One recent assault from the “no” camp is about meeting with (or talking to) Abdullah Öcalan, the jailed leader of the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The leaders of the two opposition parties claim that the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government had met with Öcalan and reached a deal with him. The initial response of the prime minister was that he never met with the leader of the terrorist organization, but later both the president and the prime minister hinted that the state -- and not the government -- would talk to the PKK if it was seen as necessary and fruitful.
This is in fact a statement of the facts on the ground. The Turkish state has been talking to the PKK through its institutions. Intelligence agents have arranged talks with the PKK in the past. The state negotiated with the PKK for the release of its soldiers through the political wing of the PKK, which is a legitimate political actor in Turkey. Kurdish members of Parliament went to Kandil to take the Turkish soldiers back to Turkey.
On the far end of state-PKK talks we see the deep and dirty relations between the leadership of the PKK and some retired and on-duty officers. Many Kurdish intellectuals are already convinced that the PKK was led, or at least used by, the Ergenekon organization.
We can also question the definition of the very acts of talking, meeting or negotiating. You don’t necessarily climb the mountains and hold talks with PKK leaders in order to talk to the organization. A general amnesty is a way of talking to the hearts of PKK members. The very decision of the coalition government of 2000 -- ironically, the ultranationalist Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) was part of that government -- not to execute Öcalan despite a court ruling was a way of talking to the PKK. It was a negotiation with the PKK that led to the longest cease-fire declaration in the organization’s history.
Ergenekon-linked officers are still talking with the PKK. Neglect of the visual intelligence gathered through Heron unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is a way of talking to the PKK and telling them that their operations are welcomed by some in the army. Creating all kinds of unintelligible pretexts for not going to help Turkish soldiers being ambushed by the organization is a way of talking to the PKK.
Why is it that the Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the MHP are so disturbed with the fact that the state is talking with the terrorist organization? Can it be because the PKK has decided to talk to the real state and not to the deep state any longer? Can it be because the PKK has been abandoning its separatist rhetoric for the first time in its history? Can it be because the funerals of martyrs are no longer political stages for the opposition?
Not speaking to the terrorists is a modern dogma created by the myth of the nation-state. One man’s terrorist is another man’s hero and, as long as you do not speak to your terrorists, as long as you continue to demonize them, they will continue to be deified at the other end of the equation; on the other side of the mountains.
