The Kurds' DTK problem

Elections are the most important way, in a country, of lowering tensions that may exist, resolving disputes, concluding grievances, taking reproaches into account, and relaxing society in general. They are the moment when all the criticisms that may exist toward the government are again decided by the people, and judgment is given on how valid the claims of the debating sides are.

When going to elections, the tensions that exist under normal conditions are, at least in this period, carried to another level while awaiting the people's decision. How strange that in Turkey, for at least the past ten years, elections have never captured this atmosphere. Election processes take place in environments where tension is raised even further. The escalation of violence on the eve of every election has become almost a routine of elections. The aim of the funerals of martyrs scattered to every corner of Turkey by the terror that was escalated incomprehensibly before the 2007 election was giving away its perpetrator stark naked. Frankly, although everyone recognizes this perpetrator, it has still not been caught and neutralized, and the future of Turkish democracy will depend on whether the effective struggle against this by now thoroughly familiar perpetrator succeeds.

Today too, while moving quickly toward elections, it is evident that we as a society very early fell into the illusion that we would go to an election far from tension, as if going to a holiday. The PKK's "cessation of actions" decision was a word with no chance of being kept, looking at everything the PKK has done before all elections so far. It was not hard to guess that the PKK would find an excuse and set violence in motion, but the inclination of everyone to give credit even to this lie of the PKK was not mere optimism; it was a wish naively embraced in the name of longing for a comprehensive solution of the Kurdish question.

The democratic alliance that suddenly moved into action against the YSK's absurd decision not to let independent candidates into the election in fact expressed such strong support as to leave the BDP members no right to complain. That this alliance could form showed that the social ground for a solution of the Kurdish question in Turkey had grown much stronger than supposed. It was an alliance that truly made the statement "the Kurdish question has been solved" no longer an exaggerated one. Moreover, what was at issue here was not only the Kurdish question but BDP members who do not put distance between themselves and the PKK. Turkish public opinion displayed a democratic attitude that did not exclude from politics even politicians of this profile.

Although Turkish democracy passed this test astonishingly well, the BDP members clearly failed it, because instead of calming their already sufficiently strained masses they displayed an attitude that provoked them further and stirred up hate speech. Moreover, they did everything they could to keep alive the sedition awakened by the YSK. Then the YSK reversed its decision, but what was left in hand were the images of a shameful wave of violence and İbrahim's life.

The statements made by co-chair Aysel Tuğluk as a result of the DTK meeting are of the kind that makes one ask which side of them to correct. "The Kurds have given their verdict. If it cannot be done with the state, our people will build their own democracy and are organized enough to know how to live within this system they have built themselves."

Setting aside what kind of threat to our democracy the mental world and manner of doing politics of these BDP members contains, this also gives away, in an instructive way, how they imagine the Kurdish people. Tuğluk evidently thinks that the BDP and the PKK represent all Kurds. When she says "The Kurdish people have given their verdict," she speaks in the name of the whole Kurdish people. If so, if she can speak in the name of the Kurds, who number 17-20 million, why does she enter the elections as independent candidates? A BDP that speaks in the name of the Kurdish people should have no threshold problem. Yet both the way of being a candidate and the roles it plays in election processes show that it knows very well the level of the organic relationship between itself and the Kurdish people.

Moreover, the Kurdish people first of all know that the organization Tuğluk speaks of is the PKK's organization, and that this organization is extremely far from the values and the troubles of the Kurdish people, and is an organization ready to set fire to all of Turkey, first of all the Kurdish people, for its own survival. From this organization only fascism, massacre and racism come out for the Kurds. This has no benefit for the Kurds.

The Kurdish question really has been solved. The political, psychological and social obstacles to the Kurds taking their place in this country as citizens equal to everyone, with their own language, identity and dignity, have been removed. Other arrangements to be made have only reached a horizon that can be handled within the political ground's own routine. It no longer needs even to be called the Kurdish question. But unfortunately the Kurds' PKK problem is a real problem.