In his national address last Thursday, Erdoğan termed the move a “project of fraternity” and stressed that opponents of the package are causing the greatest damage to the nation. “We will not take even the smallest step that could harm Turkey's interests. What we are doing is for the benefit of our country. It is for the benefit of our 71.5 million citizens,” Erdoğan emphasized. It has been over a month since the government pressed the button to solve Turkey's most important problem and has been receiving both praise and criticism for its efforts so far. The issue continues to be the most heated agenda item in the country, with many discussing its different aspects.Star's Mehmet Metiner, a Kurd, says if the “historic opportunity” to solve the Kurdish problem is not seized in 2009, nobody will have gained anything and Turkey will lose altogether. “There is no winner in this fight; hence, it is necessary to give up arguments such as ‘If we [the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK)], had no weapons, steps toward democracy would not have been taken. We defeated the PKK, the PKK is being dissolved,” he says. Looking back on the past painful experiences, Metiner says there is no point the PKK can reach by continuing an armed struggle and that it is not possible for Turkey to finish off the PKK only by military means. “The old official saying that the fight against the PKK will continue until the last terrorist is killed does nothing other than increase the intensity of the problem,” he suggests. In Metiner's view, solely calling on members of the PKK to lay down their weapons, surrender and trust in the Turkish judiciary is not sufficient to convince them to leave the mountains. “This must be a full-fledged process of integration. Only with a strong integration process, which accepts everyone with their differences and with a definite democratization process, we can solve this problem,” he says.
Looking at the ongoing debates about the solution to the Kurdish problem, İsmet Berkan says if one believes in the freedom of expression, different views should definitely be voiced; however, what members of Parliament say about the issue should be the basic framework of the debate. He says just as is the case with all the other issues, everyone has something in mind about “what should be done,” but politicians have the final say about “what can be done.” “If we believe in democracy and respect the fundamentals of democracy and the state of law, we should accept that there is always a distance between ‘what should be' and ‘what can be.' No matter whether you like it or not, democracy is a regime of reconciliation, and opposite views meet on common ground by mutual concession and compromise. This means someone's ‘should be' cannot fully take place under these regimes. This rule applies for the Kurdish problem as well. Nobody's maximalist attitude will determine the result,” he says.
Hürriyet's Cüneyt Ülsever dwells on another aspect of the issue and voices his view about the government speaking to the PKK through the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP). In his view, speaking to PKK and its jailed leader, Abdullah Öcalan, is a must to silence the weapons and end the violence. “If the government speaks to Öcalan, I will never criticize it,” he says. Calling on Prime Minister Erdoğan to announce his government's roadmap for the solution of the Kurdish problem, he says every day that Erdoğan does not announce his roadmap he is taking a political risk that he has to follow others' views, and this passive attitude causes the confidence felt toward him to fade away.
