Time to leave the lies aside


Last week, two groups from Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) President Massoud Barzani's pershmerga forces and factions from the Free Syrian Army (FSA) entered Kobani with their weapons through a corridor enabled by Turkey. However, the alliance of the PKK and the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and some leftist groups in Turkey had been expressing a totally different scene for weeks. According to them, Barzani helped the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) when it was invading Mosul, Iraq and the FSA organically came to mean the same thing as ISIS. Now, the support of both of these actors of the PYD against ISIS needs a further explanation. But neither Kurdish media nor the writers on the left have explained this "oddity." Besides, the KRG declared that they could send a number of peshmerga soldiers according to the PYD's needs. The FSA also offered to send 1,300 people, which is nearly a military regiment, but the PYD did not accept. They stepped back as soon as they saw the aid though they loudly announced for days that they were alone in Kobani. Everyone knows the reason for it. The aim of the PKK and the PYD is to have control over the Rojava region by itself and to negotiate as the only power in this land. Therefore, they do not want to see "foreign" soldiers around the neighborhood. They also objected Ankara's intervention in their negotiations with the Turkish government for that reason. Thereafter they tried to impose pressure on the government by spreading propaganda that Ankara was supporting ISIS. But now there is one more oddity – Turkey, which allegedly helps ISIS, has enabled the passage of peshmerga forces and FSA soldiers through the country. Ankara based this act on the legal grounds of the legislation recently issued in Parliament. However, the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) voted against the troop mandate. The irony does not end with this. While peshmerga soldiers were heading for Kobani through the Turkish corridor, they were welcomed by a Kurdish delegation including HDP members. The public saluted the KRG soldiers during their journey. While Turkey's media took this as natural, media outlets with ties to the Kurdish political movement did not regard it as a natural course of events. It is obvious that the PYD is disturbed by the arrival of peshmerga forces. They are even more disturbed by the fact that they reached Kobani through Turkey, because it increased Rojava's possibility of evolving into a pluralist administration at a possible moment for peace.If we leave the recently exaggerated lies aside, the core subject is simple. The Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government wishes the reconstruction of Syria and Iraq will be done in a pluralist way paying regard to the inner dynamics of the local communities. It is ready to take any step that would support this wish. The party is against the possibility of a certain force's control over a land, any kind of homogenization it would impose there and formation of a so-called "democratic" ideological regulation. This practically means liberating Rojava from the PYD's control and introducing a much broader and pluralist administration that also include the PYD. The AK Party wishes the same thing for southeastern Turkey. It sides with the free politicization of different viewpoints among Kurds, formation of a democratic competition framework and reinforcing the local administrations under such conditions. However, the PKK and the PYD are afraid of this option. They want to consolidate the power they have, turn it into an asset and conduct negotiations in such a position. Consequently, they work with Assad, do not object to the massacres of ISIS aimed at "others," do not favor the aid of FSA and peshmerga forces and want to lay the charge of its own failure on Turkey. As a tragicomic result of this condition, a Kurdish intellectual called the "secular and progressivist" stratum in Turkey to stage a coup last week. The failure and lack of politics cause a part of Kurdish society to turn to violence again diminishing legitimacy. Such a deficiency of common sense can only be explained through psychology.