What is the meaning of growing irritable as the solution nears?

It is a fact that the Kurdish question in Turkey has been caught in a vicious circle for many years. The parties memorize their own claims against each other by repeating them over and over, and after a while they become unable to tolerate hearing anything but their own rote. They become unable to bear either the existence of the other side or listening to its claim. In such times there is a need for sensible, conscientious, embracing, wise mediators. For at this stage it already suits both sides all too well to bury the matter in the midst of "martyrdom literature" with heroic-epic rhetoric.

Do not be taken in by the BDP's or the PKK's use today of the possibility of resuming the war at every turn as blackmail. The warlords on the state side, who await the realization of this threat with eager eyes, are also quite ready and at their posts.

Let us give a simple figure. Of those who have died in the events so far, at least 40 thousand are Kurds. The number of those who lost their lives as police and soldiers is around 5-6 thousand. The Kurdish warlords who threaten to end the peace allude to the deaths of police and soldiers, but in the meantime they are also gambling with at least eight times as much Kurdish blood.

This is the future they promise the Kurds. For the sake of what? Whom do they hope to benefit, and with what? Does anyone know? With the wind they inflate by speaking of Kurdish honor, by setting Kurdish nationalism against the Turkish nationalism toward which they have so far filled themselves with hatred, how far can they drag the Kurds? Say they have dragged them; do they think that this future will earn the Kurds honor? If only someone who knows would tell us which nationalism has bestowed what kind of honor on whom, so that we too might know.

While saying let us solve the Kurdish question, trying to fill the Kurds with hatred is of benefit to no one. The Kurds need not the language of hatred but the language of peace, of true brotherhood. The support that the Kurdish question has secured so far has, for better or worse, created a ground of legitimacy. On this ground the need for a language in which both sides can better understand each other has made itself felt. Truly, when names such as Altan Tan and Sırrı Süreyya Önder ran from the BDP lists, I held a strong hope that they would fulfill such a function. Because on the Kurdish matter the system's denialist and annihilationist paradigm has changed, and politics, under the new paradigm, has accepted the problem as a problem; but it needs to learn all dimensions of the problem. Here an important role falls to the actors who will speak on behalf of the Kurds and explain their troubles in a suitable language. At this stage these names could develop a politics that truly makes stopping the flowing blood the first priority.

Alas! Both Tan and Önder are playing on entirely different strings. Instead of expressing the demands of their own masses, they do not refrain from using all their rhetorical ability and personal merits to anger them further and to stir their feelings of hatred further. To deepen the resentment and anger that already exist enough between the sides, they resort to ways that would occur to no one. They are, as it were, trying not to solve the problem but to deepen it further. They drag religion, which is for better or worse an advantage in solving the Kurdish question, into the middle of the conflict as well. The religious language they use is rapidly moving away from being reconciling, conciliatory and unifying. The confrontational language of the PKK, which comes from the left-atheist tradition and which jams and fails to function when it comes to religion, becomes unjammed and starts to work in the discourse of Tan and Önder. Even if Kurds and Turks diverged in every field, they could unite in the mosque and stand in the same row, and this, whatever had passed between them, was in any case a possibility for return. Yet with the Friday actions, this function of religion too is gradually eroding. I will not say anything about the religious meaning and validity of anyone's Friday prayer. What I am talking about here is entirely with what kind of mind and what kind of politics a dignified and possible peace is being pursued.

The language that Altan Tan most recently used to criticize the head of the Presidency of Religious Affairs shows, with a sad example, into what kind of vortex of emotion this politics has been caught. Starting from the moment of silence during the ceremony of Prof. Mehmet Görmez, who went to Diyarbakır on the occasion of Kutlu Doğum week, he cried out that Görmez "issued a fatwa for Turkish martyrs" (whatever "fatwa" has to do with it here!) but committed "baseness" by saying nothing for the Kurdish martyrs. When I first heard this statement, in which Tan had overshot his own intention in every respect, I really wanted to hear that he had not said it. The days that have passed without this statement being denied showed that it had really been uttered.

On this page we have written for years about what kind of abusive discourse the secular elites who carried on this dirty war ran through martyrdom literature. On this the Turkish public has in fact come quite a long way. As this distance was being covered, was it really necessary for Altan Tan to confront us with a "Kurdish martyrs" literature as well? Does he truly believe that those PKK members have really become martyrs? What is he trying to prove by resorting to this literature? What is it about Sabahat Tuncel that is not enough for the BDP?

Moreover, in Diyarbakır Görmez had in fact given truly incredibly courageous and deep messages for the solution of the Kurdish question. He had said, "Regarding our Kurdish brothers, the problem cannot be solved with brotherhood rhetoric alone. It is necessary to emphasize the law of brotherhood." As if that were not enough, reminding that it is commanded in the Holy Qur'an that "the difference of your languages is among the signs of God," he had said, "Denying this verse is the same as denying another sign God has given us."

While getting so angry at Prof. Görmez over words he did not say, is Tan trying to push what he did say out of sight? Why? Does this constructive language disturb Altan Tan, who knows God's verses so well? What is the meaning of radicalizing this much as the solution draws near and bringing the language of non-politics and anger into the field? There is only one simple answer to this. Some people really do not want the solution. We already knew this very well, but it is very sad that one of those some people is Altan Tan.

One way or another, in the end, God willing, we will solve the Kurdish question. But solving the problems produced by those who grow irritable as the solution draws near may not be so easy.