Democratic autonomy: "Is this it?"

However the MGK or the General Staff may have understood it, a very different ground of understanding has formed in Diyarbakır regarding the mother-tongue demand. No one understands the mother-tongue demand as removing Turkish as the official language or creating two official languages. On the contrary, what is wanted is that Kurdish be added to the state's service provision and education system in regions where Kurds live in large numbers.

Kurds, who today travel everywhere in the world and have the opportunity to make comparisons, see that meeting this demand is not difficult at all and that there are countless examples of it in many parts of the world. Moreover, in the region's historical past, and even in its present, the practice of education in different languages has not been absent, and arranging this is likewise not impossible. In the madrasas that still manage to stand in the region, education is conducted in three languages at once, and the students raised there live all the blessings of linguistic richness.

That a demand as simple as this should be met with such harsh statements or political opposition is what is truly dangerous, and what may, after a while, cause these demands no longer to remain at this level.

The democratic autonomy project brought to the agenda by the DTK, on the other hand, is again found highly problematic by everyone. Whose autonomy will the envisaged autonomy be? The Kurds', the region's, the party's, or the organization's?

What is envisaged in the draft text opened to discussion is nothing other than a demand that an organization that has organized all Kurds, from the street to the neighborhood, from the village to the city, be left to its own devices. There is no explanation of what will happen to those among the Kurds who object to this organization. Will there be room for opposition in such a structure, for instance? Or will an "integrated, fused, classless, privilege-free mass" containing all the elements of a Kurdish Kemalism have been created?

Frankly, the "democratic autonomy" dream of the DTK or the BDP signifies nothing other than a demand for a people and land abandoned to its own mercy. It itself will be autonomous, but all that this autonomy will leave to the people it governs is a totalitarian and authoritarian regime. And its name will be "democratic autonomy."

We have given up on saying that, as an organization, it does not represent the Kurds or that it derives all its power from armed pressure and threat, but by what measure of reason and conscience are we to weigh its demands to be the sole actor of politics on the grounds that it has agreed to lay down arms and come down to the plain? Frankly, is this the model envisaged in the draft presented as the democratic autonomy project? The BDP or PKK being recognized as the sole actor of the region's politics and the administration of the region being granted to it as an iqta' under the envisaged autonomy model.

We had asked, will there be room for opposition in such a structure, for instance. In the typical single-party-era society of an "integrated, fused, classless, privilege-free mass" that is supposed to be created, different voices will be characterized as "sedition," discredited by being called either "traitor to the homeland" or "collaborator" or "pro-government," and if that is not enough, eliminated by reserve forces that are not legally required to answer to anyone.

Leave aside the very distant ones; let us recall the threats and insults previously directed at respected names of Kurdish politics such as Osman Baydemir and Orhan Miroğlu. The attitudes displayed in recent days toward Galip Ensarioğlu, the president of the Diyarbakır Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and Emin Aktar, the president of the Bar Association, both of whom inspire respect in everyone with their intellectual accumulation, are typical examples of this "fused mass" mentality.

The campaign of slander, lynching and execution applied lastly against Assoc. Prof. Dr. Mazhar Bağlı showed what kind of moral corruption can be risked for the sake of creating this fused mass. It was known to everyone that Bağlı had drawn the anger of this circle because of his comments on the KCK operation. What he said could be criticized, and indeed was being criticized.

In a text placed on the PKK's website FıratNews, based on some rumors, it was written that Bağlı had harassed some female students. No evidence was presented on this, but, as if the matter had been proven and settled, this time the university was accused of not conducting the necessary investigation. As though that were not enough, crowds organized by the same circle held a demonstration in front of the university with banners, protesting on the basis of this fabricated news the university administration, the government and Bağlı alike, taking on the role of a complete executioner of dignity.

The university administration and the prosecutor's office, by announcing that, contrary to what was claimed in the news in question, no complaint has been made about Bağlı either today or in the past, in fact explained the nature of the incident sufficiently, but what happened was done to a university faculty member who was subjected to a lynching of his dignity because of his different views in the very region that is the subject of the "democratic autonomy" demand.

In the words of the esteemed Diyarbakır intellectual of conscience Vahdettin Bahadır, "a person can try to be upright by watching his own conduct, but there is nothing he can do against slander."

Was the first thing to be done by the İHD, whose duty is above all to oppose people becoming victims of such extrajudicial executions, to investigate this incident thoroughly, or to give credence in advance to a piece of gossip that was clearly a matter of political revenge and join the lynch mobs calling for Bağlı's head?

In fact, while the road to the so-called democratic autonomy project is still short, let us ask now, recalling all the examples given above, the question we should ask: Is this it?