This proved to be wrong as we entered the third millennium. Now we believe that peace provides more valuable dividends. The “big powers” of the world nowadays place more value on peace and choose persuasion over coercion. The Bush cabal and its counterparts elsewhere were an exception and an anomaly. But then that is another story.The Middle East is one of the major sensitive spots in the world which produces conflicts that occasionally erupt into wars. There are several reasons to explain why this is so. First of all valuable energy resources are concentrated in this region that attract the appetite of powerful nations. They compete among local actors. Regional states are most often authoritarian or totalitarian, characteristics that carry the seeds of conflict within. Uncontrolled powers of states unchecked by popular forces end up unleashing their power on neighboring countries and on their very citizens. I am not even mentioning the Arab-Jewish conflict, which is the blown-out-of-proportion version of the Israeli-Palestinian friction that has galvanized the region by open and covert alliances which sustain and legitimize violence.
One reason why violence is preferred by regional governments and state elites is because it pre-empts politics and reduces vestiges of political participation for the peoples and diplomatic relations among nations that could reconcile their differences. Both deliberative domestic politics and diplomatic relations among nations rather than conflict and violence have a tendency to alter the status quo. Once this process gains momentum, the giants of the status quo tend to be the dwarfs of tomorrow. And tomorrow holds the hope for democracy, rights and freedoms and better living conditions for all if resources and the energy spent on conflict are diverted to human development. Now in Turkey we are at this critical juncture. That is why constitutionalist groups within the armed forces are leaking plans for future coups, and the military is increasingly pushed out of the political center stage. The government is changing its attitude to continuing with violent methods to solve inter-ethnic problems and is demonstrating a willingness to change the legal and administrative system to end the conditions that have prompted young people to take up arms and take to the mountains in rebellion.
In reciprocity the notorious terrorist organization Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has sent a group of its members to surrender as a feeler. Another group is ready to come home from Europe. This means the mountains may be vacated by armed insurgents, with regular army troops chasing them, and become tourist sights once again. Bad management of public affairs and unfair laws constituted the push to the mountains. Similarly, a lust for freedom and resistance to injustice constituted the pull of the mountains. Ironically no one really noticed that these two trends united conflicting sides on the reality of the mountains and limited their relations to a conflict that has unraveled on the mountain tops. While the PKK thought it could solve the Kurdish problem by waging a war on the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) in the mountains, the Turkish authorities believed that they could eradicate the Kurdish problem by eliminating the PKK in the mountains. So both sides, just like politics, got entangled in the mountains. Now both have to come down and try to seek a solution based on causes, not results with alternative instruments elsewhere.
While this stark truth is becoming more acceptable, the opposition is still calling for the continuation of the fight and a solution to be obtained up in the mountains. The Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leadership spoke of roaming the mountains for another 50 years. An insignificant political party called Rights and Freedoms, but in fact a very much ethnic purist (Turkish) party founded by a general, is proposing a 20,000-person special forces unit that would chase terrorists in the mountains, emulating their methods. This is the best that the current opposition can come up with. Their mind is still in the mountains, away from realities and political possibilities.
This is the main reason why the government that has demonstrated the will to solve the gangrened Kurdish problem and the initiative to set the process in motion has no political support from other parties. Yet we know from the experience of other nations that have suffered from protracted political violence that they have solved their problem with the consent of all or major political actors and through democracy. The language of peace is a reconciliatory one, and the medium for peace is democracy. If any party proposed more (state) violence to end sub-state violence, this would only help to extend violence and suffering, not end it. It is better to understand this truth sooner rather than later.
