We got through this too, but…

We still have no definite information about why the 3 PKK women killed in Paris were killed. But the information laid out about the incident and the people killed, and the timing of the incident, allow a great many interpretations. On this occasion we learned many things about the relations of the murdered women, especially Sakine Cansiz, with Ocalan.

In fact, it was also stated on this occasion that none of the three women were particularly esteemed figures either within the organization or in the eyes of the BDP leadership. Nevertheless their funerals were claimed with great care by both the organization and the PKK, and these names, who could probably be considered marginal figures of the party during their lifetimes, suddenly became heroes of the organization.

Our political history is full of rich examples of instrumentalizing deaths and writing epics for the dead. The death of many a person whose wretched existence and body were subject to harassment and abuse while alive is often sanctified and claimed by those who killed them, in order to seize the symbolic, cultural or political legacy left behind.

Ocalan himself was attempted to be neutralized alive on Imrali by the very organization he himself founded. The same organization today calls his spirit to its aid at the moment the processes under way have become inextricable for them, but frankly, during this séance heads are still thoroughly confused. In this process Ocalan has to test, by trying various ways, how far his authority extends. Right after the Oslo process he was duly reminded of a limit, and in this way Ocalan had to redefine his own authority. But as the subsequent process created a need for Ocalan's intervention, his spirit was invoked again.

The worry that the new process, which began with the talks held with Imrali, may face sabotage at any moment continues to exist. The Paris attack was in fact not the main sabotage that was expected. The main sabotage was that these funerals, none of whom were from Diyarbakir, were to be taken up from Diyarbakir, and moreover accompanied by a large rally. Naturally an expectation or worry of a new Habur arose in many circles. Days in advance, Diyarbakir and the provinces of the region prepared for this event.

Funerals and mourning are deeply human events, and regardless of whose funeral it is, people cannot be questioned for them. However, those who organized a rally for three PKK members appeared to have no relation either to mourning or to the emotional and human side of the matter. The signals given from the very beginning were that the funerals would be treated as an opportunity for a show of force open to every kind of provocation. It would have been easy for this to mean a major blow to the process being entered into, right at its start.

Nevertheless, thankfully, what was feared did not happen. After the rally held with mass participation in Diyarbakir, the bodies were sent to their hometowns and buried. Although the stance shown by BDP members in the Diyarbakir funeral rally not turning into a new Habur especially deserves appreciation, the fact that it has demonstrated its ability to prevent these incidents whenever it wishes reminded us of its responsibility for incidents before or after. That is, it forces us to think about the BDP's familiar practice of turning a political demonstration instantly into violence and clashes. This has crystallized a new question that the BDP will constantly have to face regarding the choice between politics and violence.

On the other hand, the fact that the PKK funerals became the subject of a rally organized in Diyarbakir by BDP members themselves cannot be explained simply by taking refuge in a human value such as respect for funerals or Kurds claiming their own dead. Here, a political party making a ceremony out of people known as terrorists, because they adopted armed struggle as a path, by calling them "our martyrs," quite plainly means that it adopts terror as a path. It is not incomprehensible that people from the BDP's own base claimed these funerals, and in any case no one would object to this at this hour. But the BDP's claiming this event in this way as a political party was in essence what fueled the Habur worry and showed that it was not very willing to play a positive role in this process.

On the other hand, if there had been so much confidence in the claim that the "Kurdish people" really wanted this funeral ceremony, in many of the region's settlements the shutters of tradesmen would not have been forcibly closed by KCK or PKK militants, and life would not have been forcibly stopped.

Yet everyone in the region knows that militants going shop to shop forced shops to close, and thus an attempt was made to give the impression that the people were claiming this funeral ceremony. Unfortunately this is the style of politics that the BDP, under PKK tutelage, is trying to make valid in the region at present and asks everyone to excuse. But this is not politics; it is in itself terror.