What are you cursing for, this is your account?

Let us set aside the shamelessness, which has become complicity, of those who see something abnormal in the reactions shown to İyi Party Group Deputy Chair Lütfü Türkkan, who made headlines with the vile curse he hurled at the relative of a martyr in Bingöl, with whom he had been walking for a while, clutching his head between his arms. Let us also set aside the possibility that, had someone else done such a vile thing, there might not have been the same outrage.

It is not at all hard to understand that there are aspects of Lütfi Türkkan's character that have intensified this outrage, made it explode further, and made his act even more unacceptable. For years Lütfü Türkkan has stood out as a man who reigns with a veritable terror of discourse: a nationalism that verges on racism, a superior air that accuses everyone of treason against the homeland, and a claim to patriotism that he has assumed but that has never (or never sufficiently) been tested.

A TYPICAL EXAMPLE OF POLITICAL KHARIJISM IN THE NAME OF NATIONALISM

We put the phrase "not sufficiently tested" in parentheses on purpose, because we also see that even in the smallest tests of a claim to patriotism, such figures sacrifice the greatest causes to their own interests, and turn the greatest causes into a gateway to profit for themselves.

These are the typical faces, in our age, of the "political Kharijism" that I have voiced on various occasions before, appearing in the name of nationalism and in the name of patriotism. Just like the Kharijites, they claim to be the only true owners of a cause they joined later, and they can be as skilled as possible at throwing the real owners of the cause out of the ranks. Yet in return for the ruthless accusations they level at everyone, they seize for themselves an unlimited privilege to commit the very same imaginary crimes.

It is nothing hard to understand. This is, after all, the logic of power. In discursive regimes of power that are obtained by fascistic means or that produce fascistic results, the sovereign is the one who declares the exception. Going in the reverse direction, the one who declares the exception is also the one who has seized sovereignty.

Whoever holds the apparatus of power, discursive power thus keeps operating in its own channel. But the arrogance that the holder of discursive power reaches at some stage is his greatest threat. Discursive power is not an absolute power as is supposed, and it does not permit the political Kharijite here to use the privilege of exception recklessly.

CALLING THE RESOLUTION PROCESS TREASON AND BECOMING A MILITANT OF THE ALLIANCE WITH THE HDP

Türkkan became one of the most fanatical representatives of an outlook that, at every opportunity, portrays as treason the democratic opening or resolution process that began in Türkiye with sincere intentions and sincere searching.

Yet the resolution process was nothing other than the sincere search of a country's people for a solution. That the terrorist organization and its political extension, the HDP, regarded it as an opportunity for malicious abuse was their shame and their fault. Had they been sincere in this matter, they could have gone all the way, and an entirely different course of politics could have emerged in Türkiye.

Even the arrogant behavior at that time of the PKK and HDP, who read the process as a weakness of the state and tried to turn it into an opportunity for themselves, ended up showing everyone the real address of the solution.

In fact, for the state too, the experience of this process became an occasion to show the Kurdish people itself, with certainty, what was impossible. Neither the PKK nor the HDP was seeking a solution. For them the issue itself was a source of livelihood. That is why they reacted to even the possibility of the Kurdish issue being resolved as though their taboos had been touched. Moreover, what their masters actually commanded them was not a solution but conflict and, ultimately, the destabilization or partition of Türkiye.

THE RESOLUTION PROCESS EXPOSED THE TRUE FACE OF THE HDPKK AND THOSE BEHIND IT

Through the sincere approach it displayed in the resolution process, the AK Party in fact exposed all the pretenses of the HDP and the PKK. Even if the resolution process did not go as planned, it opened the way to the real solution. The solution is to take into account the Kurdish people themselves, not the PKK, as the representative of the Kurdish people.

This policy has proven its correctness so far. Everyone is being given the treatment he deserves. Terror is being spoken to in the language it deserves, and this language is proving extremely effective at present. But this does not mean that the Kurds are being denied or that their identity, cultural or economic demands are being ignored.

The dialogues that our President, Mr. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, held with the public and with young people in Batman over the weekend, and the picture that emerged from them, constitute in this respect a new and extremely powerful reference point.

LÜTFÜ TÜRKKAN'S OBJECTION TO THE BILL PLACED BEFORE HIM

Had it not been for Lütfi Türkkan's extremism, which leaves nothing standing in nationalism and has become an ugly, merciless obstacle to humane policies and solutions in Türkiye, perhaps his act would not have caused so much outrage.

But the stances that both he and his party have shown in the past on the Kurdish issue inevitably bring them face to face with the bill of the policies that today ultimately tie them to the same chain of alliance as the PKK. This bill is sometimes presented by a martyr's relative in Bingöl, and sometimes placed before them by a shopkeeper they visit in Istanbul.

The martyr's relative who placed the bill before him in Bingöl is as right as can be, and is a creditor. But what is even more frightening than the curse Lütfü Türkkan hurled against that rightfulness is the physical violence he displayed beforehand. As he put the martyr's relative's head between his arms, it gives the feeling that he would have strangled him there had it not been the street, or had there been no cameras recording. He was clearly very angry at the bill placed before him, but the bill is his own bill. What he did and what he ate has been laid before him. Having no objection to make in words or with documents, violence and cursing came into play.

But refusing to pay the bill and, on top of that, hurling a foul curse, takes you out of humanity and also out of the political arena.