This is how we entered the new year

We closed the year 2011, which went not badly until its last days, "not badly" is an understatement, which went so well it was almost spoiling us, badly, under the atmosphere of the tragedy that took place in Uludere. And just as we closed the year, so we have opened it. Instead of entering the new year with the excitement of a new constitution, we are entering it with minds intoxicated, or made foolish, by this event.

We hope this state of intoxication does not last too long, but the truth is that the way we have reacted to the Uludere incident from the moment it happened shows how fragile the characteristics of our being a nation are.

Everyone in fact knows that the road to peace is a long, narrow and rugged road; that all sorts of traps are set along this road; and how many original and tempting games are in the satchels of those who want to sabotage this road. Intrigue never ends in Byzantium. Let us not forget that the trick is never lacking among the deep centers that have ruled over Turkey for decades. These centers, whose performance we watch these days with amazement and as a lesson, from its Menemen to its Dersim, its Kahramanmaraş to its Sivas, its Bingöl to its Çukurca, and whose ways of working we have almost memorized, have not entirely left the field. Every day they can come up with a brand-new trick and confuse our minds.

Truly, their job is to confuse minds, and the job of responsible people should be to be aware of these games and not fall for them, should it not? The way to fill the gaps that arose in this event is to cling, at all costs, to good faith, fairness and justice. From the moment the wrongness of what was done came to light, one should have apologized without losing any time and embraced the funerals and the mourning. In the end, even if there was no intent, one way or another there emerged the image of a state that fell apart as a result of its own doing and could not pull itself together for a long time. This atmosphere does not tolerate a vacuum. Although it is extremely ugly that the PKK, which under normal conditions excludes them as "village guards" and harbors enmity toward them, immediately threw its flag over the funerals and claimed them, it is an ugliness that fills that vacuum, even one drawn by that vacuum.

We do not yet have enough information about the nature of the Uludere incident and how it happened. How was this mistake made? How did these smugglers, known to be against the PKK and to be village guards, and who generally do their work in groups of three or four, cross in such a large crowd? How did the intelligence that they were PKK members come through? In what ways was this intelligence evaluated, and how did an irreversible operation order come about? After operations that had been going quite successfully for some time, how was such a great error suddenly fallen into? Answering these and many similar questions requires a detailed, transparent and of course swift investigation.

So far so good, but for some reason our instincts to date tell us that those who rush their stance and determine their sides before anything is yet known should also be viewed with suspicion. Those who, in the face of such events, take a categorical stance without leaving any margin of caution, especially in favor of fighting, are either accomplices or poor wretches who have fallen for the incitement of those who staged the event.

This relationship presents a far more striking and instructive scene especially in the manner of claiming the funerals. For some reason, someone on social media reminded those who turn into a rally ground the funerals of people whom they could normally easily kill, of the events that took place at Kocatepe Mosque after the Council of State murder. When you decipher the code of that event, you will have deciphered the code of the Uludere incident too.

Just look: the BDP members, who have lost their ground of rightfulness quite a while ago and have nothing left to tell either the Turk or the Kurd, began speaking with this event as if they had drunk the water of life. As for the PKK, it seems to have found a way to suddenly extricate itself from the massacres of children, women and civilian Kurds it carried out more recently in Siirt, Batman and Silvan.

The BDP members, who cry "where is the state?" while clinging to the funerals like spoils, also openly threatened, through the mouth of Hasip Kaplan, those who would come here on behalf of the state. When he said "everyone around here is armed, let no one come here, Atalay or anyone on behalf of the state, we cannot hold anyone, there would be provocation," do you suppose he was aware, first of all, of what kind of insult he was delivering to the Kurds?

The etiquette of condolence is one of the traditions the Kurds know and practice best. When you demolish the infinite depth and wisdom contained in this tradition, you leave nothing of Kurdish culture. The villagers of Uludere therefore fulfilled the requirements of condolence properly. While they received the district governor, who made a condolence visit to them, with an hour-long welcome, as befits the dignity of the ancient Kurdish tradition, the armed men, provoked by Kaplan's words, tried to lynch the district governor. And it was the owners of the funerals, that is, the owners of hearts burned by the fire that fell, who rescued the district governor from those hands.

We entered the new year with this mindset; may God make its end good and bring us to our senses.