The Southeast rallies and a new period in the Kurdish question

The parties are pursuing their campaigns at full speed over the constitutional package that will be put to a referendum on April 16. It would of course be ideal for this referendum if these campaigns concentrated on the content of the package to be voted on. Indeed, regarding the content of the package, even Kılıçdaroğlu appears to have become considerably better informed lately than he was at the outset.

It is evident that the confusion that initially prevailed in society about what the package brings has largely dissipated, and that the general level of public knowledge about systems of government has risen considerably. Even so, the debates and the taking of sides continue to extend beyond the content of the package alone. Whatever the package may bring, there is a mass of people who reject it, even if they know what it contains, simply because Erdoğan wants it.

There is no way to persuade that mass with any information or any argument. For what shapes their decision is not what they know but what they feel.

Truth be told, a significant mass supporting the package is also giving it full backing not because of what they know or have newly learned, but solely out of their affection and loyalty to Erdoğan. This is a never-failing level of politics.

The picture already emerging with regard to the referendum will not be limited to a change in Turkey's system of government. In particular, the scenes that emerged at our esteemed President's rallies in Diyarbakır and Mardin and our esteemed Prime Minister's rallies in Bitlis, Siirt, Batman, Şırnak, Hakkari and Van will release a brand new and fresh energy for Turkey's national unity and solidarity, whatever the result there may be.

After July 2015 a new process began in our Southeastern cities. With the end of the process called the resolution process, which ultimately exposed all the more the terrorist organization's whole sham, duplicity and savagery, the public support that the new policy pursued in the region has found among the people shows itself in all its splendor at these rallies.

Trustees have been appointed to all of the provinces or districts where the HDP embarked on its "self-rule" adventure by means of the municipalities. These trustees have been in office for a few months, and they are bringing the region's settlements together in the best way with the municipal services they had long been starved of. It is clearly seen that there is not the slightest discontent among the people over the appointment of the trustees.

On the contrary, the people, who think that the municipalities they elected with their own votes betrayed them, are extremely pleased with the trustee arrangement.

They now seize every occasion to express this satisfaction.

The HDP or the PKK, which handed the people over to the mercy of militants who occupied cities in the name of self-rule, dug trenches in front of people's homes, rigged houses with bomb mechanisms and burned and destroyed them, and violated every sense of privacy by drilling through the walls of bedrooms to pass from house to house, has nothing to say to the Kurdish people today. They hold their rallies wherever they wish within the framework of the "no" campaign,

but they have nothing to tell the people, and the people are not listening. That is why their rallies are proving extremely feeble.

Of the Prime Minister's rally in Şırnak, the townspeople said, "Şırnak has not seen such rally enthusiasm since it has been Şırnak." Moreover, the rally is taking place on a site where houses booby-trapped on account of terror have been completely demolished and turned into level ground in order to be rebuilt.

Those whose houses were destroyed hold not the state but the HDP and the terrorist organization responsible for this, and they express their satisfaction that the state, on the contrary, has looked after them.

A REVOLUTION OF PERCEPTION ABOUT THE STATE

The cities are being rebuilt.

Maximum care was taken so that no harm would come to the people victimized by terror. And in such an operation, with a meticulousness unparalleled in the world, the effort was made to avoid civilian losses by focusing solely on the terrorists who could bear arms. As people see that, in return, material damage is also being compensated,

a veritable revolution of perception is taking place in the region: the state turns out not to be the old state.

This state is also the state of the Kurds, and its basic mission is not to kill but to let live, not discrimination but equality, not to push away but to embrace.

That is why the square in Şırnak resounded with "Down with the PKK!" Along the road, people from the balconies and windows of their homes did not hesitate to greet Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım with great enthusiasm.

The people of Şırnak express that during the trench policy they personally witnessed yet another betrayal and treachery by the PKK. Seasoned militants who came from the mountain cadre and had the city's very young children dig the trenches

abandoned those children to death and fled on the day the state began the operation.

The people of Şırnak recount this betrayal in horror, but with a consolation:

When the state began the operation, they themselves, despite all the organization's insistence and threats, refused the demand to serve as living shields for the militants, evacuated the city in the very first hour, and thereby provided the state with an environment for an easier operation.

The people of Şırnak proudly recount that in this way they took their stand on the side of the state in the first hour.

Meanwhile there is one more demand I have begun to encounter frequently in the region:

The parents of the 15-, 16- and 17-year-old children abducted by the PKK during the resolution process want their children back.

They want to appeal to the PKK, but of course they find no interlocutor there. That is why they demand of the state that it take their children safe and sound from the PKK's hands and give them back.

They say there is no possibility that children of that age joined the organization of their own wish and will.

If a child of that age lacks the capacity to commit a crime, he can only have gone to the organization by being abducted.

That is why they complain about the organization that commits a crime against humanity in this way.

They do complain, but at the same time there is despair concerning Europe, which claims to be so devoted to human rights and children's rights.

For Europe, human rights are only the rights of those who behave as they wish.

Those who do not serve their politics are not even human.

In sum: the April 16 referendum process, whatever its outcome, marks the beginning of a new era in the Kurdish question.