It is possible to obtain clues from the members of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) that may enable us to better understand their idea of disarmament. Directly following the mutual statement announcing disarmament, HDP Co-Chair Selahattin Demirtaş said that the accomplishment was the result of their own efforts, and that the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) was not of the slightest help in the process. The motivation for this declaration, which only makes one smile, is of course the desire to turn Kurdish politics into a significant determinant for the Kurds. But at the same time, it illustrates that the reconciliation process has become a "meta idea" - an idea that needs protection rather than something to keep at bay. By taking it over, Demirtaş tried to politicize a development that cannot be criticized.
On the same day, Deputy Pervin Buldan, one of the figures in the delegation who met the imprisoned PKK leader, Abdullah Öcalan, said that disarmament is only valid as long as it is understood through the 10 articles announced at the meeting. We have to consider the fact that these remarks reflect a calculated declaration. Their acts are motivated to increase the radius of action of the senior PKK leadership in Iraq's Qandil Mountains. In the following days, HDP authorities said that those articles are not the resolution itself, but they form the preconditions for a resolution. However, one could only smile in the face of such announcements, just as with Demirtaş's first statement I mentioned above. All of these articles are highly ambiguous and far too broad, and the last article suggests the formation of a new constitution, covering all the other articles. Consequently, at least two or three years are needed to really put these articles into practice. If the PKK is thinking of not laying down arms until then, it would only be a bad joke targeting itself.
The reason is quite clear. At the phase that has been reached, the PKK's Turkish and Syrian policies are indistinguishable. Kurdish politics has demanded this so that they could force Turkey, but they should have stood against the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) on their own to accomplish it. But instead, they were in need of U.S. air support and the protection of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), President Masoud Barzani's peshmerga forces and the Free Syrian Army. As a result, they accepted the resolution Turkey preferred in Rojava. If they propose articles that would be accepted with public consensus and could identify a period of time as a condition for laying down arms in Turkey, its simplest result might be remaining alone in Syria. Also, if they do not favor laying down arms, even after the agreement between the government and Öcalan, they will not be supported by the U.S. in any possible clashes in Syria, since Turkey is a member of NATO and it is unthinkable for the U.S. to support a force that persists in fighting a NATO country.
It must be noted that the legitimization of the PKK's armament stemmed entirely from the illegitimate attitude of the Turkish state in the past. However, the recent developments we have gone through have demonstrated that the AK Party government has already grown away from this former state position and has reached the point where it can guarantee a pluralist and democratic structure where all identities and cultures could coexist freely. Moreover, this guarantee is also favored by Öcalan. It should also be underlined that if the Kurdish issue did not exist, the AK Party would still adopt the same strategic move, since their legitimization against the military and bureaucratic domination system depends on it. Furthermore, governing "new" Muslims without creating a "new" Turkey is not possible anymore. In other words, the attempts to attribute hypocrisy to the AK Party are baseless. The real question we must deal with is whether Kurdish politics is being hypocritical or not, and this will be answered very soon.
