During the program a Kurdish kid revealed the untold secret: Abdullah Öcalan is the Atatürk of the Kurds -- implying that he is the Kurdish hero and saved the Kurdish country, honor and dignity just like Atatürk did for Turks. The “secret,” which Kurds have been thinking for a long time but could not spell out in this way before, is now out of Pandora's box and no longer a secret.Most Turkish political observers think that raising Öcalan's position from being a terrorist leader to a national hero has been made possible by the political environment that the Kurdish initiative has created; therefore, they think the initiative could damage Turkey's national interests. With this perspective, they realize that the Kurdish initiative creates more opportunity to generate more debate on the Kurdish question. The debates on this question, they think, erode the meanings of the concepts, i.e., Kurds, terrorists, national security, the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), Öcalan, etc, that the Turkish state apparatus has spent time, money and energy to develop for the last 30 years -- therefore, it would turn everything upside down help the PKK's interests rather than the interests of Turkey.
In fact, the debate on the Kurdish question changes the meaning of the concepts established by the state. For instance, most Turkish media outlets do not even use the adjective teroristbaşı (head of terror) before Abdullah Öcalan's name. Instead they have a tendency to present Öcalan as the influential leader of the PKK. They acknowledge that Öcalan could play a critical role in bringing peace, which was unthinkable a few years ago.
The change in political discourse is sped up by the implementation of the government's Kurdish initiative. Parallel to the change, it also created deep disappointment among Turkish nationalists and military elites and among those who lost their loved ones during the war against the PKK.
In order to reassure this segment of society, the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government and the intellectuals who support the Kurdish initiative have circulated the idea that the Kurdish initiative will bring the PKK to an end. This approach creates an expectation that the Kurdish initiative can only be considered successful if in the end the PKK lays down its arms. What if the PKK decides to not lay down its arms and to continue its fight against Turkey? Would it be a major failure for the Kurdish initiative? How should we measure the success of the Kurdish initiative? Can we just argue that either the PKK lays down its arms or the Kurdish initiative is a major failure, or should we include other parameters to measure whether the Kurdish initiative is successful?
Yet the parties do not seem to realize that the Kurdish initiative has already produced positive momentum for solving the Kurdish question. First, with the recent political debates that the Kurdish initiative has ignited, Turkish society has broken its Kurdish taboos. From intellectuals to ordinary citizens on the street, people have started debating every angle of the issue. Given that this society has not discussed its own problems openly, frankly, the recent debate both transforms the existing culture of turning a blind eye to major problems and helps Turkish society understand what Kurds want. That in itself should be considered as a major achievement.
Second, the debate on the Kurdish question normalizes the form and the concept of the issue. So far, Turkish public opinion on this issue has been shaped by government-controlled propaganda that emphasizes the Kurdish question as nothing to do with Turkey's domestic policy but rather fully related to foreign powers' ambitions to “divide” Turkey. For the first time in Turkish history, now, Turks are starting to realize the opposite argument -- that is, that the problem is a domestic issue and should be addressed in Turkey. Therefore, the Kurdish initiative played a critical role in transforming the Turkish collective memory to look inward rather than to blame unrelated subjects to understand the gist of the problem.
Third, the lively debate on the issue has helped to separate from the undisputed PKK-dominated political discourse and get close to a place where every Kurdish intellectual could contribute. Most Turks and many Kurds now realize the different tones and flavors of the Kurdish perspective, now that Kurdish intellectuals are able to present their viewpoints in an environment that would help the Kurdish community germinate a new perspective, which Kurds have long missed out on because of the PKK's threat to subdue them. Alterative voices in the Kurdish debate not only help Kurds realize there are alternative ways, other than using violence, to pursue political and cultural rights but also help Turkish society differentiate Kurds from those supporting terror activities. At the end, they would function as a glue to repair the broken pieces of Turks and Kurds' public perceptions of each other.
All in all, even if the Kurdish initiative does not produce any tangible results convincing the PKK to lay down its arms, it has already produced results that should be considered a major success. However, the Turkish public is so intent on the expectation that the process will bring the PKK problem to the end, the aforementioned gains may not be considered a success.
