Democratic initiative tested

Emotions have been high on this issue from day one. What is at stake is an issue that goes at least a century back. A quarter of that century has seen blood, tears, mistrust and mismanagement. Neither the government nor the opinion leaders who support the initiative believe in miracles. When Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said last month that “they will do whatever it takes” to solve this problem, he was not being rhetorical.

The two opposition parties, the Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), are vehemently opposed to the democratic initiative. The CHP is a social democrat party, and one would expect that it would support any effort to solve the Kurdish issue. A report by Deniz Baykal on the Kurdish issue back in 1989 proposed steps that were way ahead of what the AK Party government is proposing today to expand the sphere of civil liberties and democratic rights for the Kurdish citizens of Turkey. Baykal wants to forget about that report.

The MHP is a nationalist party, and one can understand its opposition. The MHP leadership is concerned about losing the “Turkish” character of Turkish society. They see the Kurds of Turkey as their brothers and sisters but don’t want them to identify themselves as Kurds. It is a love-hate relationship: while they know they cannot reject the reality of the Kurds in Turkey, they refuse to recognize that the Kurds want to define themselves as different.

The CHP and MHP have different reasons for opposing the democratic initiative, but their criticisms agree on two principal issues. The first is that the initiative will produce new ethnicities in Turkey. By granting certain rights such as broadcasting in Kurdish and allowing institutes of Kurdish studies at Turkish universities, the government will feed into the nationalist feelings of the Kurds. This, in turn, will lead to other ethnicity-based social movements and weaken the social fabric and harmony of Turkish society.

The opposition is mistaken because the state-imposed policies of assimilation, denial and intimidation have not strengthened Turkey. Ethnicities exist, and people identify themselves with different names and cultural traditions. Suppressing these identities, as the state has done for decades, does not make them go away. If not channeled properly, the oppressed social and ethnic identities come back in the form of radical political movements and terrorist organizations such as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

The second criticism is that the government is talking to the PKK and this is a major weakness in the Turkish war on terror. The opposition claims that the AK Party government has a secret deal with the PKK and its leader, Abdullah Öcalan. While Öcalan, who has been serving a life sentence in a Turkish prison since 1999, is still the most powerful figure controlling the PKK, government officials have repeatedly said they talk only to those parties and organizations that are legitimate. They talk to the Democratic Society Party (DTP), but the DTP is not trusted by the two opposition parties because of its ties to the PKK.

The key issue here is the disarmament of the PKK. How does one do it? The opposition does not propose any alternatives because they know there is no magic formula to end terrorism. It is an arduous task and requires tremendous patience and prudence. The scenes in the Turkish Parliament on Nov. 10 were certainly not a sign of prudence or wisdom.