Foreign substances thrown into the ballot box from off the field

During the election process, arguments, theses, projects and promises compete on one side. But it is thought that nobody gives, or will give, credit to these elements, so foreign substances are being thrown in from outside the field to influence the result, in the confidence that they will determine it.

The two most important substances are the escalation of violence and the tapes. There is no doubt that both aim at obtaining the same result. As for the violence, whether it is caused by the PKK, which declared a cessation of actions, beginning to show up in the mountains with fully equipped personnel and staging attacks from time to time, or by the military staging operations against PKK members who are innocently strolling in the mountains in such a state, it no longer matters at this point. In the end, through a mutual dance they together succeed in making black clouds hover over the election atmosphere.

The BDP members do not miss a single invitation to violence; to every attack launched from here or there they respond by turning the streets into battlefields several times over. They act as if they do not know what kind of plan these invitations could be the product of, and at every opportunity try to portray the AK Parti as a hawk against the Kurdish question. Either they really do not analyze what is happening, though it is very clear that they are not that naive. Or the only remaining possibility is that they too know where these invitations to violence come from and are constantly standing ready.

The killing of 12 PKK members on the border is truly a strange, incomprehensible, illogical operation. As the details of the operation come out, all the elements of the provocation fall into place. The extreme disrespect shown to the corpses of the killed PKK members and to their relatives also now clearly shows that there was a deliberate intent in the incident. But developments also make one ask this question: what is the organization, which had declared a cessation of actions, doing at the zero point of the border with so many armed and equipped personnel? Which unit of the organization drove them there to do what? Were these personnel making preparations for an attack like Dağlıca and Aktütün, or were they thrown from the center of Kandil in front of the military as sacrificial victims to create these dreadful scenes?

These are the questions on everyone's mind in the region I have been touring for the past few days.

At stages in the Kurdish question where quite high thresholds have in fact been crossed, the paradigm has changed and a considerable distance has been covered, the way the PKK escalates violence is increasingly provoking a serious reaction against the PKK in the region. This is one of the reasons the Prime Minister's Siirt rally took place with the defiantly high turnout of Kurdish voters.

The pressure that the BDP, which takes part in the election with the PKK's armed coercive elements behind it, exerts on the political activities of other parties in the region is very clear, and because of this they are secretly gathering an intense antipathy. Escalating violence is the most effective way of maintaining their pressure within their own neighborhoods. In certain ballot-box districts they have profiled everyone, house by house, voter by voter, and detect a possible search for an alternative in advance and take their measures. These measures take the form of pressure, threats and intimidation.

Vahdettin İnce, one of the valued Kurdish intellectuals, began his piece titled "How Can the Wound of Language Heal" in the Açık Görüş supplement of the newspaper Star with an instructive observation: "The greatest atrocities witnessed by history have largely been committed at the hands of the victims of the past."

The PKK-BDP line, identifying itself with all Kurds and deriving for itself a right to compensation from every kind of Kurdish victimhood, makes other elements in the region suffer many times over everything it complains of on the part of the state. Because they see themselves as the natural and sole representatives of the Kurds, they try to establish a monopoly over the definition of Kurdishness, defining other Kurds as either "devshirme," "traitor," "the AKP's Kurd," "assimilated Kurd" or "wrong Kurd," and self-appointedly produce for themselves a justification for a denying and annihilating violence against them.

Apart from the violence they exert on the work of other parties, the growing organization of Mustazaf-Der, which is not a party in the elections, is also a serious source of discomfort for the PKK members. Moreover, Mustazaf-Der is a formation that for about ten years has insisted on operating entirely in the civilian sphere, far from any armed activity. Association buildings are repeatedly subjected to Molotov cocktail attacks. Most recently, the association's deputy branch president in Yüksekova was killed by PKK members in the attack it suffered during the funeral ceremonies of the 7 PKK members killed in Tunceli. Prudent BDP circles, in view of the possible consequences of these incidents, got in touch with association representatives and offered condolences. The patient attitude the association has shown against all these attacks is earning appreciation from all Islamic groups in the region, but the provocation that a group among the PKK members themselves is persistently sustaining against them makes everyone think.

It is also thought-provoking that the PKK-BDP line, which does not hesitate to do to other Kurds far more of the denial and annihilation that it claims the state does to Kurds, has become even more irritable during the solution process.

They are in fact eagerly clinging to the idea that the opening is over, yet there is no sign in the Prime Minister's statements that the opening has been abandoned; on the contrary, it is clearly stated that the opening will continue in spite of them. The Prime Minister has his own language and discourse on the solution, and it was very well seen at both the Siirt and Van rallies that this language is by no means incomprehensible in the region.