The Kurds within a renewed conception of the nation

One reality that has emerged after the heinous terror act on Istiklal Avenue is that the PKK no longer has an initiative of its own even in determining the purpose and goals of its own actions. Let us speak frankly: what benefit to the Kurds could an organization that has for years defined itself as a movement devoted to the Kurdish cause have thought of providing by carrying out such an act against civilian targets? Leave the Kurds aside; let us say that the PKK, as an organization that has completely lost its compass, could have obtained no result from such an act other than putting itself in great difficulty. A reckless, thoughtless act is the work only of people whose eyes are covered by a lust for revenge and who have no faculty of rational thinking left. There is no one who does not know that the organization has been burning with a lust for revenge because of the heavy blows it has received in recent years from the state's successful struggle against terror, but would even this lead to an act whose outcome would turn against it? Would those tiny innocent children who lost their lives in the explosion not descend upon them as a curse? Would the Kurds first of all, on behalf of the parents who lost their children, not curse this act with hatred?

HAS THE PKK ANY WILL TO ACT LEFT?

On a foreign TV channel in which I took part, to the question that the PKK, whose commission of this act has been confirmed, had no reason to commit it, I answered with a counter-question: "Do you still think the PKK is an organization that cares about the Kurdish cause?" The PKK no longer has the luxury and the will to carry out these acts in its own name. In Syria, before the eyes of the whole world, the United States, from which it receives 10 thousand truckloads of weapons and every kind of intelligence and logistical support, is surely not expected by anyone to have given all this support as humanitarian aid and to leave the PKK as an organization free to act as it pleases. The mind that gives this many weapons and this much money also determines the road map down to its details. It cannot be thought otherwise. That is why nothing could be more natural than to hold the US, or other powers that openly support the PKK, responsible for every act the PKK carries out. At this point, asking what the PKK is trying to do with this act becomes absurd. The right question: what are those who made the PKK commit this act trying to do, trying to say?

In fact, that the PKK has no connection with the Kurdish issue was confirmed by the continuation of the rebellion after Abdullah Öcalan himself said "If denial ends, rebellion ends too," and after the state in Türkiye, led by Erdoğan himself, ended its policy of denial. For years the PKK presented the state's denial of Kurdish identity and existence as an excuse for its terror.

The truth is that such a denial existed too, and it was not in keeping with the historical, spiritual and cultural tradition on which Türkiye stands. It was a deviation from it and rested on a primitive understanding that came with the construction of a narrow nation-identity. The AK Party under Erdoğan's leadership saw this primitiveness from the start; although it ended these policies of denial in the name of its own conception of the nation entirely, never as a concession to PKK terror, the PKK, with the irritability of having had its pretext taken from its hands, increased its terror even more.

What the AK Party did with the resolution process and the democratic opening policies was in fact nothing more than renewing and refreshing the conception that makes this nation a nation. What had to be done for this, and what it did, was to give the Kurds what was theirs by right, while at the same time taking its pretexts out of the PKK's hands. The PKK, which stepped up the dose of rebellion even more although the denial had ended, proved that it was no longer doing this on behalf of the Kurds, but now it is showing that it is no longer doing it on its own behalf either. The PKK is not an organization that has its own existence, that is in itself; so there is no point in interpreting its acts in vain and attributing an existence to it.

One must look knowing that it organized the Istiklal Avenue attack not in its own name, but on behalf of powers that wanted to give a message to Türkiye.

WHICH KURDS?

The workshop that the Democracy and Unity Association and the Democracy and Unity Foundation organized in Ankara on 12 November deserves to be recorded as a very horizon-opening initiative regarding a completely different expression of the Kurdish issue and the real identity and political representation of the Kurds. From what our esteemed friend Mehmet Metiner, who gave an opening speech at the workshop, wrote in his column, it is impossible not to be excited on behalf of this initiative.

The participants in the workshop, I think, were all Kurds, and as Kurds they tried to challenge the claim of the PKK, which until now has claimed a monopoly on speaking on their behalf, and to set out their own views and positions "as Kurds." Of course they do not claim that their own views represent all Kurds either, but at the very least this objection, displayed against the PKK's usurping, by fait accompli, the right to represent all the Kurds, is very meaningful. In truth, the majority of the Kurds have supported the AK Party from the beginning, and the Kurdish political representation within the AK Party is greater than the HDP's. That is another dimension of the matter, of course.

Even before it came to power, the AK Party was a political movement that saw and accepted the existence of the Kurdish issue and had a very different solution to it. When it came to power, it implemented its own solution program step by step and ended the eighty years of policies of denial. As the AK Party saw, recognized and brought the Kurdish issue to a solution, the PKK and its political extensions, who regard Kurdish politics as their own property, instead of supporting it, showed an even fiercer opposition. They drew closer to the parties that were the real cause of the Kurdish issue. There are of course psychologically explicable aspects to this, but the only cause cannot be reduced to psychology.

The Kurdish issue is not only a political and economic source of livelihood for the PKK elites, but also an important instrument of the international powers that support the PKK. That is why, when Öcalan, who saw the source of the Kurdish issue as "denial," "wanted to end the rebellion" after the denial that he had concluded was over, the PKK did not listen to him. We saw that he had lost his control over the PKK from that level on.

Today it is as clear as day that the PKK's engagements with imperialist countries in Iraq and Syria bring no benefit or gain to the Kurds, and that the only reason for these engagements is to bring Türkiye under control, to limit it and to weaken it.

As Metiner pointed out at the beginning of his speech, writing such a role for "the Kurds, who are among the children of a great nation living in this country, believing in the same religion and turning to the same qibla," is the greatest betrayal of the Kurds.