PKK–Hamas comparisons

Turkey's showing such close concern for the plight of the Palestinians, surpassing even the Arab countries, evidently disturbs some people. Let us cover up this indifference, which wants Turkey to be concerned only with the people of its own country and does not care what happens to anyone else, lest it catch cold.

If you set out to take this voice seriously, you would only find the bottom of moral collapse. Let that, too, no longer be Turkey's business. In its foreign policy, perhaps for the first time, Turkey is following a path so oriented toward "virtue," beyond the "interest"-based relations that it has until now been made to memorize.

The foreign policy discourse taken into account until now is a discourse that is extremely calculating and self-interested, that makes no contribution to world balances and relations, that in fact does no good even to itself, and that constantly marks time.

The counterpart of this policy, which instills in us a lack of any interest in any part of the world if we have not a penny of interest there, is no different in domestic politics or in human relations. This policy emanates from, or produces, a personality that regards as skill double-crossing even its closest friend, stripping itself of all the values that brought it into being in the name of realpolitik, and, when the occasion arises, "not trusting even one's own father."

For years all the theorists of international relations or political scientists have been trying to explain that this style of politics is normal. Yet Turkey's new foreign policy, especially as manifested in its concern for Palestine, is a policy that breaks precisely this circle. It is a virtuous policy that holds that human values matter too, and that is willing to bear all the costs of spoiling relations with the one who is strong, who is "authority," who is dominant, if at the same time that one is unjust and oppressive.

All the arguments that can be developed to block the way of this policy refer to "the country's interests." They talk about how difficult days await us, starting from how these interests are being put at risk. In fact, for those who know the nature of the matter, it is not hard to see that the analyses along this axis amount to nothing but the paranoia of a certain weak, opportunistic, characterless personality. Those who say that human values, kindness, loyalty, compassion and mercy have no counterpart whatsoever in international relations, or in politics in general, are merely contributing a little more "sickness" to politics.

Indeed, today there was a new, effective and fruitful path of politics that Turkey discovered through the Palestinian cause. This virtuous path, which no one gave sufficient credit because it was thought to be invalid in politics, is a politics that will shed a new light before humanity and deeply affect the current structure of the status quo in the world. That this politics finds an echo in every part of the world at once, that Turkey can suddenly display tremendous diplomatic influence such as it has never had in its history, also shows the great vacuum or expectation that this style of politics has captured.

It is quite normal that, as Turkey advances along this path, there are those who confront it with its own internal contradictions and inconsistencies and call it to consistency. Of course, a Turkey that has taken up the Palestinian problem cannot be expected to acquiesce to an equivalent contradiction in its own country. But let us, even if we accept that some of these PKK-Hamas comparisons are sincere, see that many of them are made not so much to support the just causes of the Kurds as to legitimize what Israel does to the Palestinians.

They use images of Kurdish children throwing stones to dilute the justness of the Palestinian Intifada, and then try to engrave in minds that the PKK and Hamas, and therefore Israel and Turkey, are the same.

May they fear God.

The history of Turkey's relationship with the Kurds of course deserves criticism in every respect, but there is no occupying state here, and for quite some time now the Kurdish question has been put on the road to a solution on a democratic basis. Today, very clearly, the party that wants the continuation of this problem is the very organization that claims to represent the Kurdish people. Until yesterday the denialist policy constituted an excuse for Kurdish violence, but for at least five or six years this denial has been replaced by an open recognition and a will to solve.

It has now become unnecessary for those who speak about the Kurdish question today to remain insistently stuck on injustices committed earlier. They need to see that the situation that formed the just ground for violence has now changed. Today the only obstacle to making the solution more lasting and sustainable is the very violence that the PKK itself, incomprehensibly and with interesting timing, resorts to.

This violence tries to keep alive the impression that no problem has been solved, but this is not fair. Comparing a Kurd living with dignity in his own country with the citizenship rights guaranteed by the state under the constitution to a Palestinian whose everything has been seized by Israel adds nothing to the Kurd's rightness. For those who know, know well enough. Yet on the contrary, this comparison ends up lending legitimacy to Israel's Zionist and terrorist policy. Turkey's Kurdish people are too prudent to fall for this insidious comparison, and never see themselves in Turkey as the Palestinian vis-à-vis Israel; they have shown that they do not, through their high participation in the Mavi Marmara both as passengers and as martyrs.

My longtime friend from Siirt, İbrahim Bilgen, and most of the other martyrs, as Kurds, chose their side and gave the necessary answer to this comparison.