The angry Kurdish youth to come

There is an expression that has been frequently cited by Kurdish politicians for quite some time. Ali Bayramoğlu cited it again in his latest column: "A generation that has seen hatred among the Kurds, an angry generation, is coming. If the state does not move quickly and solve this problem, it will be very difficult to deal with the new generation."

For Kurdish politicians this is in fact not an observation but a posture. It is the language of an excuse for an attitude of evading responsibility. We hear other forms of expression of this discourse as well. For example, one of the similar arguments that BDP politicians resort to as an excuse for their own hawkish rhetoric is that they can now hardly restrain the young Kurds.

In fact, if it remained merely an excuse for evading responsibility, it could be met with a measure of understanding. The typology of the politician who does not want to take risks and does not push his own limits is not one we are unfamiliar with. Perhaps this style of politics is one of the most prevalent habitus of Turkish politics.

But is this really what is going on? Are the BDP politicians, enduring great sacrifices, calming and controlling young Kurds who would otherwise do worse and stage greater outbursts? Frankly, if they are truly playing such a role, the BDP people deserve to be appreciated, both for sparing the country worse conditions of violence and for sparing young Kurds disasters that ultimately cost them their own lives.

Unfortunately, however, this is not what is going on. This very discourse of the BDP people has much more prioritized using "angry young Kurds," who of course exist as a reality, as a trump card and an opportunity on the political ground. So-called in the name of calming those young people, it threatens with those young people, trying to treat the fire that will burn at the cost of those young people's lives as an opportunity for political gain. In doing so, it incites those young people even more.

To this day we have not heard from BDP politicians a voice that shows young Kurds other ways against going up to the mountains, that proposes to them living and letting live, instead of dying and killing, as a more virtuous, more attractive option. The capacity of those "angry young Kurds" to die and to kill is not a worry for the BDP people but an opportunity, a trump card, a capital.

In the end, the PKK is today running incredible tactics to draw more young Kurds to the mountains. There are no angry, hate-filled young people who are barely restrained; there are poor young Kurds who are forced to the mountains, abducted to the mountains and ultimately sent to their deaths. Instead of conveying through this route a message that a politician could easily deliver with a single statement, the blood of those young Kurds forcibly taken to the mountains is made into ink. Could the messages conveyed through the blood those young Kurds needlessly shed not in fact be conveyed much better by BDP deputies in Parliament?

We understand, the PKK does not authorize the BDP to convey this message. The BDP, for its part, does not engage even in maneuvers through which it could expand its own field, if it wished. We say if it wished, because, setting aside the expectations about its calling the PKK terrorist, let it not call it so, but it is not without means that would further increase the chance of politics, of life, of negotiation against the PKK's tutelage. Expecting it to use those means does not mean expecting too much of the BDP. Instead of doing this, by making a rhetoric of "angry young Kurds" it is busy inciting young Kurds further, showing the way to the mountain to the human resource of which the PKK appears these days to be much more in need.

In fact, at the point reached today on the political ground, there remains no area of problem that would require a single young Kurd to put his life on the line. There remains no factor that has so far spoiled the atmosphere of solution on the part of the state. The conditions voiced for laying down arms remain a drop in the ocean compared with what has been done so far. The paradigm of the state in Turkey that gave rise to the Kurdish problem has changed radically. Everything that was impossible under the old paradigm has become open to solution under the new paradigm. The Kurdish problem, which was entirely closed to politics under the old paradigm, has been opened to politics to the fullest extent.

From this point on, presenting the state, still under the AK Parti's administration, as if it were being obstinate, acting as though nothing at all had been done, stems, in the mildest terms, from a dearth of understanding, and in more realistic terms, unfortunately, from provocation. That the PKK or the BDP are deliberately uncomprehending and feign incomprehension so as not to get close to a solution is understandable, but it is impossible to understand these provocative approaches of the so-called democrat-liberal neutrals.

That the prime minister, who one night was proclaimed the hero who saved Turkey, is suddenly shown as having surrendered to nationalism because of some of his reactions to the outrageous words of the PKK or the BDP politicians shows, unfortunately, not only the imbalance of these approaches; it also shows their imprudence, their dearth of understanding and their inadequacy in analyzing the world. God forbid, whoever takes it upon himself to make these pens his guide, no balance nor direction will be left to him.

The prime minister announced that, if necessary, he could immediately send the MİT undersecretary to İmralı to assess the possibility of an end to the bloodshed. He also implied that he could do more. It is a separate problem altogether that those who only a few days ago wrote that the AK Parti and Erdoğan had lost all their will or capacity for change and had surrendered to nationalism, when they hear once again these approaches that display how wide a political margin the prime minister can keep, do not think that they owe a very heavy apology, let alone to him or his party, to their readers who follow them.

Yes, in fact the prime minister and the AK Parti have displayed from the beginning an approach that keeps the political margin as wide as possible. This breadth does not, of course, require bending and bowing politically to the other side, surrendering unconditionally to their maximalist demands. If everyone in Turkey kept the political margin equally wide, we would probably have overcome many of our problems differently.