Let 27 February last only a day

Abdullah Öcalan's call on the PKK to lay down arms, heeding the historic call of MHP Chairman Devlet Bahçeli, showed that the "strange but this time quite beautiful days" that began on 22 October are continuing. If these almost near-impossible developments have happened, there should be no reason for more, for better and more beautiful days, not to happen.

Indeed, before we had even recovered from the astonishment of this brave initiative of 22 October, we also witnessed a great story of victory that began on 27 November and put its full stop on 8 December. The story of the liberation from its chains of an oppressed people subjected to every kind of cruelty for 61 years, and of its overcoming its oppressor. If we witnessed this too, why should there not be more beautiful days for Turkey, which has stood shoulder to shoulder with Syrian lands and the Syrian people until now?

Bahçeli's call to Öcalan was a very surprising, brave initiative with very strong potential to produce a solution. An initiative that made the great majority of Turkey, on hearing the offer it contained, say "why not?" Its success lay there. In fact, at a point where the processes were clogged for all parties, at a moment when the view had become thoroughly uncertain and blurred, it opened up a clear horizon.

The plan of this initiative, staged on 27 February, was being realized with one difference from Bahçeli's proposal. Öcalan made this call not by coming to the DEM Party group in the Grand National Assembly, but through a press conference following serial contacts of DEM Party officials. This was in fact the point on which people were most stuck in Bahçeli's call. It both posed a technical difficulty and was hard to accept in terms of reasonableness. In any case, the fact that no one insisted on this showed clearly that the aim in the offer was to obtain the positive result without getting stuck on details.

A CLIMATE THAT INVALIDATES WEAPONS

Öcalan made a call to lay down arms "in this climate formed by the call made by Mr. Devlet Bahçeli, the will put forward by Mr. President, and the positive approaches of the other political parties to the said call," and by saying "I assume the historic responsibility of this call," he pointed to a climate that has formed today. There is no chance for anyone to act outside the conditions of this climate; whoever does will be left outside history, outside the equation.

So what is this climate? In fact, it was again Öcalan himself who pointed to this climate. The conditions and politics that gave rise to the Kurdish issue no longer exist, that is, the Kurdish issue has been largely resolved, and this has rendered invalid any path of gaining rights through armed means in the name of the Kurds. If the Kurds have problems, they are within limits that can be easily solved on the ground of democratic politics. At this hour there is no way for the Kurds, for Kurdishness, to wage armed struggle in order to obtain any right for the Kurds. From now on, the weapon claimed to be carried for the Kurds will be carried only on behalf of some other power, other centers.

So did this climate actually emerge today? The conditions that have formed in Syria have undoubtedly further confirmed this call, creating much stronger conditions in Turkey's favor. But, though somewhat less so, similar conditions existed 15 years ago too, and Öcalan made a similar call then, during the resolution process.

ÖCALAN IS NOT MAKING THIS CALL FOR THE FIRST TIME

He had said that the time was no longer the time of weapons and that the democratic political ground was sufficient to obtain results on the Kurdish issue. The organization (PKK) also listened to him for a while, and during the long resolution process the guns fell silent. In the meantime the state was not conducting operations against the PKK. It expected the organization to lay down its weapons and its militants to leave for abroad. But in the meantime developments in Syria distracted the PKK. The United States' coming there and giving the PKK a task in the name of fighting ISIS, and granting it an advantage by treating it as an interlocutor, made the process Öcalan had entered unattractive for the PKK.

In the meantime it was seen that neither Europe, nor the US, nor the Syrian regime wanted a terror-free Turkey. On the contrary, since the Kurdish issue in Turkey had been resolved to a significant extent, especially in the Erdoğan period, there was no ground left at all for the PKK to wage armed struggle, yet despite this these powers did not want the PKK to lay down its weapons. Thus Abdullah Öcalan's word was left hanging in the air, and the PKK imagined that it could grow stronger with the support of the US and Europe.

Undoubtedly there are many more reasons for the 27 February call to take hold. First, there is neither the PKK's great supporter, the Assad regime, nor the logistical facilities Iran obtained from the Assad regime to provide that support; just as there are no physical possibilities for terror to hold on in Turkey, so too there are no denialist policies that supplied terror's human support. On this ground Öcalan's call even provides the PKK with a way out, an opportunity.

UNDOUBTEDLY THE PROCESS STILL HAS ITS THREATS

In particular, the US presence under Israeli direction is increasingly felt on Syria's new state, wanting it to keep a distance from Turkey in order for sanctions and the siege to be lifted. The Syrian regime of course resists these pressures, but resistance has a cost. It will be a policy Turkey needs to develop against the possibility that the US turns this issue into a hostage issue against the Syrian regime in order for the PKK to continue its existence.

Of course Turkey's hand is by no means empty. But here this blockade and the tempting (but of course empty) opportunities it produces will also have the potential to distract the minds of some from within Qandil.

Sociologist Dr. Veysel Karataş's assessments of Öcalan's call, on tezkire.net, end with important and quite justified warnings, but this time not to the PKK side, rather to the Turkey side. The process being entered is one in which everyone must be very careful.

After conveying Öcalan's emphases and analyses in the call regarding the conditions that gave birth to the PKK, Karataş says that this "shows that he tied the PKK's conditions of existence to the nation-state construct of about 40 years ago," and, saying "Now that it has dissolved itself, how the construct opposite it will determine a direction in the face of this new reality remains one of the main matters of curiosity… It remains, because, if one is to speak on the basis of the statements made up to now, it shows that no additional condition or demand has been put forward to place this process within a certain framework. Therefore, as an alternative, it is whether the second, larger and more complicated construct, which caused the first, will question its own reason for existence or what direction it will determine," he reminds that, now that this good ground has been secured, there is an ethical responsibility, a style and a language incumbent on this side too.

Of course first a somewhat long-overdue questioning, and of course also some courtesy and elegance as the process requires. Without leaving the field to political hooligans. Exactly as Karataş pointed out, so that "27 February" lasts "a full day" and only one day.