The chairman of AK Party is also the prime minister of the country, but he was not courageous enough to meet Ahmet Türk, the chairman of the DTP, in his role as the prime minister. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan preferred the meeting to take place between two chairmen. This is not the best that can be done, but it was good enough to please the DTP leader. This is a good start.Leaving the meeting with his AK Party counterpart yesterday, Türk said his party was aware of the responsibility on their shoulders and that they will behave accordingly. Echoing Interior Minister Beşir Atalay, who said the state does not have a solution package but it does have the will and determination to listen all the related parties, Türk said, as a party, the DTP saw it as inappropriate to come out with a solution package of their own. “We want to move within a process of mutual dialogue,” he said.
Understandably, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) is not happy with these initiatives. Its leader Devlet Bahçeli is the most outspoken leader against the Kurdish initiative nowadays and the language he uses makes it seem as if the country has bowed to terrorists. At least this is his party's rhetoric. I find the claims that the MHP will lose its raison d'être if the Kurdish issue is solved for once and for all and that this is the reason for Bahçeli's ill-temper to be the most plausible. The MHP is afraid to lose the public support that has been fueled by the martyrs' ceremonies.
To my understanding, whoever is not a party to the solution of the Kurdish issue is part of the problem. At least by keeping silent the nationalist parties could aid the solution. With its surging rhetoric and sharpening criticism of the government's initiatives, the MHP is becoming a part of the problem. They have to keep in mind that the public is going to “bury” all the disturbing memories of the past, together with the parts of the problem that caused those memories.
Turkey is at a crossroads. This is not the time to discuss whether speaking to the Kurdish political party in the Parliament is necessary or not. This is the time to act swiftly and move beyond official meetings.
Some intellectuals say starting the meetings in the Police Academy or declaring the willingness for reform from the mouth of the Interior Minister was a mistake. They claim that these institutions and posts are concerned with internal security, whereas the Kurdish issue is not solely a security issue. This is true, but it is not the correct time to pronounce this truth. The Kurdish issue is a vital issue and its solution needs the contributions of all of the society; of each and every person who can do something. The least we can do is to be blind and deaf to the trivial mistakes made on the way to the solution.
Apart from some imbeciles who claim that the AK Party is an American puppet working to present our lands to the cause of a Greater Israel, nobody can question the intentions of the prime minister and the government. Hence, the first question one should ask him or herself is not, “What are the mistakes of the government?” but, “What can I do in order to help the government?” This is not a political issue, neither is it a partisan problem, nor should it be left to the government to be solved. We have all suffered, including the Kurds who found no other option made available to them other than going into the mountains, and we should all work together to bring this human tragedy to an end.
A sincere smile to a Kurdish colleague is a first move one can adopt in order to aid the solution. A Kurdish word learned every other week is extra input to the solution. A visit made to southern Turkey; some shopping done at an idle marketplace in a Kurdish-populated neighborhood; a business contract signed with a local businessman there; a football game organized between neighborhoods of Mersin and Balıkesir, where Kurdish immigrants are pushed towards ghettoization; a get-well visit to an ill Kurdish neighbor; a visit of sympathy paid to the DTP office in Ayvalık which was burned down last year by criminals… One can add a thousand ideas to this list of “What can I do today about the Kurdish issue?”
What we lack is not a list of good ideas; what we lack is the will to do our own homework.
