Turkey's "Kurdish Question" memory

The comprehensive report titled "From the Eastern Question to the Democratic Opening: Turkey's Memory of the Kurdish Question," prepared by the esteemed scholar Hüseyin Yayman, a member of the faculty of Gazi University, was presented at a cocktail reception organized by the SETA Foundation.

Turkey has no well-established tradition of looking at its own problems by way of probing memory. When we say memory, we mean a constant in which certain feelings that arose in the depths on some occasion and in a single moment are frozen so as to be considered valid for all times. Neither the before nor the after of this "moment" may matter to us.

Yet like every moment, the moment that made us adopt the Kurdish question as a problem has a before and an after. When we go there, we have the chance to face the real dimensions of the problem. When we do so, it becomes possible to face a little the problem but rather more ourselves. We better understand that problems are not eternal and everlasting things but defects that can be overcome and even must be overcome. But for this we need to make flexible, to move beyond, that constant we have frozen in our minds.

In this framework Hüseyin Yayman has done a very beneficial piece of work. He has probed our memory and recorded what Turkey's state or civil segments have thought from the beginning about the Kurdish question, which we live with every day and which has become part of our lives. He has done this by gathering together all the reports written to date on the Kurdish question by the different units of the state (military, government, state), political parties and civil society formations (70 in total), and carrying out a discourse analysis of the context in which all these reports were formed and the emphases they made period by period. How many reports have been written on the subject, but at the same time how far from diagnosing the matter they have kept... Even calling the matter by its name took quite a long time despite so many reports...

When Turkey's memory of the Kurdish question is probed, it is seen that the most reports on the problem were written by the CHP people, yet the policies that most deepened the problem instead of solving it, and even made it unsolvable, were also implemented by the CHP people. Accompanied by the denialist policies applied in the single-party period, the problem referred to as the Eastern question was approached purely as a public-order problem. Approached this way, it went on carving deep pains of the loss of children into the "memory of the Kurdish people."

The DP did not handle the problem with a public-order logic but brought large public works and development investments to the region. The normalization achieved in the DP period was reflected in the Kurdish question as well. The fact that best sums up the DP period is that some of the figures exiled in the single-party period became DP deputies.

Despite the civilianization discourses that increased their influence in politics in the 1990s, the political and military elements became more intertwined in facing the problem, and the problem was practically surrendered, in all its aspects, to the security paradigm. The harsh measures applied in this period caused, in later years, a problem greater than the problem itself.

The democratization efforts begun in the 2000s gained a new momentum with the AK Party government. With the 'Democratic Opening' process begun by the AK Party, the Kurdish question entered the country's agenda in a way never before seen in history, and society began for the first time to face the problem to this extent.

Yayman's comprehensive memory report is also a study showing where we have come from and where we have arrived in the solution of the problem. But it also identifies that the delay in reaching this point we have arrived at constitutes an entirely separate dimension of the problem:

"Because steps for a solution were not taken in time, the impact of the moves made in later years remains low, and for this reason the problem has gradually become chaotic." For that reason, all the distance covered today on the democratic opening can, because of the atmosphere caused by this lateness, create an opportunity for propaganda in the opposite direction.

As we come closer to the solution of the problem, it also becomes striking that the politicians who have made themselves exist through the Kurdish question radicalize further and move away from the field of solution. These politicians surely have their own memories, but taking a look at Turkey's Memory of the Kurdish Question should be a separate matter of conscientious responsibility for them.

Last week the Strategic Thinking Institute published a Kurdish Question report. This week, together with this SETA report, TÜSİAD's new draft Constitution, which also contains radical proposals on the solution of the Kurdish question, has been published.

While Turkey, with all its elements, shows how willing it is to solve problems, the further radicalization of Kurdish politicians and their forcing of the environment, contrary to this positive climate, is no sign of good for the Kurdish people.