Bilingual strategy a must for resolving the Kurdish issue and defeating the PKK

Once again, we have confirmed that the PKK, as an atheist Marxist-Leninist terrorist organization, has no reverence for the sacred value of Ramadan, a holy month characterized by peace and tranquility. The tragedy, sorrow and pain caused to the families of the more than 20 soldiers and police officers during Ramadan cannot adequately be expressed with words. The whole nation has its share from these sorrows and suffers from indescribable pain in these blessed days.

These latest atrocities by the PKK indicate that we are now at a turning point. The PKK and its supporters are trying to take advantage of changes in the regional conjuncture, apparently with their own plans. Obviously, they also are misunderstanding the government's efforts to settle the Kurdish issue and eliminate PKK terrorism through non-violent approaches, which they believe to be a weakness on the part of the state. It is for this reason the language and style that have been dominating the terrorist organization PKK and the PKK's stooge, the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), have long lost any trace of fairness and moderation but rather have turned into that of threat and blackmail. This language of arrogance will no longer be tolerated by the state or the nation. The point where enough is enough has already been exceeded. So-called politicians who lend support to and praise terrorist activities and terrorist organizations -- which no state on earth can tolerate -- should not expect tolerance from the Turkish government and its security forces. We have already reached the limits of tolerance that we have been exhibiting in the name of peace and tranquility. Now it is time to give everyone what they want and speak to them in a language they understand.

It is now essential that we use one language for the solution of the Kurdish issue and an expansion of socio-cultural and political rights of our Kurdish citizens and a completely different language in addressing the PKK and its supporters, who are growing more acrimonious as a solution to the Kurdish issue approaches and the realization dawns that the rights granted to Kurds will restrict the PKK's room to move. It is also high time that these two languages should be taken to the extreme. With work commencing on a new constitution, the vision of introducing constitutional guarantees for all sorts of reforms that will ensure that our Kurdish citizens can live happily, peacefully and in the most dignified manner as honorable members of this country must be quickly enacted. All socio-cultural rights including the restructuring of the state system based on the principle of decentralization, the strengthening of local administrations and the abolition of all obstacles to the use of the Kurdish language in education and local administrations must be generously granted. The campaign that is already in progress to boost economic and social development of Kurdish-dominated regions, which have long been neglected due to terrorism and other reasons, must be accelerated.

Simultaneously with these moves, everyone who lends support to terrorist organizations and this gang of traitors that have been exploiting the Kurdish issue must be called to account for their acts by legal methods. Just as the language we will use for our Kurdish citizens should be laden with peace and compassion, the language used against the PKK and its affiliates should be equally harsh and unwavering. Everyone who is ideologically, intellectually or financially supportive of terrorism, including the pro-PKK BDP and its deputies who extorted the votes of people in the Southeast with threats and blackmail and who refrain from representing those votes in Parliament but opt to hold their own parliamentary group meeting in Diyarbakır with the intention of creating chaos in the country, must be made to pay the price of their actions through legal channels. The state's hand of compassion and hand of wrath and its language of peace and language of violence should work simultaneously and with equal strength. As the state welcomes our Kurdish citizens with its hand of compassion, its other hand, now decidedly tightened as a fist, must deal a fatal blow to terrorism and those who support terrorism.

The lessons learned from our mistakes in the past should not be ignored in this process. It is not enough to shell the terror camps in the Kandil Mountains in military operations, the effectiveness of which is dubious, although it is the first option we resort to whenever terror has haunted us during the last 30 years. These air attacks may be calming the public after our martyred soldiers, but it clear that these operations are no longer effective. The good decision to use the police's special operations teams against terror must be quickly implemented, and we must search for ways to destroy the terrorist organization in its own nest. Whatever is needed for counterterrorism -- tanks, cannons, finely targeted operations, land operations -- all options must be implemented simultaneously.

In the meantime, all these moves must comply with the rule of law. And we don't doubt this will be the case. Concerns about a return to the extrajudicial violent practices of 1993-1994 are extremely unfounded. Indeed, Turkey is no longer that country of the 1990s and the current government is not weak, unlike the governments of that era, and the security forces can no longer act with impunity and are held accountable for their actions. Today, the country's extremely advanced civil society, its independent media with an ever-increasing effectiveness and its strong judicial institutions are capable of monitoring all sorts of security moves and developing strong guarantees against violations and violations of freedoms.

I must note that the Erdoğan government will certainly use the state's hand of wrath against terror and its hand of compassion against our civilian Kurdish citizens in the most successful manner, and like many of its previous successes, it has a good chance of being etched into history as the government that put an end to the PKK's terrorism. This can be done as long as correct actions are assigned to the correct people at the correct time. This can be done if Erdoğan stops rewarding some of his close aides responsible for the failure of the Kurdish initiative and, worst of all, tasking them with finding a solution to the Kurdish issue.