Let us look from the East and Southeast too

I am following the reflections of the parliamentary debates on the 4+4+4 arrangement in the education system, and of its eventual enactment, from Malatya, Elazığ and Diyarbakır, where I have been, a day apart, for symposiums and conferences. First of all I must say that the claims that the public is uninformed about the content of this law and that the matter was presented as a fait accompli find no echo here whatsoever.

On the contrary, all segments of the public I was able to meet, talk with and listen to are following what is going on very closely and are far more familiar with the content of the arrangement than is assumed. With a few exceptions there is extraordinary support for the arrangement, and the speech of thanks and assessment that Prime Minister Erdoğan delivered in Parliament after the arrangement was also received with great appreciation. On this occasion it is strongly felt that Erdoğan has once again consolidated his leadership with this arrangement. I saw many people who, with tears in their eyes, opened their hands and prayed for the prime minister.

Meanwhile, I can say that his thanks to the MHP and BDP deputies who supported the arrangement were received with particular appreciation.

The two-day international symposium titled "The Direction of Global Change: Chaos or Justice?" organized by BİLSAM in Malatya took place with intense public interest and participation. Parallel to the performance of justice at home, the symposium witnessed an interesting quest in the demands and searches for justice at the global level among people in Turkey. Undoubtedly the alternative to justice is not always chaos, and chaos is sometimes a situation to be preferred over order for justice to be secured. For many orders that seem or feel solid can rest on great injustices. The orders of the world, old and new, have always rested on injustices, and demands for justice have required deep crises. At the symposium held amid these debates, the talks of names such as Alev Erkilet, Ömer Çaha, Mehmet Altan, Halilullah Rasuli and Ahmet Ertürk made for a veritable feast of thought.

In Elazığ too, at the panel organized by the Milel Nihal Journal-Association on the causes and consequences of the Arab Spring, with the association's founders as speakers, what stood out more than the speakers was the intense level of public participation in the panel and the questions. At the panel, chaired by Prof. Osman Özcan and held with Şinasi Gündüz, Alparslan Açıkgenç and Mahfuz Söylemez, the interest in the Arab Spring was actually aimed largely at understanding Turkey's situation and position vis-à-vis the developments of the new world. This interest and excitement in Anatolian cities toward politics, especially foreign policy, and the course of the world is remarkable in every respect.

KURDISH POLITICS CONFINED TO THE KURDISH QUESTION

After Malatya and Elazığ, going to Diyarbakır for a similar event, one can ascertain on the spot, while it is still fresh, significant differences in politics in its field of interest, its content and its style of approach.

In Diyarbakır too, the education arrangement holds a by no means negligible place on the agenda of ordinary people. The stance of the government and of the BDP deputies who supported the law is clearly approved, while the stance of those who did not support it is regarded as strange. Like the boycott practice in the referendum, this is a matter that is hard to explain, but this time the BDP's being divided makes it relatively easier.

Beyond ordinary people, in the approach of the segments more engaged with politics, a problem that is increasingly felt stands out. The Arab Spring is happening in the Middle East, a series of democratization steps are being taken in Turkey, the 4+4+4 arrangement is being made, a great many developments are happening in the world, but the political elites of this place remain indifferent and distant to all these matters. For them, no development and no politics that does not directly touch the Kurdish issue has any importance at all. That is why all the AK Parti's actions are ultimately evaluated only from the window of what they bring regarding the Kurdish question.

Frankly, this brings with it Kurdish politics being confined within the Kurdish question, and makes it excessively uninterested in, even alien to, any other sector of politics. This has a stultifying effect on Kurdish politics. Unfortunately, Islamist Kurds too cannot free themselves from this situation, and a world and political horizon as deep and broad as Islam can become shallow and narrow under the influence of this choice. Yet Muslim Kurds should have much more to say, both including the resolution of the Kurdish question and to this region and to the rest of the country.

Meanwhile, it must also be noted that the recent operations have created a very pessimistic atmosphere regarding peace and, however much the government argues otherwise, have fed and nurtured a perception of a "return to the nineties" among the public.

In truth, the government needs to see once again this reality: Terror does not end by killing terrorists. On the contrary, it feeds even more the ground on which it flourishes.

These data truly rest on sociological observation: Families never want their children to go to the mountain. Moreover, the families of those who go to the mountain also try everything they can to bring their children back. However, no matter how it is understood, it makes no difference: these families, both in the meantime and when their children's dead bodies arrive, embrace their children's cause all the more, and gradually become natural and inseparable parts of the organization. The organization also knows and sees this, and calculates that every violent incident will ultimately work for it. A few more Kurdish children have died; it does not care, since the survivors become its own anyway.

Even if we proceed from this alone, we understand that this path will not lead us to safety.