Lessons in self-government from Afyon

The AK Parti gathered in Afyon, with its founders, the MKYK core leadership, its youth and women's branches and its deputies, to hold the 24th of its consultation and evaluation meetings this year. Unlike previous ones, this time's meeting was also attended by the provincial and district leaderships of some of our eastern and southeastern provinces in particular. Since the state of the ongoing counter-terror operations and their likely effects was also an important agenda item, participation at this level from these regions made a distinct and quite meaningful contribution.

The continuity of this meeting, held every six months since the day the AK Parti was founded, is the strongest indicator that consultation has become institutionalised. This meeting, which has been held twice now under the chairmanship of Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, is also an important occasion for the AK Parti community to bond as a large family and to reproduce its common mind.

At the closing meeting, the information Prime Minister Davutoğlu gave on how the HDP-run municipalities of our Southeastern provinces in particular manage their revenues and expenditures was very meaningful. These were very illuminating data about the self-government performance of the HDP municipalities, which have made concepts such as self-government and democratic autonomy a constant refrain, and which in this cause have driven very young children into the trenches of death.

For example, on average more than 90 percent of the own revenues of all these municipalities is met by the central administration. That is, in spite of all their demands for autonomy, these municipalities cannot generate their own resources. Moreover, very little of the revenues coming to them from the centre is turned into investment; in most of them more than 70-80 percent is allocated to personnel expenses. This ratio is very high compared with the ratios in our other regions.

As a matter of fact, this situation is one that should make the HDP, which appears so assertive on self-government, put its hat in front of itself and think. It is clear that the HDP, which launched the concept of self-government into Turkish politics with the trenches it dug, means nothing by it other than a region under the domination of the PKK.

Yet if they were a little sincere, we could well have said that they had a great opportunity to prove themselves on self-government as a concept that could very well be opened to debate. They could have shown that self-government is truly a good thing through the municipalities and local democratic elements producing a much better governance performance. Better service to people, more effective and efficient use of local resources, the ability to stand on their own revenues...

In this regard, for instance, the HDP municipalities should have shown that they are better than other municipalities at standing on their own feet. Yet, as we see that the HDP municipalities are more dependent on the central budget, they also show no skill whatsoever in turning the money coming from the central budget into service to the people, into infrastructure investment.

The HDP has no effort to seize the golden opportunity in its hands to persuade people of the goodness or necessity of the self-government or democratic autonomy it has concocted out of its own head; in fact it has no such intention either. Because the HDP does not need to persuade the people or anyone else of the goodness of self-government.

More plainly, the relationship of the HDP or the PKK with the Kurds is, as we expressed earlier with reference to Orhan Miroğlu, a master-slave relationship. It establishes its domination over the Kurdish people with fancy words it calls "self-government" or "democratic autonomy," but knowing it cannot establish this domination with these words alone, it tries to present a fait accompli by force of arms. It knows very well that what it persuades with the weapon it holds is not a self-government" but "the despotic rule of the PKK." Knowing very well that no people would hand over its own self-government to a PKK that does not point a gun at it, it never severs its bond with the weapon.

Meanwhile we watch with astonishment that the politics of the HDP members consists of nothing but devotion to this struggle for survival of the PKK. That is why they never focus on service in their municipalities. Because they do not think their own people deserve service.

According to the clear information the Prime Minister gave in his Afyon speech, only 1-2 percent of the money sent by the central administration for service to and investment in the people of the region is allocated to infrastructure investments. They have no excuse they can find for the lack of investment, no fault they can lay on the state, the government or the centre. There is no excuse, but the reason is clear. The HDP members pursue a politics focused on serving not the people but the PKK, which tries to establish tutelage over the people.

With the people of Turkey having come so far in removing every kind of tutelage that has operated over them since the past, they will not stand by as a far more primitive, power-hungry terror organisation tries to establish tutelage over the Kurdish people. The Kurdish people have best understood the meaning and aim of this war, and that is why they are giving the greatest support in this war.

And so the Kurdish people give the best answer to those who shamelessly try to pass off Turkey's war as a "war against the Kurds."