As the PKK has failed to garner support for its revolutionary people's war, it has had recourse to the murderous terrorist attacks that it used to carry out during the 1990s. The recent roadside ambush that targeted troop units in the southeastern Turkish town of Dağlıca is the outcome of this tight spot and craziness. Even though this bomb attack tore out the hearts of millions, it also revealed the necessity of a strong response to violence. There are also those who hope for help from this malevolent conflict, with the media and politics taking the lead. The approach of Turkish Hürriyet daily, which distorted President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's remarks on the issue the previous night, was exemplary. We once again saw how the newspaper's columnist Ertuğrul Özkök sows discord and how Hürriyet mistakes journalism for ideological obsession. I think the history of media has hardly witnessed examples that degraded journalism to such a great extent.
Statements by the Peoples' Democratic Party's (HDP) Co-Chair Selahattin Demirtaş reflected the political aspect of this approach. Demirtaş, who fails to display a political will in the face of the PKK leadership in the Qandil Mountains, also failed to condemn the Dağlıca massacre in a courageous manner in the tweet he posted. Acting out of fear, he concealed the true murderer, the PKK, by adding children from the Cizre district to the soldiers slaughtered in Dağlıca and unabashedly said "our brothers who we lost in Dağlıca." However, let alone taking up a position, he failed to mention even the names of those who killed "his brothers." Can such a politician bring peace to this country? Society now questions why the PKK re-instigates terrorism and the HDP ignores this violence.
When will the Kurds draw a line?Although the Kurds have not yet displayed a strong reaction, it does not mean that they cannot. The public, who enjoyed the political atmosphere brought by the reconciliation process, cannot go back from this point. Particularly Kurds have not yet found an answer to the question of why the PKK has put terrorism in place at a time when politics has gained strength. Despite the HDP leadership's perception manipulations, the man in the street cannot be prevented from asking "Whose war is this?
People are being silenced with fear. Similar fear prevails not only in the southeastern region, but also in the big cities of Turkey and EU countries. That is why Kurds keep their mouth shut despite feeling the reaction against the seizure of their lives by terrorism and violence. However, they accumulate anger at Qandil that escalates violence and their questions increase. This is why their call for an uprising remains unanswered. Not only people, but also politicians in the PKK and HDP bloc question this. Although no one has yet taken the heart to speak, it will not take long for this deep wave to surface. A Kurdish politician, who interviewed prominent figures of Kurdish politics in Europe, says, "I had conversations with leading figures there. Nobody knows the cause of this war. They say nothing when I say the PKK shoots itself in the foot. There is a weird deadlock. All of them know well that rights cannot be obtained through violence."
Well, why are we dying then? This is the question that Kurds cannot answer. Kurds see that the gains they achieved thanks to the reconciliation process are being wasted, but they do not yet have the self-confidence to object to this. This self-confidence will be ensured by the democratic struggle that the state is waging against terrorism in the region.
People know that the state is no longer the state of the 1990s. Aware of this, the HDP and its circles are insistently striving to spread the perception that the state is returning to the 1990s. They, in fact, are the ones who cling to the 1990s and even to the leftist mentality of the 1970s. Qandil has no chance to win this war while there is a changing Turkey that does not want conflict and a responsible political will that draws its strength from the public.
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Last Update: Sep 09, 2015 12:09 pm
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