The right question: "why didn't the guns fall silent earlier?"

With the press conference Murat Karayılan held in Kandil, the process has also acquired full officiality on the PKK side. Reaching this stage was in fact made possible by many national or international actors that had truly made major investments in the PKK's armed struggle either dropping out of the equation or making a new revision of position within the equation. But in any case, this new distribution of positions shows that an active political mind and will in Turkey is operating successfully.

Even at this stage, the question that those who do not give up "caution" never tire of raising is "what did the PKK get in return for laying down arms". It would actually be unfair to say that everyone who asks this question is ill-intentioned and is trying to undermine the process. The question of why an organization that has for so long used the gun as the only way of demanding something, even of conveying its message, has gone for such a seemingly radical change may always, and rightly, come to mind. The problem is that exaggerating in such reasoning gradually serves to make what the PKK has done until now, that is, delivering its messages through arms, terror and death, be perceived as if it were normal.

More plainly, as more convincing reasons for the PKK's laying down arms are sought, armed terrorist activity begins to be engraved in minds as a normal option even on a democratic political ground. As more convincing reasons for the organization to lay down its arms are sought, the rightness or legitimacy of its keeping arms in hand is engraved in minds. Yet the more reasonable, fairer and more valid question is not why the organization or İmralı has decided to lay down arms today but why it has not done so until now.

After all, setting aside the debate over whether violence is in general adopted as an option in the pursuit of rights or whether it is deemed justified, in an environment where the ground of politics has expanded this much today, there is essentially no excuse left for continuing the armed struggle. Those who seek reasons for laying down arms are, knowingly or not, also producing an excuse for the gun. Yet in the face of the existence of this broad political space, the PKK has nothing left to tell, let alone the whole world, even its own target audience, the Kurds.

True, violence is very effective as a means of propaganda, quite convincing when prolonged, a show of force, and it attracts the temporary partisanship of weak masses. But this persuasion reached through fear and terror has no political equivalent, nor any sustainability in today's world. On the other hand, a stronger violence can always arise against a violence, and this creates among the masses a chaotic situation that provides no benefit to anyone. Moreover, in proportion to the violence produced, the rightness in the eyes of the whole world is continually eroded. Yet the organization has, in the face of the emerging conjuncture, caught the opportunity to withdraw within a reasonable context from this situation that is no longer reasonable or sustainable even for itself; there is nothing incomprehensible in this.

Essentially, in today's world, particularly in the changing regional geography, the international clientele for a terror to be used against Turkey has also diminished, contrary to what is supposed. There are, of course, still those who want to use this card against Turkey, but against them we can say that the alliance of those who invest in Turkey's internal peace and stability is broader and more inclusive. That is, the factor of external powers supporting Turkey's stability is today more decisive than the external powers supporting terror. This is perhaps a situation that cannot be easily understood without revising our current rote notions about international relations, but that is how it is.

Of course, let it not be misunderstood, this is a situation that Turkey itself has largely spearheaded by securing its own economic development and making its geography more important. Turkey is now a country where those who would target its stability would themselves suffer greater harms.

In such a context, a thousand and one reasons can be listed for the PKK to lay down its arms unconditionally. Moreover, all these reasons are of a kind that should lead us to be no more astonished that it has not laid down its arms until now.