They all wanted the same thing but were ignorant of each other's language. If an esoteric master were there, he would say, “Don't fight, you all want grapes in your languages. Give me the money and I shall buy them for you.”
How similar this story told by Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi to the case regarding to the “democratic initiative” the government is pushing forward. Some call it the “Kurdish initiative” though, in essence, they refer to the same thing. And then others start fighting about the conceptual framework. “We have to define the concepts first,” they say. “First of all we have to come to terms with what you mean when you say ‘Turkish'. Do you mean the name of an ethnicity or the citizens of this country named Türkiye?”
Others are still at the level of equating “brotherhood” and “non-existence”: “Turks and Kurds are brothers,” they say, and then they behave as if the term Kurd does not correspond with an external existence. Others are happily stuck on the meanings of technical terms: “Autonomy, federation, joining, unitary and indivisible …”
The same is true about the “deep state, Ergenekon, classical establishment, elitist secularists, the White Turks, the sons of the darkness -- this one is my version -- autocratic statists, intellectual despotism and the traditional centre …” Tired of the multiplicity of terms for the same concept, many prefer just to say “certain people” or even simply “them.”
This is my point of view: If you want a reconciliation effort to continue on and on inconclusively, just launch a discussion about concepts.
“What do you mean by a conclusion, by the way?”
The same holds for the names of localities, be them villages or larger cities. Norşin and Güroymak is a discussion at hand. President Abdullah Gül uttered the historical Kurdish name of a village, Norşin, which was renamed Güroymak after the 1980 military coup. The nationalist opposition perceived this as a grave sin and started a discussion about the revival of Armenian, Greek and Latin names of cities, including that of İstanbul, in the past called Constantinople. Intellectuals, whose contributions are badly needed in the democratic initiative, took the bait and shared their “valuable” etymological insights with the readers who were, in fact, expecting analysis and critique of the democratic initiative. We now know that İstanbul is in fact a Greek name older than Constantinople and the first is no more Turkish than the second. This is an interesting observation indeed, but it will not help to solve the Kurdish issue -- or the Turkish issue, if you will.
Semiotic discussions are not semiological discussions. We need to know the reasons for the social illness and its cure, but we can happily continue to use different names for the social illness.
A sticky issue about semiotic discussions is to add a dimension of “direction” to the symbols and their connotations. Let's take the “strengthening of local administrations.” You may load different meanings to this phrase and all may be equally legitimate, but the moment you add a “direction,” a “leaning towards,” a “connotational evolution” to the meaning you may end up with “separatism.”
Well, of course the Kurds are planning to establish local assemblies and those will one day declare right of self determination and some other day, full independence!!!
If you have good enough perception, you can sense separatism resonating behind each and every symbol.
Öcalan is reported to say that he does not want a federation, nor does he want a separate state for the Kurds. With the kind of semantic inspirations “certain people” have, one can easily reach this conclusion: “You know what? He wants the country as a whole. Learn Kurdish and be prepared to be a citizen of Kurdiye!”
Those who are stuck in semiotic discussions are no more innocent than those who have dragged their feet on a peaceful solution for 30 years.
