A quite didactic picture has been revealed as the elections near. While the outlawed PKK, which claims to have declared a cease-fire, continues killing military and police officers and the government keeps saying that the operations could continue until the end. Normally, it can be thought that this state of conflict would prevent the organization of the elections. But this is not happening. While the PKK cannot receive societal support in the region it dominates, the operations are gradually seen as an obligation to maintain public order and safety. In other words, the armed fight between the PKK and the state is departing from its ideological context for the first time in the last 30 years. This fight, which used to be thought to be given for the rights of Kurds, is now thought to be organized due to the PKK's own political and organizational interests.
A very distinct case corroborates this. The current conflicts were initiated with the PKK's one-sided decision for war. The goals were to represent Turkey as a country in which elections cannot be held and paralyze the interim election government. Also, it was planned to propagandize that the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) did not allow elections in order to receive support from the West.
However, this project, which underestimates society, collapsed at the very beginning. Today, myriad criticism can be directed at the AK Party government regarding the resolution of the Kurdish question. It can be argued that it moved slowly, left the process in suspense, could not diversify agents and resorted to easy ways when the situation got tough. But one must be ignorant, stupid or immoral to claim that the AK Party did not want to grant rights to Kurds, started a war and oppressed Kurdish people.
Only a few days ago a declaration of this kind was released, which was signed by many Western academics. According to the declaration, there are serious claims suggesting that state agents have a part in the Ankara massacre. Frankly, even a non-serious claim does not exist in this respect except for Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) Co-Chair Selahattin Demirtaş's tactless accusations. Besides, those signing the declaration demand colonizing Turkey through multilateral agreements along with isolating the country. The declaration even goes further, pathetically arguing that the current election government is authoritarian and illegitimate. At the end, holding free and open elections is demanded, but without touching on the PKK, of course, which does not want a free and open election.
What can be said for academics who make a spectacle of themselves by signing such a declaration? Maybe they are aspiring to show an idealistic reaction departing from some limited knowledge about a society they are not familiar with. Or they take political assessments of some people as truth only because those people resemble them in cultural terms. Or they try to stand in the right position due to peer pressure from their fellow left-wing proponents. We are in a period in which left-wing ideology gradually takes on some psychological functions and leftist intellectuals, who see that they have lost their societal agencies and have become marginalized, try to preserve their character by forming communities on a global scale.
It would be absurd to categorically claim that these people are ignorant, stupid or immoral. But political marginalization forces them to be political on some subjects they are not very familiar with, and the only outcome of this is an unhealthy formation of communities.
This declaration was probably not released on the initiative of those Western intellectuals. Someone from Turkey must have written this text and handed it to them. When the list is viewed, it is not hard to guess who they are. If one would like to make an analysis, they would have to keep in mind that the PKK is being unexpectedly defeated in the ongoing war. I would not be surprised in the slightest if the declaration turns out to have been penned directly on the PKK's request