Will the BDP enter politics?

Last week, what was said in Neşe Düzel's interview with the BDP's Selahattin Demirtaş in the newspaper Taraf was read by many as a sign of the transition to a new era in Kurdish politics. Among the many things Demirtaş said over the course of the long interview, the remarks taken as signs of this transition were the distinction he drew between the PKK and the Kurdish question, his statement that they could be neither an authority nor an interlocutor on the PKK issue, and, by contrast, his claim that on the resolution of the Kurdish question the BDP is almost "the sole authority or interlocutor."

Truth be told, there is nothing new in Demirtaş's statements, just as there was nothing new in what was presented last month as the government's new solution package on the issue. First of all, the policy presented as the government's new solution package and summed up as "fighting terror, negotiating through politics" was merely a continuation or restatement of the policy that came into play right after the elections, in response to the Silvan attack.

As the leaked Oslo talks also clearly showed, the government had been prepared to take the risk of meeting with the organization at every level. Yet both the way the talks were leaked and the way the organization used them to buy time or create room for maneuver produced a problem of trust that cannot easily be repaired.

From now on, for the government, resorting to this path again has become a risk that has already been tried and that it would be unwise to take on once more. In this situation, there was no way left other than returning to the familiar methods for fighting terror and strengthening politics for the resolution of the problem.

In some respects this path looks like a return to the beginning, but the fact that it is being returned to after some paths have at least been tried makes the situation quite different. Today the organization, with its Kandil and its İmralı, is looking for ways to be treated as an interlocutor again, but it needs to re-establish the credibility it has lost. The BDP can of course play a role in re-establishing this trust, and indeed it should. Yet from Demirtaş's statements it appears that the BDP is evading the role it should or could actually play and writing itself another role: that of the sole owner and interlocutor of the Kurdish question.

In truth, the Kurdish question is, in general, a problem of Turkey, and its resolution is at the same time a matter of political competition among all political parties. If there is a problem, it does not have only one solution. Everyone can have a proposal for a solution to this problem. Politics is the arena of debate and competition among these proposals. What matters is that everyone enjoys enough freedom of expression to be able to discuss everything on this subject and even to propose everything.

If today we have arrived at a political ground on which every kind of proposal can be discussed, from democratic autonomy to education in the mother tongue, even to the demand for secession, then no one is left with any excuse to flee from politics. In that case, instead of regarding or presenting itself as the sole interlocutor of the Kurdish question, the BDP also has the option of developing and putting forward reasonable proposals capable of persuading the parties to a solution. Even if this is a somewhat difficult option, it is a political option in its own right.

Yet the BDP, thinking that this path will yield no result, displays a hopelessness from the outset. Thus, in order to lend force or weight to what it says, it chooses to feel, or to make others feel, the presence of the armed organization. This inevitably leads it to build its language as a language of blackmail, which leaves it, inescapably, far behind and outside today's political horizon.

Why should the other parties, the AK Parti first of all, need the BDP for the resolution of the Kurdish question? Does the BDP have an answer to this question that does not touch on its relationship with the PKK?

Within the AK Parti's horizon of democratization there is already a proposal for the resolution of both the Kurdish question and all human rights problems. Moreover, the AK Parti is able to do this without turning into a regional party or an exclusively Kurdish party. The AK Parti's solution package of course does not coincide one-to-one with the BDP's demands, but in persuading Kurds the AK Parti's solution package performs by no means worse than the BDP. Perhaps one difference is Kurdish nationalism: the BDP plays to that nationalism, whereas the AK Parti seeks to go beyond every kind of nationalism. This is evidently more attractive to Kurds and Turks, the great majority of whom are neither Kurdish nationalists nor Turkish nationalists.

Of course, the choice of nationalism is also a political option, and it is an option that is entirely legitimate to defend in an environment of free political competition. A party's focusing on a particular problem and identifying its very existence with that problem is, ultimately, also an option. However, it is a separate fact that, to the extent a party identifies with these problems, both its field of vision and its horizon of solutions narrow considerably.

That is why, when the BDP truly chooses politics, it will need to build a more encompassing language that can persuade both Turks and Kurds at the same time.

But as we said, this is a somewhat more difficult path, yet when it is achieved, its fruit is far more beneficial and blessed.