The corpses of the PKK members

The justification for the BDP actions that spilled onto the streets again last week was the failure to hand over the PKK dead killed in clashes, or the ill treatment applied to the bodies of those handed over. The BDP members, in fact, have no difficulty at all producing justifications for demonstrations at other times. But if this time's claims are true, and eyewitnesses confirm it, we must accept that we are facing a very serious human problem.

The families of PKK members who died in clashes could not receive their children's bodies for a long time, and when they did, they saw that their children's bodies had been subjected to serious destruction even after death. It is impossible not to rebel in the face of such a sight. One of the most sacred values humanity has produced throughout its history is respect for the corpse of the dead, even if he is an enemy, whatever he died for, whether a criminal, a terrorist, or someone who fought against you. Even if he was fighting you, from the moment someone dies his account with you has been settled, and even if he is your enemy, to be buried properly is among the most sacred of every dead person's rights.

There is an ancient belief that the soul of a body that has not been treated and buried properly does not depart from this world and in the end returns to take revenge on whoever killed it and those who deemed such treatment fitting for it. You may think that the dark clouds that now and then hover over our social peace and disturb us all are connected with those souls. Unfortunately, in the history of this country there are a great many dead who were not buried properly. Because the rights of the dead were not observed, if only for this, a curse that will not let go of us hovers over us today.

The bodies of soldiers who fall as martyrs in the struggle against the PKK are buried with state ceremonies, as they deserve. Even though our state is secular, it officially grants them the title of "martyrdom," which belongs to the afterlife of religion. Meanwhile, news of terrorists killed in clashes is given as statistical figures. They are only numbers, and when one goes into a bit of detail, they are brigands who rebelled against the state merely for fantasy, and they deserve every kind of death anyway.

In recent days, Chief of the General Staff Gen. İlker Başbuğ, in response to the question of why the struggle against the PKK has failed, said that a total of 30,000 PKK members had been killed so far, and that, considering that the PKK's current number of armed militants is 6,000, this amounts to a total of 5 PKKs. Although there was a series of statements throughout his speech that broke scandal records, the statements about success measured against the number of PKK members killed require a separate consideration.

Might not the reason the PKK is somehow not ending today be precisely connected with this figure of 30 thousand militants killed? Just think of 30 thousand people together; it is like the destruction of the whole of a small city on a handful of land. And then distribute them across the cities of the Southeast. What will you see? A terrifying accumulation of war, in which at least one dead PKK member has fallen to nearly every neighborhood, every street, even every house. In fact, there could be no statement that confesses better why the Kurdish problem has become so identified with the PKK today.

The continuing armed clashes have increased the PKK's influence over the people with every passing day. Because the "PKK dead," pronounced with appetite after each operation as if giving statistical figures, have added a story of national heroism to the living areas of the region, and a Kurdish nationalism that is putting down ever deeper roots has been fed by the sum of these stories. However compassionately the state approaches, however far the government can take its opening policies, the people look at how these policies will be perceived even from within a hot fight that includes their own dead, whose total has reached 30 thousand, and their own children, whose continuation reaches hundreds of thousands. For this reason, as long as the atmosphere of conflict continues, the state has no chance whatsoever of winning over the Kurdish people. Because every clash keeps the painful memories gradually accumulating in the region always fresh and leaves every step toward a solution without result.

Especially speeding up operations at the most critical steps as though helping the PKK, resorting to practices such as provocation toward the PKK dead, forcing people to take the road to the mountain, means nothing other than never wanting this war to end.

When the PKK began its armed struggle, its number did not reach hundreds. Yet today we have a General Staff boasting of having finished off 5 PKKs on an average of 6000. Was it the PKK's own doing alone that a PKK membership not reaching a hundred rose five times to six thousand, or did the practices resorted to against it, for the sake of deterrence, have no share? How many more PKKs (that is, 6000 more Kurds) need to be destroyed for this business to end?

When we think together with Başbuğ's statements, the PKK that was destroyed 5 times reappearing, like a cyborg or a ghost, 5 more times with the same strength may stem from the fact that there is in fact no desire for the PKK to be finished off completely. Or perhaps that ancient belief is being confirmed, that the souls of PKK members whose dead were not respected during the clashes return each time, as a punishment, to take their bodies.