The heaviness that weighed on our shoulders in the past couple of years is gradually lifting. A new breath of fresh air seems to have pushed away the thick clouds of stagnation.Had I been the only one experiencing the phenomenon, I could have attributed it to a personal mood change, but several of my friends have noticed it, too: There is a renewed sense of optimism, and many people have a new spring in their step as Turkey bravely moves forward on several fronts.
Anyone who lives in the country is, of course, accustomed to its sudden ups and downs. Turkey always keeps us all on our toes: Go away for a few weeks, and you don't know what country you will find upon your return. I recently had a conversation with a friend who hadn't visited Turkey since the days that followed Hrant Dink's assassination. The dark place she was talking about bore little resemblance to the way I perceive the country today, yet I shared her sense of foreboding in the face of mounting nationalism and inward-looking xenophobia not so long ago.
We still don't know in concrete terms what the government's much vaunted Kurdish initiative will include. Often disappointed in the past, people in the Southeast want deeds instead of words.
Several other developments are taking place simultaneously that make success more likely. The Ergenekon investigation has opened the way to a much wider inquiry into the dark activities of state actors in the region. As the bodies of people who had disappeared in the Southeast are being exhumed, public opinion can measure the extent of the damage that was caused to the social fabric in the region. Officers are being investigated and arrested. The stronghold of the HSYK is also being questioned and the entire justice system has come under new scrutiny while the power of military courts has been curbed.
Another crucial difference is that, this time, this multi-pronged push for change is not powered by a foreign engine. Most of the reforms of the past decade were directly inspired by the EU and the timing of their introduction was determined more by deadlines such as summits or progress reports than by Turkey's own internal momentum.
Today, the situation is different. Turkey has, of course, not abandoned its goal of EU membership, but the voices coming from European capitals no longer wield the influence they once commanded. But while the EU as a body has lost some of its leverage, the values it represents, on the other hand, have been largely internalized by the Turkish population. Civil society has become more active, new media forces such as the Taraf newspaper have raised the bar of journalism and provided new communication channels.
Steering a country like Turkey into a new direction takes time and determination, and the new spirit has not reached all corners of the state apparatus.
While the government is getting ready to take bold steps to solve the Kurdish question, a court has just sentenced Leyla Zana for a speech she gave at London's School of Oriental and African Studies. The continued detention of Güler Zere, a stage four cancer patient detained for nearly 14 years for membership of an extreme-left organization, also appears an anachronism -- and a lack of compassion -- in the current circumstances. Yet she is one of many prisoners still serving lengthy sentences although the State Security Courts (DGMs) that handed them down have long been dismantled.
These contradictions show that much work still needs to be done, but for now Turkey appears to be sailing in the right direction and it is doing so under its own steam.
