The Prime Minister's "Eastern Rallies" say more than that "one word"

The "eastern rallies" that the Prime Minister has attended in Siirt, Van, Kars and Hakkari are taking place with a discursive content that will reframe everything said so far on the Kurdish question and the new constitution. In the coming days he will add Batman and Diyarbakır to these rallies. What he will say at these rallies already seems clear from what he said at the Eastern Rallies held so far. That these rallies are being held with such magnificent turnouts has become more important than the content of the rallies.

In these regions the AK Parti represents a governing power charged with maintaining public order and responsible for protecting all of the country's balances. The BDP, its only rival on the political ground in the region, is a party that makes all its calculations on the disruption, rather than the preservation, of public order and security. The authority of government, by its nature, while providing public order and security, must abide by the law, human rights and the criteria of democratization, and bears the responsibility of taking all measures for this.

The BDP, however, has built its struggle entirely on the destruction of the existing security ground, and because of the illegal forces with which it is in solidarity, it bears no responsibility to abide by the law, by human rights or by democratization. The actual counterpart in the region of the democratization, peace and human rights that it never stops mentioning is the sacrifice of all these values, in its own sphere of power, to organizational interest. Whenever it wishes, it has shutters forcibly closed throughout the city, can restrict tradesmen's freedom of trade, and prevents people from being transported to rally grounds. While demanding human rights, democracy, freedom and autonomy for itself, it regards usurping the rights of others of every kind as a natural right.

Even so, the level of turnout at the Prime Minister's eastern rallies shows how insistent the people are on not surrendering to PKK tutelage. It also shows that, on the other hand, the Prime Minister is not in a retreat or withdrawal on the Kurdish question, but, on the contrary, is extremely insistent...

I do not know what effect the words at the rallies will have on those who greet every word he utters on the subject with an ill-omened remark like "Here it is! OK, the opening is over, the Prime Minister has turned to nationalist discourse again, the denialist attitude is back," or sometimes with an enthusiasm as if it were good tidings. But there is one thing we know: Erdoğan, as Mustafa Karaalioğlu also determined and expressed very well, is developing, with regard to the Kurdish question, his own language of solution, very different from the language of the BDP or the PKK. He sees that in this matter the PKK or the BDP are in an attitude not of facilitating the solution but of sabotaging it. Despite the strangely obstructive and sabotaging attitudes they display against the opening, Erdoğan, contrary to what people try to make appear, is not abandoning the opening, but is bringing into play a broader language that will force them too toward a solution. In this context, he makes his own interpretation of the words "There is no Kurdish question, there are problems of our Kurdish brothers" against the zealous effort to declare it "a renewed denial of the Kurdish question."

Meanwhile, it is seen that Öcalan, or the will acting by using Öcalan, is still waiting for symbolic signs in order to pull the problem into its own domain and take the Prime Minister captive. Whether the call made to the Prime Minister with the words "A single word of the Prime Minister can end the war" truly wants to end the war, or is meant to get tangled once again around the Prime Minister's feet, is a question that must be dwelt upon.

Frankly, the Prime Minister has already said, and is saying, much more than that word, much more openly, at the Eastern rallies and indeed on many previous occasions. Is there a famine of understanding, far from grasping this? Or, on account of this word, which they obviously cannot take literally, will they turn to the Kurdish people and say, "Look, we made every sacrifice we could, but the Prime Minister considered even such a simple gesture to stop the bloodshed too much," and thereby create a pretext to shed more blood?

I am amazed at the minds of those who present this as "a tremendous sacrifice from Öcalan." How is it not understood that this is clearly a simple trick to impose their own language on the Prime Minister? On what matter has this language inspired confidence up to now, that it should be relied upon from here on? Unfortunately, the most violent and least trustworthy opponents of the opening so far have been only those who speak this language.

The Prime Minister, in any case, is promising that the agenda after 12 June will be a new constitution, and that it will contain the highest and most advanced democracy, harboring no prohibition, no "but," and no denial or discrimination. He is announcing this now in order to ask his voters for support.

As a political party leader, is it possible for the Prime Minister to make a greater promise than this? If he cannot get this support from his voters, perhaps he can look for a path of agreement with the other parties on these matters. Whether those parties, first of all the BDP, would give support is a separate problem. If what they have done is a guarantee of what they will do, we can expect the BDP at the outset to oppose it and to make no contribution at all to the making of a new constitution. What remains is that, to be able to give this word, the Prime Minister would have to be a sultan above every legal restriction.

Well... of course everyone knows that he is not and cannot be a sultan. Then how is he expected to give that "single word" that could be expected only of a sultan? Why is attention not drawn instead to the more realistic paths of democracy and politics, and why is no stand taken against deviations from those paths?