Vahap Coşkun
The Turkish original of this article was published as ‘Kabak tadı’ on 15th July 2015.
Turkey has gone through a general election of major importance. Four parties have entered parliament. The AKP has lost its grip on the government. No party has been able to attain the majority needed to govern by itself. Now coalition talks are being held between these parties. Depending on how they go, either a coalition government will be agreed upon, or we shall be heading for early elections.
Everybody is waiting for this picture to be clarified. What sort of government is it going to be? With which partners? What will it strive to achieve? Is it going to be a short-term affair purely for the purpose of taking the country to early elections, or will it be a long-term executive for implementing various programs? Will parties be able to agree on the main issues? Or in order to cut through the knot, will it be necessary to go to the people yet again? There are many problems facing us. Through what policies are they going to be addressed? This will largely depend on the answers to the foregoing questions.
The PKK, too, says that it is waiting for the political situation to crystallize before setting out their position. In an interview granted to Ayşegül Doğan of IMC, Murat Karayılan states that they are going to take a look at the government to be formed, and chart their route accordingly: “In the short run, we are trying to clarify the whole process as much as possible. At the very least, it is the process of forming a coalition government that is on the agenda. We will be taking a look at its color before determining our own path.”
“Terminating the ceasefire”
But unfortunately, the PKK’s words and deeds are out of synch. A government, any government has yet to emerge. Hence there are no signs at all about what path a prospective government might follow. Nevertheless, and going against what it has been saying, the PKK is gradually hardening its position. Over the past week [of 7-15 July] the PKK has made two moves that are significant in this regard.
First, the KCK made a public statement. It declared that it was going to mobilize everything within its power to block all government construction of roads, dams and army outposts, and that it had its sights set on all dams in particular. Furthermore, it announced that it would undertake counter-reprisals against any attempts to stop it.
Second, in the aftermath of its statement the PKK promptly escalated its violence by undertaking one armed act after another. In Ardahan’s Göle county seat it stormed the city’s waterworks, commandeered a municipal vehicle, and subsequently set fire to it. Here a firefight broke out during which one citizen lost his life. At Ağrı, the PKK set up a roadblock on a highway, carried out ID checks, and set three TIRs afire. Again in Ağrı, it also burned a concrete mixer truck. The KCK statement did not explicitly say that the ceasefire that has been in force for the last two years and a half is now officially over. But because of the threatening tone of voice pervading the entire text and the succeeding incidents, it was as “terminating the ceasefire” that a majority of the public read and interpreted everything.
Peace by the grace of the PKK
The KCK statement was wrong both because of its timing and its increasingly harsh tone of voice. But the mistake is not limited to this declaration; it lies far deeper. The problem is that the PKK has come to regard the Solution Process as “a favor granted to the state, the government and the people by its own grace.” The PKK sees itself as exercising all rights and powers over the Solution Process, and it keeps emitting signals that it might renege on this act of grace at any moment. Hence it is, that whenever the Solution Process encounters any sort of problem, the first thing that the PKK can think of is resorting to arms. At the slightest hint of any difficulty, the PKK puts its guns on the table to remind everyone of other alternatives and to raise the specter of putting paid to the Solution Process. If you want to go back and check your archives, you will come up against many such statements by the PKK ever since the Solution Process started. So this attitude has always been there, and there is a disconcerting, disquieting side to it.
Similarly, we have to underline that neither is there anything acceptable about the PKK’s recent actions. Last year, too, the PKK undertook many such acts in various province in the region. Carried out under the aegis of the YDG-H, they had made life quite intolerable and caused harm to the people. Faced with growing complaints, the PKK had declared in December that such actions had to be consigned to a bygone era. It had announced that all actions that directly harmed the people and obstructed their daily lives, such as creating roadblocks, checking IDs, setting fire to vehicles, enforcing shop closures etc, were to be terminated forthwith. It went even further by emphasizing that those involved in such actions were to be treated as “traitors.”
Quite some time has passed since then, and actions of this sort should long have become history. That, however, is not the case, as the PKK is not holding back from carrying them out at present. Whenever it feels the need to demonstrate its power or to make its presence manifest, it keeps resorting to them again and again despite the fact that it has itself declared them to be wrong and erroneous.
The PKK’s attitude of flaunting its weapons at the people at every opportunity, of engaging in displays of brute force and setting vehicles afire here and there, and of not removing the shadow its arms have been casting over the Solution Process, has long grown very stale. The PKK is fond of repeating that the state must finally make up its mind and start taking the requisite steps if it really wants peace. It may be right on that count, but it is not just the state but the PKK, too, that has to make up its mind. Does the PKK for its part really want to go ahead with the Solution Process? Has it really made up its mind on living together, developing democracy, and achieving peace? If so, it should promptly abandon its present stance. For it is neither conducive to peace nor democratic politics.