted for other parties, identifies and punishes them, or forces them to leave the city. The people's courts that have been set up and the neighborhood pressures built on discourses of loyalty and betrayal to Kurdish identity are possible precisely in this environment of advanced democracy.

These islets of despotism developed in an environment of advanced democracy are, of course, felt by broad segments of the people not as democratization but as the end of state authority. And at this stage of democratization, people, paradoxically, demand more security, more control, more state authority. For those who want to keep their faith in democracy, this is not a pretty picture at all.