The PKK ruined the Kurdish people's daily lives through ditch wars and lost every opportunity it had in the reconciliation process. All Kurdish people and democratic forces must rise and resist against this situation
After the arrest of two Diyarbakır co-mayors, Gülten Kışanak and Fırat Anlı, 12 deputies from the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) were detained to bear testimony as part of the compulsory judicial process on Thursday evening. The HDP deputies, including the party's co-chairs Selahattin Demirtaş and Figen Yüksekdağ, are mainly accused of being a member of and supporting the PKK terrorist organization.
While the HDP said the detentions were attempts at liquidation, political lynching, siege pressure and the first steps toward a fascistic regime, the PKK reacted to the detentions by carrying out a bomb attack that killed eight people in Diyarbakır. It also called for resistance by using the all-too-common democracy discourse through the Kurdish Communities Union (KCK), saying that, "We are where words fail. All Kurdish people and democratic forces must rise and resist this situation everywhere."
Republican People's Party (CHP) Chairman Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu criticized the detentions, highlighting that those who are elected through political means must be removed through political means. Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım said those who are elected through elections, but are implicated in terrorism, must account for their acts.
Certainly, European states will voice their criticisms, saying that they are "deeply concerned" about the rule of law and freedoms. We might soon face heated arguments about democracy, fascism and counterterrorism. The most important thing, however, is the fact that the PKK-HDP line in Turkey has entered the final phase of its collapse.
It would be useful to make a trend analysis and remind others how we have got to this point. The process started with Kurdish nationalists seizing cantons in Syria in order to realize their dream of establishing a PKK-dominated Kurdistan. However, they made a grave mistake in calculation. The fact that Arab rebellions brought the civil war and conflicts in the region instead of a democratic order was considered to be a winter for Arabs and spring for Kurdish nationalists. With this understanding, the PKK-HDP bloc used the Syrian civil war to sabotage the reconciliation process.
Driven by the fact that Russia, Iran and the U.S. took them as an addressee, they implemented a maximalist plan in the Middle East: They planned to unite imaginary Kurdistans in Syria, Iraq and Turkey. Due to this ambition, they were swallowed by the reconciliation process that they disrupted themselves. As such, the collapse started during the days when they both talked about peace and turned the southeast into an ammunition store.
The political uncertainty caused by the June 7 elections and the HDP's electoral success were the final poisonous drops that nourished the excessive ambition. The PKK's resumption of terrorist acts in July 2015 was a new ring in the chain of mistakes that accelerated the collapse. Every passing day further marginalized the HDP, which failed to put a distance between terrorism and itself, and made the PKK more aggressive.
The PKK ruined the Kurdish people's daily lives through ditch wars and lost every opportunity it had in the reconciliation process. Counterterrorism turned into new political ground that brought together some of the Justice and Development Party (AK Party), Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and CHP's bases.
The issue of survivability, which was fueled by the PKK's quest for uniting separate cantons in southeastern Turkey and northern Syria, created reconciliation that cannot be compared to the one in the 1990s. And, parliamentary immunities were lifted in this reconciliatory atmosphere.
On May 20, 2016, Parliament's general assembly passed a constitutional amendment with votes from the AK Party, MHP and some CHP deputies to lift immunities and submitted the files of 138 deputies to the judiciary. Certainly, the repression of the July 15 coup attempt and the proactive security approach that was represented by Operation Euphrates Shield further consolidated the reconciliation.
This political trend offers a single opportunity to remaining HDP deputies: They must break away from the PKK and establish a new political party that conducts Turkey-oriented politics as seen in the Spain example.
About the author
Burhanettin Duran is General Coordinator of SETA Foundation and a professor at Social Sciences University of Ankara. He is also a member of Turkish Presidency Security and Foreign Policies Council.
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