NGOs call for calm amid prospect of violence in Southeast

More than 90 civil society organizations, including business associations, chambers, professional unions, human rights activists and women's organizations, will launch the “two minutes of darkness” protest starting today and have it run until March.

The campaign will urge the public to turn off their lights at eight o’clock every evening for two minutes. The civil society organizations underlined in their joint declaration that violence and armed struggle should not be considered appropriate methods for demanding rights.

The declaration also protested the arrest of many Kurdish politicians, among them mayors, during an operation that allegedly targeted urban extensions of the PKK.

Southeastern Anatolia Industrialists and Businessmen’s Association (GÜNSİAD) President Şah İsmail Bedirhanoğlu told Today’s Zaman that the protests are not aimed solely at violence and the arrest of the politicians but also include a demand for a new constitution and a protest against alleged coup attempts.

“The first stage of our protest will continue until Feb. 28. We picked this date deliberately as it is the anniversary of the Feb. 28, 1997 postmodern coup,” he said.

He added that every spring, starting on Feb. 15, the anniversary of the capture of Öcalan, the streets start to get active. This activity reaches its peak on March 21, at Nevruz, which is considered a new year and a Kurdish holiday.

“We don’t want tension this spring. This does not mean we don’t have anything to protest against, but we want democratic, peaceful protests in which no one’s life and property are threatened,” Bedirhanoğlu said.

But the PKK, on the other hand, is signaling that it might increase incidents of violence starting on Feb. 15. The PKK’s youth wing has already urged large-scale demonstrations.

“This year, as in previous years, the PKK will try to use the streets as it always has. This year there are also threats that the violence will hit the big cities in the western parts of the country, but we will have to wait and see,” Sedat Laçiner, chairman of the International Strategic Research Organization (USAK), told Today’s Zaman.

He also said that the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) has urged people to engage in acts of civil disobedience -- particularly through violating limitations on using Kurdish as a language in education.

Emre Uslu, a columnist for Today’s Zaman, noted that Öcalan has ordered the BDP not to advocate for the PKK, as has always been demanded by the EU, but that the PKK plans to pursue its own agenda through a more violent campaign of terrorism.

“In an interview, Cemil Bayık [a prominent PKK commander] revealed the PKK’s 2010 strategy to remove the Justice and Development Party [AK Party] from the Kurdish region. According to Bayık, the Turkish state thinks the AK Party is the last resort for it to establish relations with Kurdish communities. If the PKK removes the AK Party from the region, Bayık thinks, the Turkish state will have no choice but to sit down with the PKK and negotiate peace,” Uslu wrote on Monday for Today’s Zaman.

According to him, the PKK will this time use proxies to terrorize society. Among the proxies are the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (TAK), who threatened to target AK Party, Republican People’s Party (CHP) and Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) offices in the Southeast.

“The PKK calculates that the government will see that the PKK could be a reasonable organization to negotiate with. If not, the government could potentially face more radical organizations like the TAK,” Uslu claimed.