Who promises what to the Kurds?

One of the undoubtedly most important determinants of the June 24 elections will be the votes of the Southeast. All the candidates have a special ambition to win the votes of the Southeast, in other words the Kurdish votes.

But what are they doing to win these votes? Looking at what they promise to the Kurds in particular and to the Southeast in general, the Kurdish issue, interestingly, appears to have been exhausted in the discourse of all parties, including the HDP.

Frankly, apart from Erdoğan, no one can say anything of substance about the Kurdish issue. By saying "The Kurds already have a state, and that state is the Republic of Turkey," he expresses in the most striking way the point we have reached that the Kurds are equal citizens and owners of Turkey. He explains that the formations the imperialists are trying to have the PKK and its extensions set up in the region mean nothing but a sedition that will destroy peace and tranquility in the region and lead the way to occupation. He explains with examples that on the Kurdish issue we are at the end, not the beginning, of the road. The ban on Kurdish, the pressure on Kurdish identity, the policies of denial and assimilation have been completely ended. "If there is anyone who feels pressure and oppression because of being Kurdish, let him come directly to me." Yet now it is time to protect the Kurds against the terror that is trying to take them captive and make them the target of imperialist occupation. If there is a problem, it is that one at present. Do not mind Muharrem İnce's shouts of "there is a Kurdish problem, we recognize it," in a tone of voice shouting at the top of his lungs at the Diyarbakır rally. That shouting finds not the slightest response in anyone's heart or ear in that square. First of all, those words are 90 years late for the CHP, and for Turkey, 16 years late, that is, since the AK Parti administration. Those words are today in Diyarbakır completely out of history, out of context, or more correctly, out of place. Because what is to be said on the Kurdish question has been said, and what is to be done has been done by Erdoğan.

When on August 12, 2005, Erdoğan said, in the same square, "there is a Kurdish question and we will solve it," that word had a place among words, penetrated to the very depths of hearts, and found its meaning and appropriateness in every home of Diyarbakır, in the heart, memory and experiences of every Kurd.

Of course, there were also people who heard those words and flew into a rage because of them. Those who inflicted eighty years of atrocity on the Kurds had noted another reason to remove Erdoğan, whom they had disliked from the start anyway. To solve the Kurdish issue, Erdoğan had set himself against those despotic tyrants and had become their target. They attempted coups many times, filed a closure case against his single-party government, and again attempted assassinations many times. Despite this Erdoğan did not give up; he said democratic opening, he said solution process, he said "if necessary I will drink hemlock, as long as this problem is solved," and brought the matter to this point. Now when he says "there is no Kurdish problem," this statement finds its meaning in a very different way from those who said it in the past. In the past, those who said it said it to deny the Kurds. Erdoğan, however, says it to explain what he has done in this field, and he is completely right. That is why his words find their response.

That is why today, including the HDP, the other parties and candidates have nothing new to say to the Kurds, nothing they can promise. All that is left is to demand freedom for Selahattin Demirtaş.

HAS THE KURDISH ISSUE NOW BECOME NOTHING BUT FREEDOM FOR DEMİRTAŞ?

Just think, the whole of the Southeast and the Kurdish issue has come to rest on this. At the Diyarbakır rally the crowds that filled the square, no matter what Muharrem İnce said, chanted a single slogan: "Freedom for Sılho." Leaving aside that it is a sign that none of those who came to listen to İnce will vote for him and that all of them were there in the name of HDP-CHP solidarity, look at the grotesqueness of turning Demirtaş's freedom into a right or a promise to be offered to the Kurds. Meral Akşener, Temel Karamollaoğlu and Muharrem İnce promise the Kurds nothing but "freedom for Demirtaş."

What can an approach in which promising "freedom for Sılho" is considered nearly sufficient to win Kurdish votes or please the Kurds give the Kurds? Really, is Demirtaş's release from prison truly a more important matter for the Kurds than all the problems they are living through right now?

In essence, from the moment Demirtaş, instead of making use of the tremendous political opportunity this people offered him on June 7 by giving him 80 deputies, suffered the PKK's coup and as if accepted the position of the PKK's political spokesman, he had already shown that he was not free at all, that he was a hostage in the hands of the PKK and the forces behind it. Do you suppose the Demirtaş outside is freer than the one inside? Because Demirtaş is in prison at present he cannot be used enough by those forces. That is the only reason his freedom is demanded.

It should not be overlooked, through half-baked dramas, why he is inside. He is not in prison because he is a political rival. On the contrary, he is held responsible for the deaths of at least 53 people solely through his incitements in the Kobani events. That incitement and all the savage murders that followed took place before the eyes of society. He is also on trial for the trench terror he again supported, the attempts to carry the canton occupations in Syria over to Turkey, and the massacres that took place in the meantime.

That is why the Kurds are angry at Demirtaş for handing the possibility of politics over to the terrorist organization instead of doing politics in line with the trust placed in him. They are furious that he served as political spokesman for the terrorists who played at self-rule by demolishing their homes and hearths and violating their privacy. They are angry that, instead of representing the Kurds, he could put no distance between himself and the terrorist organizations that were trying to prepare the country for foreign occupation.

They are both angry and pitying, because they also know that he did not do all this of his own will.