On what ground did the PKK emerge, and to what ground has it returned?

The PKK's expected decision to dissolve itself is without doubt one of the most important events in Turkey's century-long history. It is also inevitable that it has an effect that requires us to evaluate together all the conditions that created this problem a century ago.

The PKK is a problem that, in the last 47 years of this century-long history, emerged from the bosom of that problem, from the atmosphere of that problem, but probably one that lasted longest and consumed the country's human resources, energy and morale the most. 47 years is an average human lifespan. During this problem, however, how many people were wasted in the mountains without seeing the age of 20 on average. Even within the 47-year process, the state itself went through several fundamental phases in its approach to the problem. With the AK Party's coming to power most recently, it is clear that a truly paradigmatic change took place in the approach to this problem. It is precisely this that in fact began to erode the ground of the problem, exhausting the ground, the reason, for the existence of an organization like the PKK.

Among those who could not keep themselves from showing that they are not at all pleased with the PKK's dissolving itself, the reactions of the leftist-Kemalist circles in fact fall into place. Because the resolution of the problem with this finale means the unraveling of a knot tied on Turkey a century ago, the correction of a wrong. Uğur Dündar, for instance, got stuck on the PKK's having referred to Lausanne as the source of the problem in its dissolution statement. He wants Turkey to be terror-free, but he also wants the Kurdish problem to continue exactly as it was constructed a century ago, and Lausanne not to be touched at all.

IS LAUSANNE A SACRED TEXT?

Even in today's theological debates, no side of sacred texts is left untouched or undiscussed; on whose behalf can this vigil of sensitivity be kept that makes so undiscussable a text imposed on us by the great powers who a century ago produced a whole host of problems and left them in our lap, and who brought down our six-century-old state and occupied its lands? That he said this debate was an imposition written with a longing for Sèvres is one thing, but the comments under his statements that confirm it with great spite and appetite point to quite another gravity. The Kurdish problem in Turkey has already been solved, or will be, but the problem produced by this mindset does not seem easy to solve.

Thank God, Yıldıray Oğur deigned to this mindset and pasted a reply: "We read mind-boggling reasoning. Did you expect the PKK to speak like the militants who surrendered on the program Anadolu'dan Görünüm? This is not an agreement text, so that it could be an imposition. The organization has told its history in the final congress's concluding declaration. What can an organization that dissolves itself impose? They have described the Lausanne Agreement and 1924 as the beginning of the Kurdish problem. Are you hearing this for the first time? In every text about the Kurdish problem this is presented as a milestone. What Sèvres? Does someone who wants Sèvres lay down arms? For Sèvres, one needs not the PKK but the seven great powers. Will an organization that could not do it in 50 years while armed divide the country when it lays down arms?"

Because, and to the extent that, Turkey has been able to surpass the horizon set out at Lausanne, it not only reaches the capacity to solve its own problems but also becomes as credible, effective and decisive an actor as possible on the world political stage. Start from Syria and Palestine, and take, if you wish, a world tour extending to the issues between Ukraine-Russia and India-Pakistan. Is the Turkey seen a Turkey that has remained in the Lausanne horizon? With a social-national psychology whose entire psychology has been spoiled by Sèvres phobias and which has been talked into accepting malaria at Lausanne, no problem can be solved, just as no breakthrough can be made.

Moreover, as President Erdoğan says, in the terror-free Turkey process the PKK's declaration is not a finale but a critical stage. That we have passed this stage is in itself a great event. Those who say this process will come to grief like the earlier ones are not making an analysis; they are expressing their feelings, fears or distrust. Yet the situation we are in contains sufficient objective conditions to render these feelings futile. First of all, it is inevitable that the matter calls for reviewing Lausanne, or the entire century-long history, in some way. Those texts or those events will need to be reread in this new conjuncture of the world and of Turkey.

Second, in Syria there is no longer a regime that harbors hostile feelings toward Turkey and that gave the PKK every kind of support from its founding. On the contrary, the regime in Syria at present is as friendly to Turkey as possible and a regime that will not allow the existence of the PKK or any organization that is its extension. Moreover, the new quality of citizenship and the participation possibilities that the new regime in Syria will offer the Kurds are at a level incomparable with the old regime's. That is, Turkey's domestic peace and Syria's own domestic peace and integration seem likely to work very much in parallel with each other. In Iraq, both the central administration and the Northern Iraq administrations support the process to the end. On the other hand, the sole support of Israel, which has so far been supporting the PKK structure in both, will not be able to mean anything. At present it is both busy enough with its own troubles, and it owed all the logistics and financing of the support it has given until now to the US and the Syrian regime; now it is deprived of both supports.

Third, in this conjuncture the Kurdish people too have received and embraced this process with great enthusiasm. From now on, those who would undermine this process will find before them, before anyone else, the Kurdish people.

By granting more rights to the Kurds and by recognizing them more, Turkey becomes much more integrated, fused, without being divided. Because unity and togetherness is a process realized not by denying differences but by seeing and recognizing them.

Note: In the "Tarihin Gerçek Yüzü" (The True Face of History) series published these days by Beyan Publications, Prof. Mustafa Aydın Hoca's book "Lozan: Başarı mı Taviz mi?" (Lausanne: Success or Concession?) gives a very good summary of what Lausanne brought and took away. It is to be read in precisely this context.