The government seems to have outmaneuvered him by its already famous and popularly supported Kurdish initiative. Öcalan must be confused. Certainly some of the improvements the government has been promising and putting into effect were among the demands of the terror leader -- to ask for a complete halt to violence and a final disarmament of the mountain-dwelling militants. Having seen that Ankara has already given what he was planning to ask for, Öcalan must have been confused about what to ask. The ultra-nationalists regard these pre-emptive democratization efforts as “bowing to the demands of the terrorist organization.” I rather see these moves as part of a strategy to prevent a public perception that some kind of “bargaining” is being carried out between the state and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). The government gives what it needs to give because of international human rights standards, and the terrorists should disarm themselves, not thanks to a deal with Ankara, but because terror is also unacceptable with those universal standards.There is indeed a debate going on between the state, intellectuals, politicians and journalists about what the expectations of the Kurdish citizens of Turkey are, which ones are acceptable and realizable within the red lines of Turkey and what to do about the unacceptable demands of the Kurds or of the Kurdish political parties. But a debate is not tantamount to negotiation, let alone to bargaining. The government is actively listening to these demands, and it is not waiting for a complete package deal. The president and the government have already started to tear down the taboos and initiated processes that will change the face of the regions that are dominantly populated by the Kurdish citizens of this country.
A commonly pronounced demand of the Kurds was concerning the use of original Kurdish names of counties, villages and cities. President Gül took the first step and referred to Norşin, a district of Bitlis that was renamed Güroymak in the modern era of Turkification, with its original name. Norşin is not necessarily a Kurdish name. Several districts and villages had Armenian, Arabic, Persian and other private names with no particular meanings in Turkish, and they all were renamed after the infamous 1939 law concerning the names of villages and districts. The president's reference helped me identify Güroymak as the village where Bediüzzaman Said Nursi received part of his early seminary education. The books of Said Nursi are among the most read books in Turkey, and his biography refers to a particular village named Norşin on several occasions. Thanks to the president, I know now the whereabouts of this Nurşin or Norşin.
Inescapably, politicians and journalists who are against anything done by the government and the president used this as an opportunity to attack the AK Party government and “its president,” Gül. This is double discrimination against Kurds. It is as if by changing the name of Norşin to Güroymak the establishment had tried to erase the history and memory of Said Nursi on the village, and by renaming the district Norşin, President Gül was undoing what the secularist regime did 60 years ago.
This is not true. The new name Norşin was never internalized by the local people and what President Gül did was simply accept the common will of the locals. That is a major change in the style of the state. The state is no longer seeing its citizens as trivial bodies that are shaped and reshaped by the government. The government is ready to be shaped by the people.
A similar change of mentality is observed in the police. The police are working on a parallel “Kurdish initiative.” It seems that this is not a part of the public debate but is a part of the general solution package the government is trying to apply. Yesterday, the Bugün daily reported that the police visited 1,046 families whose sons and daughters are in the mountains and tried to convince them to help their children come down. Initial reports from these contacts gave the expert the sense that the PKK is getting ready for a complete disarmament and for a halt to violent means of struggle for the cultural and social rights they have been asking for.
This translates as such: “If you are ready to rename Güroymak Norşin, even the terrorists in the mountains will be ready to see Ankara as their capital.”
