So were their families, waiting for their sons to return from a war in which citizens took the lives of other citizens. This goes for young Kurds and their families who resorted to violence to air their grievances in the void of other instruments allowed to them as Kurds. The feeling of solidarity and peaceful cohabitation has to be fostered together with a legal system that will equalize all ethnic differences. Secondly, political parties representing different social groups with different worldviews and lifestyles have reconciled and exhibit a common determination in sharing the responsibility of peaceful change and reconstruction. But what do we see: A total disarray of parties and a dangerous disassociation from the hottest issue of the country.The Republican People's Party (CHP) is acting as opportunistic as ever. For decades it opposed the right of young women to enter universities with a headscarf, dragging laws lifting bans on this matter to the Constitutional Court to annul them. However, just before the local elections, it came up with a very insincere “cover or hijab initiative” allowing traditional religious dressing styles among party members and the rest of the society. The party leader, Deniz Baykal, recruited several fully covered women in black and praised this initiative as “democratic progress.” No one bought this opportunistic election caper, for the party held on to its old habits of obstructing freedom, including dress codes at universities and elsewhere.
The same goes for the Kurdish issue, created during the CHP's single party rule, which cast an air-tight mold over the society between 1923 and 1950 and tried to Turkify all citizens, reducing them to obedient subjects. The CHP has always supported a “nation of the state” model, whereby Kurds would act just as they are told, rather than a system that would incorporate Kurds into the system as equals, restoring the state that would serve them as well.
The second opposition party is the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). This party fed on ethnic conflict and the superiority of Sunni Turks over other minorities and religious groups. Its votes rose during the bloodiest periods of fratricide with Kurds and fell during times of relative calm. It is obvious that the MHP will be trivialized when the Kurdish problem is solved and an egalitarian constitution goes into effect. So this party is prone to reflexively resist lifting up the status of Kurds and to conclude the issue by reconciling with them. The party sticks to the method of subduing the rebellious Kurds as we have tried to do since the inception of the republic. This stance is made evident by the public statements of the party leader, Mr. Devlet Bahçeli, and other MHP officials. In response to a government and civic initiative to pave the way for a solution to the Kurdish problem, he said, “If you want the country to be divided by those who roamed the mountains over the past 25 years [meaning the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK)], the MHP is ready to go to the mountains for the next 50 years to prevent this division.” (Takvim; Aug. 3, 2009). MHP parliamentary group leader Mr. Mehmet Şandır added: “The steps taken in the name of a ‘democratic initiative' are the PKK's old tactic of becoming a political actor.” (Takvim; Aug. 3, 2009). It is obvious that Kurds are unwelcome in politics, the turf of Turks alone.
It seems that the MHP is against a peaceful solution and wants the continuation of the present violent ways to repress the Kurds and is offering to turn his party members into an armed militia to wage a guerilla war against the PKK in the coming years. At a time when the state is giving up its brutal methods to end violent opposition with overwhelming force, a legitimate party is offering to take up the banner! The MHP leadership must be quite desperate to say such things.
I would like to play the devil's advocate here and invite the MHP to send its most ferocious group of warriors to the mountains to test the realism of its proposition. If they are more able than the regular army and return victorious, they will make many people happy by ending the issue through eliminating those who are part of the problem. Once they are gone, there will be no problem to solve and all the pangs and hardship of change will cease to be. Guerilla warfare against a trained peasant force that is part of the landscape living on mountain tops does not resemble urban roughness against middle-class leftist youth in the past that was supported by the state.
As regards the Democratic Society Party (DTP), we hear nothing at all from it. Given the enormous vacuum in the political realm and the lack of support from opposition parties, it is really hard to obtain peace among Turks before they strike a reasonable deal with the Kurds.
