How do those who cannot call terror terror fight terror?

Turkey's legitimate struggle against terrorism is persistently characterized in some Western media as "Turkey's war against the Kurds." In this way, an escape route also emerges for not calling the terror directed against Turkey terror. In fact, this is the greatest handicap of the fight against terrorism. As long as there are approaches that make the terror suffered by other countries look charming, or at least excusable, it is impossible to develop a common sensitivity against terror.

It seems that, for both the US and the EU, sensitivity against terror is at present exhausted by opposition to ISIS. Since terrorist organizations other than that one do not touch them, they are not even counted as terrorist organizations to the extent that they do not touch them.

The same applies to Europe. In European capitals, Turkey's terrorist organization the PKK and its affiliated organizations can operate with ease. When asked, they say they tolerate this within the limits of democracy. Yet when a terrorist organization of the same kind, even a far less active one, moves against them, they can suspend all their democratic systems with ease.

Indeed, after the Paris and Brussels attacks, in France and Belgium, and afterwards across Europe, the balance between security and freedoms has tilted entirely in favor of security. In many European countries, the course of events is drifting day by day toward the appearance of a full-blown martial law, and in parallel with this, bitter examples of a racism and Muslim hatred that deepens and comes to the surface among the public day by day are on display.

The EU, which can immediately move to change its terror codes in its own territory even in the face of the slightest possibility of terror, put forward the condition of "Turkey changing its definition of terror" — something that had never been on the agenda — for the free movement right that Turkey should receive in parallel with fulfilling the conditions in the process of membership negotiations. This is, in a sense, no different from saying "give up viewing the PKK as a terrorist organization."

Can you imagine the same offer being made to a terrorist organization that carried out in any European city a thousandth of what it has done in Turkey? You cannot. So why, and with what face, can the EU demand this of Turkey?

Knowing that it is impossible for Turkey to accept such a thing, this condition can be regarded as a new escape plan that the EU found in order to evade the free movement obligation that it had somehow been obliged to accept. To put it more plainly, at precisely this stage the EU is asking Turkey for the impossible. It seems that those who are in decision-making positions on behalf of the EU today are running away from Turkey. More precisely, as Turkey meets the standards for EU membership, they seem to reveal another face of theirs.

Wanting to change the definition of terror in the middle of a struggle against terrorism that hurts Turkey is truly something impossible for Turkey to do. Because Turkey has to wage this struggle. The fight against a terrorist organization that has gone blind with rage, that makes no distinction between civilians, women and children, and that especially tries to enslave the Kurdish people, is not a choice for Turkey, it is a necessity.

The terror we face used to find a ground for itself through the Kurdish question and through the mistakes of the state, which caused many grievances among the people because it made no distinction between the terrorist and the people. Yet today the state has both removed the entire political ground that gave rise to the Kurdish question, that is, has solved the Kurdish question, and, while fighting terror, has distinguished — and continues to distinguish — the Kurds from the terrorist organization with great meticulousness.

To the extent that the state does this, the organization too has begun to lose all the supports it has held among the Kurdish people until now. Despite this, the terrorist acts that continue no longer have anything to do with the Kurdish question. For this reason the terrorist organization has difficulty explaining its acts to the Kurdish people, and grows more distant from the Kurdish people with each passing day.

In the nineties, the state did not care about the grievances created among the people during the fight against terror. The problems of the villagers who fled from evacuated villages to the cities virtually did not concern the state. This indifference alienated the people who were victims of terror from the state and brought them closer to the terrorist organization. Yet today, in the fight against terror undertaken after all the options have been tried in peace, the people who suffer are never identified with the organization, and their grievances are redressed by the state.

In fact, we can say with pride that this is not only a present-day situation: despite all the frenzied terrorist acts, the people of Turkey as a whole never identified the PKK with the Kurdish people. Even at times when the most merciless, savage attacks were on the agenda, there was never an approach among the people of Turkey that held the Kurds as a whole responsible for these events. Of course this is not something easily understood by a Western mindset whose view of its own Muslim neighbors changes suddenly upon watching on television a DAESH or al-Qaeda attack in Syria or Kenya. It is also a picture of how far they are from understanding what kind of deep-rooted relationship Turks and Kurds have in Turkey. This deep-rooted relationship is Turkey's strength, its possibility, its symbolic wealth. However much we thank God for this wealth, it is not enough, but we also need to try to protect this wealth.

BRIDGES OF THE HEART BETWEEN TURKEY'S EAST AND WEST

Speaking of protecting this national human wealth, these days AK Parti Organizations are trying to build broad and busy "bridges of the heart" in order to give the people of the region the message "we are with you" in the face of the grievances that have arisen among the people in the fight against terror. Within this framework, a comprehensive program that continues throughout Ramadan is being carried out between the western cities and the eastern cities of Turkey. Each of the western metropolitan cities, with its organization, its civil society organizations and its members of parliament, builds this bridge with a city of the region. Within the spirituality of Ramadan, they come to this meeting together with aid to be distributed to people in need. The meetings take place in an atmosphere of a true feast of brotherhood.

This weekend we too accompanied the Sakarya delegation that came to Siirt within this framework. Our Sakarya Member of Parliament, Prof. Dr. Mustafa İsen, together with Sakarya AK Parti Provincial Chair Fevzi Kılıç and those with them, crossed this bridge of the heart and settled into the hearts of the people of Siirt.