Haberler

In the end, the government did come up with a very successful move: All the bargaining that had been going on with the US for months was concluded with an agreement that enabled Turkey to draw US support to its side, with the further corollary that Turkey came to be certified as a primary partner in the struggle against IS. (…) Cooperation with the US also means cooperation with the Turkish army, and renders the AKP’s survival significant and functional directly in the eyes of these two actors.

In all settlement areas where it gained significant influence, the YDG-H then embarked upon a socio-political cleansing operation. Its mission of “building autonomy” was and is really a euphemism for the organization’s task of clearing the non-PKK population out of the Southeast. Coupled with the state’s weakness in preserving law and order and protecting citizens in the Southeast, the people of the region have been laid at the mercy of this armed urban gang.

The Kurds are abiding by political realism in their search for a way out. People are aware of all the power relations, the costs and the opportunities.

Some calls for “peace” are given to some very harsh name-calling for politicians. Even that might be regarded as normal. But to be able to issue a call for peace without even mentioning the PKK has to be regarded as a “uniquely Turkish advocacy for peace.”

In these circumstances, in order to foresee what the coming weeks and months are likely to bring, it becomes important to have a sense of what the people in the Southeast might be thinking and feeling, what criteria they might be judging the two sides by, how they might be reading politics and the region.