Zaman touched upon the possible developments around the Kurdish issue.
In Turkey, most leftist intellectuals have been living in an interesting dream for the last few years.
They don’t believe in anything but the idea that Abdullah Öcalan will bring peace. It is not an objective analysis, or a political stance, or even a hope, it is just an unreasonable belief. There is a lot of evidence and every reason to believe that Öcalan could/would not bring peace; however, leftist intellectuals continue to argue that the only leader who can bring peace is Öcalan.
This belief dominated the Turkish media columns and Twitter accounts once again when Öcalan called on his followers, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants, to end a recent hunger strike that lasted for two months. Leftist intellectuals jumped to the conclusion that Öcalan had once again showed his leadership qualities and opened the door for possible peace. Many of the leftist intellectuals praised Öcalan for his leadership in bringing the hunger strike to an end and becoming the leader to end the violence.
Would he really want to bring peace? By playing a critical role in ending the hunger strike, has he earned the right to negotiate on behalf of the PKK and the Kurds? Can we really trust him to participate in a peace process? Why does the PKK resume peace talks every fall and violence every spring?
First, the peace that Öcalan and the PKK talk about and the peace that the Turkish government talks about are two different concepts. The PKK wants to bring peace without laying down its arms. It wants to return to the cities as the guardian of the Kurds and the democratic autonomous system that the PKK wants to establish in the region. However, the peace that the Turkish state talks about is for the PKK to lay down its arms and surrender. Once the political ground is ready, the state plans to declare a general amnesty for PKK prisoners.
The PKK argues that the peace the state wants is the “surrender of the PKK,” while the state thinks that the peace the PKK wants is to win yet another front in a battle for separation.
The discrepancy between the two demands is so big that no amount of leadership skills could bring the two sides together to find a medium for possible peace. In addition, the newly emerging PKK states put further uncertainty and extra stress on possible peace negotiations. Therefore, at least in the coming years, it is not possible to say that peace is on the horizon.
I don’t think that Öcalan would want to negotiate for peace at this stage because he would be considered a traitor in the eyes of Kurdish nationalists if he ended the terrorism while the PKK is winning. Ending the hunger strike does not mean opening a new chapter for possible peace. Those who present Öcalan’s intervention to end the hunger strike as a positive step toward resuming negotiations ignore the fact that it was Öcalan who did not intervene in the early stages of the strike when he met with his brother on Sept. 22.
We, experienced Turkish citizens, no longer believe in Öcalan and leftist intellectuals’ peace games. The hunger strike was yet another of Öcalan’s political tools to push the government into a corner and take advantage of an opportunity to further erode the government’s image in the Kurdish region. No one could deny that Öcalan and the PKK were the absolute winners of the strike action. With this political move, the PKK once again dominated the Kurdish street and sent a signal to the Kurds that the PKK is the only legitimate political group that represents Kurdish political interests.
If a political action, the hunger strike, has served the interests of the PKK and helped to establish the PKK’s political domination over the Kurdish masses, how could we interpret ending the strike as begging for peace talks? The hunger strike has ended because the PKK and Öcalan got what they were planning to acquire. The most important reward the PKK got was bringing the powerful Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to his knees.
In addition, the PKK resumes peace talks every fall and resumes violence every spring because in the fall the PKK prepares for winter conditions that limit its capacity to fight. During the fall and winter the PKK has less operational ability, so it needs to ease or, if possible, end military operations for the season. Leftist intellectuals present this nonsense peace argument as if it is a real possibility for peace.
