This is truly a weird sort of country. The nation’s agenda and the media’s agenda are wholly at odds with each other. To give a slightly different twist to a well-known saying, the nation is afraid for its life while these are afraid for their goods and money. Not even news of all these martyrdoms coming from the Southeast can make them change their priorities. While the PKK-HDP keeps declaring “self-government” and setting up “cantons” in various towns and cities, all the time drenching the country in blood and terror, the CHP, the MHP and the Doğan Media Group are still busy debating whether Erdoğan has exceeded his powers or not.
While I mean no disrespect, I cannot help observing that when Devlet Bahçeli, as the out-and-out fascistic leader of an out-and-out fascist party, is really mocking all of us and taking us for idiots when he compares President Erdoğan to Hitler, Mussolini, or Kaddafi. Similarly, CHP leader Kılıçdaroğlu echoes a former prosecutor who has left his country to flee abroad when he accuses Erdoğan of “carrying out a coup d’état.”
This political duo is complemented by the Doğan media. Hürriyet throws a banner headline to accuse Erdoğan: “He has carried out a coup.” It also asks its columnists to keep writing articles about why “This is flagrant putschism.” Actually, however, it is none other than this paper that is actually addicted to military coups and interventions. Both its boss and its writers are famous for being pro-coup. It was just the other day that this media outlet presented the real putschists’ flight abroad to its readers as a “passage.” Over 17-25 December [2013], wasn’t Aydın Doğan a party to the attempted coup? Who is it that has been trying to drag the country into civil war? They have gone to the length of regarding even the PKK and DHKP-C terrorists as allies for the sake of getting rid of Erdoğan. And they have not tired of appealing to the Turkish Armed Forces’ sense of “duty.”
As for Erdoğan, just what kind of “coup” has he accomplished, and how? Was it by running for office, or by achieving the support of 52 percent of the public? And isn’t it a novel situation for the president to be elected by popular vote? How can there be no difference between a president appointed by parliament and a president elected by the people? Doesn’t the National Assembly have to address and redefine this situation? Why should it be putschism to say so?
Or else, what is it that you really want?
It is the Doğan Media Group that has plunged this country into terror. They did it comjunction with the daily Cumhuriyet and the Gülen Congregation media. Those who were presenting the PKK as “nice kids” before the elections have been trying to turn a blind eye to or gloss over the PKK’s murders ever since. With news of more martyrs arriving from the Southeast with every passing day, and the PKK proclaiming “self-government” in towns and cities or transforming neighborhoods into “cantons,” they are trying to benefit from all this noise and confusion to get Erdoğan out of the way. First they have set the whole country afire, and now they are trying to see to their own interests in the midst of the whole chaos.
The PKK is no more than a cheap sub-contractor for this bloody strategy. By dragging the Southeast into conflict and chaos, it is offering its services to those who would like to weaken Turkey. It provides the trained and ready manpower for low-wage terrorism. Nobody can explain this terrorism any longer through appeals to the Kurdish cause or a struggle for rights and liberties. It has become clear that they will not be able to cow Ankara through such bloody violence. And it is going to be a long and futile wait for them if this nation, whose children they have been killing, is once more to consider pursuing a “solution process” and concluding a “peace agreement” with them. Regardless of what people might argue to the contrary, if you have been murdering a nation’s sons tomorrow it is not going to be easy engage in dialogue with them, to talk and to live together as if nothing has happened. Through this latest wave of terror the PKK cannot achieve anything other than to have all those provisionally opened doors close in its face. There is nothing more that it can hope to obtain. In particular, it will never be able to make the Kurds into partners in this war. Peace is bound to come, but those responsible for this terror will never be forgiven.