Kurdish political pendulum swinging toward hard-liners

The decision was announced late on Monday after the deputies of the now-defunct DTP and representatives of civil society groups met in Diyarbakır to convene the Democratic Society Congress.

The civil society representatives were hoping to convince the deputies to stay in Parliament, but Emin Aktar, the chairman of the Diyarbakır Bar Association, said when they arrived the resignation letters were already signed and that they did not even have a chance to talk the deputies out of their decision.

The DTP deputies were enthusiastically welcomed by crowds at the airport in Diyarbakır. DTP Chairman Ahmet Türk, who was banned from politics for five years by the Constitutional Court, addressed the crowd and suggested that a group of experts be established to discuss ways of solving the Kurdish question. He was rebuked by the crowd, who urged the deputies to resign immediately.

“We will submit our letters of resignation to Parliament as soon as possible. Parliament was not able to handle us,” Türk said while announcing the party congress’ decision.

But according to the Constitution, the individual resignations of the deputies are not enough for the resignations to be valid, as the approval of the General Assembly is required. It is not yet clear, but there is an expectation that Parliament’s deputies will not approve the resignations of the DTP deputies since this would mean 27 empty chairs in Parliament, one seat below the threshold that would trigger required interim elections according to the Constitution.

‘It was not easy for the DTP, either’

The former parliamentary group chairman of the DTP, Selahattin Demirtaş, after the announcement of the decision to resign, said it was not an easy decision to make and that they are not giving up on democratic politics, but rather that in order to force the channels of democratic politics they had decided to resign.

“Maybe this crisis can turn into an opportunity and the other political parties will really think about the necessity of changing the Constitution, the Political Parties Law and legal amendments for broader freedom of expression. We want everyone to think about the problem seriously and reassess the situation,” he told Today’s Zaman.

Demirtaş added that they will also rethink the situation and that if even friends of the DTP are critical of the party, this would mean that they were unable to express themselves fully.

He underlined that by this mass resignation they are taking a stand and do not mean to imply that they are stepping aside so the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the military will face each other in conflict.

“The state, by closing us down, tried to say, ‘I want to see and deal with the PKK,’ but this would mean more bloodshed; on the other hand, this is a de facto situation on the ground,” he said.

He also recalled the recent street clashes over the ethnic rift and said that everybody must think and be aware of the danger.

Demirtaş said they made their decision after discussions and after everybody had a chance to speak their mind, and added that it is meaningless to talk about “moderates” and “radicals” in the DTP.

“This is a discussion to which we are not a party,” he said.

The decision of the DTP deputies to resign is considered by many experts to be a crossroad in Kurdish legal politics and that it also helped in crystallizing differences between moderates and hard-liners more than ever. The determination to resign is also considered to be a victory of the hard-liners for the time being.

Before the decision was made, the outlawed PKK announced in a statement that withdrawing from Parliament was the demand of the people and should be respected.

The same statement suggested that there may not be space left for Kurds in Turkish politics, so Kurdish politicians, even if they are affiliated with political parties other than the DTP, should return to their own land and participate in the struggle. The statement went on to call for young Kurds to head to the mountains and join the PKK.

“It is true that the DTP was excluded from Parliament, they were not listened to. But still it would have been better if they were staying in Parliament,” the Diyarbakır Bar Association’s Aktar told Today’s Zaman.

He said that Kurds are really disappointed and while they are in this mood everybody should understand the difficulty of expecting Kurds to stay calm and trust the existing system.

“In the last 15 years five pro-Kurdish political parties have been shut down by the state. It is so hard for Kurds to engage in politics,” he said and added that under these circumstances it is also not relevant to talk about moderates and hardliners.

But according to Şah İsmail Bedirhanoğlu, the chairman of the Southeastern Anatolia Businessmen Association (GÜNSİAD), the rift between moderates and hardliners is already there, getting deeper, and it will be reflected in the future, too.

“Maybe it does not look good now. But if we compare how the situation was 10 years ago, obviously there is progress. Despite all the shortcomings, we are freer now. The mentality of the state officials is different; under these circumstances the voice of the moderates will be heard more,” he told Today’s Zamans and added that the attack at Reşadiye, in Tokat, is the real beginning of this separation.

One week before the Constitutional Court ruled on the DTP closure, there was an attack in Tokat province in which seven soldiers were killed. The DTP condemned the attack and claimed that it was a provocation to stop the democratization process. One day before the Constitutional Court’s announcement, the PKK claimed responsibility for the attack.