The interlocutor beyond the PKK

On the Kurdish issue, the saying "one talks to, and treats as an interlocutor, whoever one is in conflict with" has been pointed to as a line that, though people, and especially the state and statist circles, arrived at it with difficulty, has been the right one from the start. Even if legal steps that will solve the Kurdish issue are taken, even if these steps meet with goodwill among the Kurdish people, you cannot finish this issue without addressing the forces that have taken on the representation of this issue and that have gained an existence for themselves through its existence.

This force holds a war machine in its hands and constantly threatens to keep that war machine running. What this force demands is power, and the ruthless means it resorts to merely to obtain power sufficiently show why power cannot be handed over to it. But at the same time the hostages this force holds must be rescued.

From a certain point on, the PKK issue resembles a hostage rescue operation. It keeps trying to convey that if what it wants is not carried out, more blood will flow. Improving the situation of the people whose rights it claims to defend, and giving certain guarantees in favor of that people, is not enough either. It wants something for itself too, but it wants too much, it wants so much that it cannot be given. By proving that it can set ambushes wherever and whenever it wishes and kill people, it uses this capability as a threat for the fulfillment of its demands.

The state's first priority is to rescue the hostages. If possible, to move toward a solution by also meeting the reasonable demands of those who hold the hostages.

Over the KCK arrests, BDP's Gülten Kışanak reacts by saying "The AKP has gone on a Kurd hunt!" We have touched before on this language, which establishes an absolute identity between the Kurds and the PKK. This is a very dangerous and cheap language of politicization. With this language aimed at agitating the Kurdish people, she in fact turns her own people into a shield for herself. With a by no means manly move, she drives the Kurdish people in front of all the anger that will be directed at herself.

Yet the KCK is the organization that represents the PKK in urban actions. It is a structure that organizes the terror incidents in the cities, establishes the PKK's tutelage over elected municipalities, extorts protection money from people, and includes every kind of mafia activity. If it were of those who truly want to lay down arms and do politics, it would be most welcome. The PKK's politicization is, whatever anyone says, nothing to be feared or avoided. But politicization does not mean using the instruments of politics as well, without giving up one's armed force and means. In the name of a so-called "Kurdish or PKK reality," every sort of lawlessness, extortion, seizure, threat and armed tutelage cannot be tolerated. If the PKK is really going to be politicized, let it be politicized, everyone is now waiting for that. But the KCK structure and its activities are not politicization but the taking of politics hostage by the PKK, and however much popular support there may be behind it, it is unacceptable.

The BDP, which puts forward the KCK operations as the cause of the lack of a solution, at the same time wants the KCK's notorious and widely known terror acts to be met with reason and understanding as part of political activities. Perhaps in return the state, too, acquires the right to demand that its own operations be met with understanding while continuing negotiations. It is of course not pleasant to say, but if we follow this logic, the BDP should meet this with understanding as well.

After the state spent years dallying over whether to treat an Öcalan, a Kandil, a BDP as an interlocutor, when it finally came to the point of treating whoever is there, whoever truly wants it, as an interlocutor, it was also realized that within the PKK or Kurdish politics there is in fact no one with the authority to solve the problem, to produce a solution. This is in fact an indicator that the movement as a whole has lost its own control.

Did not the BDP members who today place having Öcalan meet with his lawyers at the center of the Kurdish issue, only a short while ago, zealously serve the process that disregarded Öcalan's will? And was not this understood as a strong sign that at the final point of the solution Öcalan, too, would not be recognized as authorized?

If someone truly authorized on behalf of the PKK were found, the government would no longer hesitate to treat him as an interlocutor, but who is the interlocutor? Whom is Turkey in fact fighting when we say the PKK?

This question inevitably takes us beyond the PKK.

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MOTHER TENZİLE'S PRAYER

When my dear friend Aydın Bolat, the Secretary General of SDAV, recently lost his mother, on my condolence visit he said something that moved me very much, as one who was orphaned at sixty: "I have lost a source of prayer," Aydın abi had said.

Mothers surely mean a great deal to their children, but they are also an extremely important source of prayer. Mothers are those who offer the most sincere, most selfless, most heartfelt prayers. Mother Tenzile must have been a very powerful source of prayer for her son. Those prayers must have propelled her son toward successes that upended all the calculations of this world through what he did. Without those prayers, what are we before God?

Only those who know the "prayer" made behind his back know that what the Prime Minister has achieved in this world is not simply the result of intellect, strategy and tactics.

Behind what he has done, above all else, is Mother Tenzile's prayer.

Now that source of prayer has reached the source and destination of all prayers, the Supreme Mercy. Of course, this does not show that the source has dried up.

Prayer is a spring whose source is watered by the Almighty Creator Himself and which reaches those who are destined for it. Among politicians past and present, I do not think there is anyone who has benefited from this source as much as Erdoğan.

My late grandmother had a one-word prayer that she loved and repeated dozens of times a day for everyone and of course for herself: she used to say "alel-iman." That is, "May God make our end be in faith."

I wish God's mercy upon Prime Minister Erdoğan's beloved mother who has passed away, and graceful patience to his family.