He does not suggest any solutions to the problem other than saying that Turks and Kurds have been brothers for the last 1,000 years. But his harsh rhetoric is a double-edged sword, simultaneously further alienating Kurds and agitating Turks to hate Kurds. Sadly, this is one of the major aims of the Ergenekon terrorist organization, as is well-documented in the recently publicized third Ergenekon indictment. Moreover, to put it in MHP rhetoric, a Kurdish-Turkish enmity is what Turkey's enemies have always wished for. It is, thus, surprising to see Bahçeli playing into the hands of both Ergenekon and Turkey's enemies. He is probably following a strategy aimed at electoral success by provoking the nationalist sentiments of Turks. He knows that his party will never get votes in the eastern part of Turkey, where a majority of the people are ethnically Kurds. But he is well aware of the fact that in the last general local elections, his party's candidates won over Justice and Development Party (AK Party) mayors in several western Turkish cities where many Kurds have recently emigrated, and Turkish residents have developed feelings of uneasiness, to say the least, against these new arrivals. Bahçeli is getting ready for the 2011 general elections and is calculating that if he agitates further the nationalist feelings of Turks, he may get an electoral victory. But at what cost for the country?
Our nationalists are right in saying that Kurds and Turks have been close brothers and relatives, peacefully coexisting in Anatolia for the last 1,000 years. But saying this does not explain why thousands of Kurdish youths have joined the PKK. In the same vein, it does not explain why 50 to 60 percent of people in eastern Turkish cities vote for the Democratic Society Party (DTP), a kind of Kurdish Sinn Fein which has never denied that it has some links with the PKK. Its leaders have openly declared recently that the state should speak to Abdullah Öcalan in order to solve the problem. Some analysts have happily said that the PKK is a Marxist-Leninist organization and thus the masses would not follow it. But this argument is doomed to failure as it cannot plausibly explain why the DTP could get an overwhelming majority of the votes in eastern Turkey and 7 percent of the overall vote in Turkey. I personally know many practicing Muslim Kurds -- who would have nothing to do with neither Marx nor Lenin -- that vote for the DTP. In London, they will openly tell you that Öcalan is their leader.
We have to accept that today's Kurds are different than Ottoman Kurds and are sharply aware of their ethnic identity, without any intention of jettisoning it for the sake of Turkish ethnic nationalism. We have to blame our nationalist policies and the wrongdoings of our bureaucrats in the region before blaming international actors, imperialists, Western powers and so on. They have always been there and will always be. We need to eradicate the domestic root causes of the problem, and Devlet Bahçeli is now exactly doing the opposite.
Our social fabric and coherence are in grave danger. Many Turks even in a metropolitan city such as Istanbul have an enmity against our fellow citizens just because they are Kurds and have recently arrived. A few days ago, one of our neighbors was gossiping about our newly arrived neighbors just because they are Kurds, and when my wife asked why she thinks that they are bad, the only reason she could come up with was that they have too many children. Bahçeli should be aware of the fact that his rhetoric could turn Turks xenophobic. He may win the election in such a Turkey, but this victory would only be a Pyrrhic one.
