Did you think the declaration of autonomy was a game?

Yahya B. Adil, writing on Birikim's website, defines the concept of Democratic Autonomy at the very beginning of his piece as the Restoration of Politics against War, but of course it is not possible for us to understand from this title alone what kind of politics democratic autonomy contains. For what comes to mind these days when democratic autonomy is mentioned is digging up avenues and streets with the weapons in their hands and the masks on their faces, issuing an invitation to war out of nowhere and provoking war. How can one, having done all this, claim both "democratic autonomy" and "being against war"?

Here, who stands against war, and who wants war? Is it by the so-called armies that they began to form in the cities, now quite openly, throughout the solution process, by the fascistic violence these armies spread, and by the provocations of "come on, come on!" toward the state's security forces that one stands against war?

We had no idea: Adil has defined democratic autonomy as "a new social contract, that is, the reshaping of society and politics, even their very restoration." Having defined it that way, this definition does not satisfy our curiosity. However democratic autonomy is defined today in theory, with whatever embellishments, there is now a practice, and this practice overrides every kind of definition. In that case we consider it unnecessary even to ask: surely the whole Kurdish society is not waking up one day, getting together on its own and deciding to make a new social contract. On the contrary, in keeping with the familiar processes of the relationship between nation-state and violence, has the HDPKK-DTK-JPG-H been able to find the path to a new social contract without the imposition of an armed organizational structure, like all movements that carry a claim of social contract?

Just as Adil admits a little later in his piece: "The demand for democratic autonomy is, in this respect, above all the organized local people imposing themselves as a political actor, as the subject of politics." Fine, but you are both making such a definition and naming it both democratic and autonomy. Is this not a strange equation in which you can find neither the sauerkraut nor its fast? Truly, which local people are making the declaration of democratic autonomy right now in Cizre, in Yüksekova, in Diyarbakır, in Siirt?

And what kind of democratic right of representation could they have obtained in the name of a people whom they have completely silenced with the weapons they hold in their hands and the terror they unleash on society, that they even make a demand for autonomy in that people's name?

Truly, if democratic autonomy can be like this, why did we go to all this trouble; had the weapons in the TSK's hands been used in the same direction, the people of Turkey would have been silenced all the better and could have kept their army in the position of representing them much more willingly and on a much broader base. Would that not be the same kind of "democratic autonomy"? Surely not, right? In such a democratic autonomy you would see the fascism in all its nakedness. Why on earth does it never occur to you to apply what you see as fascism in Turkey to a claim of representation obtained today in the name of the Kurdish people by presenting a fait accompli with the force of arms, and to the practices put forward with this claim?

Everyone now sees that the HDP's election campaigns are conducted by the PKK or the YPG-H. Here is one example of this election campaign. The headman of a village has been warned by the PKK for quite some time on the grounds that he appears close to the AK Parti, but he does not respond to these warnings. That headman is killed only 40 days before the June 7 elections, and all the villagers around are told that they must take a lesson from the fate of that headman. As you can guess, the election result shows its effect up to ten surrounding villages, that village included, and in total 97 percent of the vote comes out. Yet one would even have expected those villagers to turn the matter into a question of honor and react to the killing of one of their own village. These warnings were delivered to all the villages one by one. Some had a son abducted, some were summoned to suitable places and warned, some had their workplace set on fire, some had their relatives threatened, and everyone was somehow pulled into the line of obedience.

Afterward, even in the villages where the vote came out above 90 percent, there is a hunt for who did not vote for the HDP, and many people, having been identified as voting for another party, are tried and punished in the mock courts set up by the PKK. Here is a cross-section from the scene of democratic autonomy in its simplest form.

In this scene, can you see anything other than banditry, terrorism, fascism?

Apart from the tiny children who still experience the events like a game but are openly drawn into violence and turned into monsters full of grudge and rage, and the warlords who recklessly squander their lives and futures, do ask the people as well: how autonomous do they really feel?

Somewhere in his piece Adil also attributes a quotation to me, and he also declares me "a member of the ruling class." He says: "There is also a difference between local DBP politicians declaring autonomy and a member of the ruling class like Yasin Aktay saying 'we will not give you autonomy.'" I could not even wonder what the difference was; I only felt what an othering, what a hate-filled language I was being subjected to. Of course I have never felt myself to belong to the "ruling" class; even in the position in which I am supposed to be strongest, I pray not to stray from the consciousness of "la hawla wa la quwwata illa billah."

Moreover, it is not possible for me to say to anyone something like "we will not give you autonomy." Or if I did say it, I said it like this: What you claim is not autonomy but feudal lordship, it is enslaving the Kurds. We will not allow you to enslave the Kurds, to establish feudal lordship over the Kurds.

Truly, I am not the one who will not let that be done, either. Of course the Kurds will not allow such a thing. I too dedicate myself to supporting the Kurds' resistance against being enslaved.

If there is anyone who wants to be enslaved voluntarily, there is of course nothing I can do about that either.