Burning weapons: a road to peace with no return

The process, which began with the call Devlet Bahçeli made in his speech in the Grand National Assembly on October 22, 2024, and which has been followed with great curiosity for months, passed through a historic turning point yesterday with the organization's "weapons-burning" gesture. "Burning weapons," rather than laying down weapons or burying them, is a truly meaningful gesture, because "burning" is also an expression of irreversible determination. It recalls the famous act of "burning the ships" by Tariq ibn Ziyad, the conqueror of Andalusia. Burning the weapons is the resolve to walk, after a long journey, on the new road and in the new direction that has opened before them. This is like a message of resolve to those who have so far questioned the PKK's sincerity in the process.

Without doubt, Turkey's resolution of a terror problem it has suffered from for 50 years in this way, on a ground of agreement in which the organization takes part through the voluntary act of burning its weapons, is a candidate to form a model without precedent in the world. That some of the PKK's leading cadres also took part in the "weapons-burning" act yesterday in Sulaymaniyah, with the symbolic participation of 30 people, was a strong message that they remain bound to Abdullah Öcalan's decision on this matter. It was a participation that addressed the concerns many people have voiced since the beginning of the process, and showed that those concerns were unfounded.

From the moment the PKK held its ceremony of burning its weapons, we have reached a very different point of the process, and a historic one for Turkey. To see this as a victory in which Turkey has completely solved a problem that has plagued it for 50 years, or completely finished off the adversary it was fighting, would be the worst conclusion to draw from the event. That a path of resolution begun on Turkey's side has been able to bring matters to this point is undoubtedly a very great success and a very auspicious path for Turkey. But there is still much to be done.

There is no doubt that Devlet Bahçeli, who took the initiative in this new style of politics and began the process, has taken on a historic responsibility for Turkey. This was a risk equivalent to Erdoğan's risk of "drinking the hemlock" in the resolution process, and he took that risk. But it is already apparent that this risk will have no serious cost either for him or for his movement, because peace, brotherhood and unity are much closer for Turkey than is supposed, and much less costly than is supposed.

The nationalist construct that estranged people from one another in Turkey, almost making them enemies, was still keeping its sentinels over politics alert. Taking the initiative on the Kurdish question could, for a time, really become costly. No one has emerged who could bear this cost more than Erdoğan. In fact, Erdoğan's political paradigm had from the outset a vision, an approach, that could solve the Kurdish problem at its root.

For him, the matter was never merely one of establishing a power, of making one segment of society crush or prevail over another. He was from the outset radically alien, even opposed, to the nationalist construct that gave rise to the Kurdish problem in Turkey. That is why he had, from the beginning, an ideological and paradigmatic ease in approaching the subject. Indeed, with the steps he took he brought the matter all the way to the point of final resolution. So much so that when, from 2015 onward, he arrived at the discourse of "there is no Kurdish problem," this phrasing was perceived as a return to the earlier denialist paradigm, but he was, with the greatest ease, in effect saying "we have solved the Kurdish problem." What came after that was the putting aside of the weapons. How the initiatives he undertook for this turned out is well known.

Today we are very far from that point at which the resolution process ended in fiasco. The failure of the resolution process stemmed largely from the temptations of international tenders and, especially, the situation that emerged in Northern Syria. Today there are serious questions about how the YPG in Northern Syria will still join the process or how it will interpret Öcalan's message. The new Syrian administration has a resolve regarding Syria's territorial integrity and never accepting a federative structure. In truth, we must see that the YPG has a much smaller chance than 7 months ago of putting into practice its intention, which it has by no means hidden, of sustaining an autonomous status in Northern Syria. Under the Assad administration the YPG had in fact already established a de facto autonomous, even independent, administration in Northeast Syria. How do the circles that today voice their concerns, even conspiracy theories, on this matter fail to see that this chance has suffered a very great regression compared with 7 months ago? How can they think that the Sharaa administration, working in full harmony with Turkey, could grant a federative status there to the YPG, which has also lost the support of the US on this matter?

Without doubt Öcalan's call binds the YPG as well, but the dynamics inside Syria may require a different process for adapting to it. Even so, the result will not change in any way.

We must think about the new political responsibilities the process places upon us from Turkey's standpoint. To keep turning the matter into "making the terrorist organization PKK kneel," "defeating the organization, finishing it off," into a drunkenness of victory, would be the worst possible outcome. It is true, we have written and said a great deal that what the PKK has fought for until now had long ceased to be the Kurdish question. But at the point we have reached, we must not forget that the PKK too has now made a choice in favor of peace, in favor of the horizon set out for a terror-free Turkey. Its positive response to the call to lay down, even burn, its weapons, answering Devlet Bahçeli's call, even if in the name of loyalty to Öcalan, is ultimately a choice. The alternative to this choice could have been to continue terror activities to fulfill this or that party's orders, as it had done until now, and we, as a nation, as a country, could have gone on paying costs ad infinitum. Yet the climate of peace and brotherhood that has been reached has been possible through a decision taken together by those who until now were in conflict. For this reason it is of great importance that the parties avoid rhetoric and behavior that would spoil this climate.

That the PKK has laid down its weapons does not require saying to the Kurds what could not be said until now; on the contrary, it requires clinging more firmly to the occasions of unity and togetherness that already exist.

That the DEM Party co-chair phoned Pervin Buldan to congratulate Bahçeli for his contributions to the process should be recorded as one of the gestures most fitting the spirit of the process.

Let us record that at just the right place, so that our blessed Friday may be brought to its close.