What is happening today in the Turkish state reminds me of nothing but a power struggle over seats: a struggle over who will be the one to ensure the integration of the Kurds into the murderous Turkish state, who will make them deny the massacres and their losses; a struggle over which wretch will do this, which Kurd will be the one to whitewash the murders of the Turkish state. From the outside this struggle may be invisible, or it may look as if the Turkish state is seeking a solution for peace, but things are not as clean as they appear.
The bloodiest-handed leader of the murderous Turkish state, Devlet Bahçeli, has launched a process he calls “a Turkey without terror” and has taken on the role of being more “pro-Kurd” than the Kurds themselves. Any Kurd who sees this knot and has even the slightest sense of history knows that this killer cannot have stepped into this role so that Kurds may be free, and is certain that, in the end, either Kurds will be stripped of their Kurdish identity or a very bloody process will begin. Devlet Bahçeli and the mentality he represents today is the continuation of the mindset that carried out the Sivas massacre, the Çorum massacre, the Maraş massacre, the Roboski massacre, the JİTEM “unsolved” operations, the torture of Kurds and their disappearances. Which Kurd is there who has not been subjected to the murderous looks of MHP supporters? Of course there are some, for example the sellout Kurds, for example those Kurds who have found a place for themselves in the Ülkü Ocakları; these are the traitors in our midst.
But right now there are much bigger roles at play. What Öcalan and the DEM party are doing at this moment is to try to bring Öcalan into the place of Selahattin Demirtaş. The deputies of the Turkish state have officially visited Öcalan and declared him the legitimate interlocutor. Selahattin Demirtaş, on the other hand, as a leader who has been accepted and respected in Kurdish politics, has been thrown into prison, taken hostage and is being ignored. By declaring that the only interlocutor is Öcalan, they are trying to transfer Demirtaş’s weight and leadership to Öcalan.
You may look from the outside and say, “That cannot happen,” but in the murderous Turkish state everything that was once said to be impossible has come to pass. In his time, Demirtaş was the candidate in Turkish politics who, with his discourse on Kurdish rights and democracy, achieved the highest recognition and the highest electoral potential. The only reason the DEM party can still be in parliament today, and the force that sustains it, is the politics carried out by Demirtaş and figures such as Osman Baydemir, Garo Paylan and S. S. Önder who walked with him.
Öcalan is disturbed by this, and the reason why Demirtaş, whom he has had taken prisoner by Erdoğan’s hand, is now to be buried in silence is that there exists a politician greater than Öcalan. From the very beginning, the politics that have been pursued have been conducted solely in reference to Öcalan and in his name; therefore Öcalan believes that the legal political leadership created by Demirtaş is actually his own right. And because he is now a prisoner of Erdoğan and does not step outside Erdoğan’s word, Öcalan is being put in Demirtaş’s place and is being turned once again into someone who will serve Erdoğan and the bloody Turkish state.
Let us say this does not happen; then it will be blood. Then what happened in 2015 will happen again, only bloodier, harsher and more painful. But in the end it will be the Kurds who are citizens of the Turkish state who pay the price, and that price will be for nothing, or for Öcalan’s effort to make his own leadership sacred.
I am sure all Kurds have already placed Öcalan in a sacred place as a leader of Kurdish rebellion, but he wants more: every day he can breathe he wants to reach his individual freedom and to hand over the PKK, which Kurds have supported with the dream of a country, to Erdoğan and the murderous Turkish state. This is the summary and the plain truth of the matter. I do not know whose the seat will be, but as long as Kurdistan does not belong to the Kurds, the pain, the massacres and the slaughters will never end.
Ünal Zera
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