Turkey's most revolutionary democratic initiative in the last century is the reconciliation process that aims to end the outlawed PKK's clash and resolve the problems faced by Kurdish citizens of Turkey.
The questions of the Armenians and Alevis, as well as many others, are not only the shortcomings of a mentality that was adopted during the establishment of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, but are also heavy historical burdens for us. While the Ottoman Empire was regressing and falling apart in the face of the West, it lost its civil peace and social balances due to aggregation of some reasons too knotty to be mentioned here. As the state authority weakened, the demands for rights and security of various communities evolved into a big commotion. The state was therefore in uncharted waters and resorted to such artificial, violent and destructive methods as the Imperial Edict of Gülhane to save the day.
This means that while Turkey unearths the Armenian, Kurdish and Alevi questions today, it does not only tussle with traumas nourished by 80 years of Kemalist oligarchy, but also much older ones whose germs were sown in the 19th century. In particular, handling the Alevi question means stirring up trauma that is at least 300 years old. This task is shouldered by a Sunni-based religious government and its influential leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The situation may confuse the minds of our Western companions for two primary reasons: The first is that they still continue to evaluate the East and Islam through outdated colonial clichés. According to this perspective, the East is ontologically incompatible with democracy. The stereotype of the irrational and sluggish Eastern man who is prone to violence and superstition is still alive in the subconscious of Westerners.
Furthermore, there are puzzling codes of power struggle that are going on between the religionists and the Kurds who represents Turkey's reformists and totalitarian secularists who stand for obscurantism. The totalitarian seculars do not accept equality with religionists, Kurds, minorities and Alevis. They have serious power that has been achieved through 80 years of privilege. They get backup from the Republican People's Party (CHP) and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) in the fields of media, business and politics. The situation became more complicated when the superstructure of the Gülen Movement, which strove to seize critical institutions of the state and align itself with the totalitarian seculars when Erdoğan rebuffed them, came into play.
Thus, this alliance that constitutes two-thirds of the media and is engaged in close relations with nongovernmental organizations, offers the West a picture of the struggle in Turkey as they wish. This alliance, which is essentially totalitarian but seems modernist in appearance, easily garners sympathy in the West. However, the situation is much more different than they narrate.
There is the reconciliation process that has been at the core of this struggle for almost two years. Completing the reconciliation process successfully means that the totalitarian and secular oligarchy loses its last stronghold. They consider the belligerent PKK as the most influential opposition against the Justice and Development Party (AK Party). That is why this process, which was declared publicly on Jan. 3, 2013, has been targeted by the totalitarian secular media and the superstructure of the Gülen Movement since day one. From the outset of the process, the "intellectuals" who are well respected in the West launched a campaign to sabotage it. On the one hand, they said to the Kurds, "Öcalan renounced the 30-year struggle to Erdoğan for the sake of nothing" and on the other they incited Turks by saying "Erdoğan granted the east of the country to the PKK."
They offered provocative broadcastings during the Gezi crisis to invite Kurds onto the streets and to conflict with the state. These sections hamper the Kurdish question and advocate the massacres that were conducted by the state and burning of Kurdish villages in the past. However, they suddenly begin to engage in so-called advocacy for the Kurds. Fortunately, the experienced Kurdish people were not deceived by this hypocrisy.
Then they started to instigate the Alevis. Yet again, some so-called secular and democrat writers invited the Alevis into clash by forming sentences like "Kurds fought and acquired their rights; you too fight against the state and have your rights." They never cared about the Alevis. To them, the death of young Alevis in the streets is nothing but a potential instrument to topple the AK Party from power.
On May 19, 2014, during a summit at the Office of the Prime Ministry, it was decided to open up a new phase in the reconciliation process. Within the context of this four-stage plan, a formula of how the PKK will first withdraw from the borders, lay down arms and then return to the country, is being discussed with the participation of Kurdish political representatives. The pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party (HDP) committee that visited İmralı prison recently said Öcalan was happy with the progress of the reconciliation process. The committee highlighted that the government took two radical steps on the issue: The first is the government's resolution to base the process on legal grounds; while the second is that the negotiations go beyond bureaucracy and are carried out between political representatives.
Now the government is preparing for an initiative to solve the problems of Alevis. Probably, after a little while, problems faced by Alevis such as the freedom of worship will go down in history.
Although the era of dictatorship is being permanently closed in Turkey, Doğan Media Group and the Gülenist media are against the government's history-making steps to solve century-long handicaps.
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