It is seen as ironic that some Kurds who have long complained about the state’s anti-democratic and discriminatory practices are now choosing to remain indifferent to the democratic reforms. But it is clear that the BDP’s decision to boycott the referendum is not supported by all Kurds. Instead, these people are being forced to abstain due to pressure coming from the BDP and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).Star’s Berat Özipek thinks the Kurds are very desperate people because they, after being victimized by the state’s despotic mentality and ideology, now suffer from oppression by Kurds who very much resemble the very state that made Kurds suffer. He says BDP leader Selahattin Demirtaş, a Kurd, is treating the people he refers to as “our public” as a “herd” in order to ensure that the BDP’s decision to boycott is put into practice, recalling how Demirtaş accused a group of nongovernmental organizations in Diyarbakır that voiced support for the reforms of seeking to further their own interests. “Demirtaş considers himself in charge of the Kurds and tries to keep them away from the public because he knows that if they go to the ballot boxes, they will vote ‘yes’,” Özipek says. “One of my friends once asked, ‘How desperate are the Kurds?’ This really is so. There is always a stick over their head. When they protect themselves from one stick, they fall under another one. The BDP should see this and try to save itself from that despotic mentality. It should want pluralism among Kurds and it should respect the views of Kurds who think differently,” Özipek suggests.
Yeni Şafak’s Ali Bayramoğlu, who examines the Kurds’ problematic approach to the referendum, cites an excerpt from an article written by a hawkish Kurd in the Gündem newspaper. “A new situation will be created if the referendum is boycotted east of the Euphrates and if the number of boycotted votes exceeds the number of BDP votes. This will once again prove that no problem can be solved without the Kurds,” Bayramoğlu quotes the Kurdish writer, whom he fails to name, as saying. He thinks these sentences are the perfect definition of a pragmatic political understanding which is willing to bargain but that forgot its principles. “These statements mean nourishing a power policy, a Kurdish policy apart from a common Turkey policy in all circumstances and addressing the Kurdish problem with this policy. This is a known attitude that exhausts democrats,” Bayramoğlu says.
