Etyen Mahçupyan
The Turkish original of this article was published as Diyarbakır’dan analizler on 27th August 2015.
While trying to survive the rack that it had been stretched on, the Kurdish people was forced to try and protect its collective sanity through “over” politicization. Hence it is that today, whoever you happen to talk to and about what, the answers you get will end up mirroring that politicization. This is fully reflected by Ayşe Yırcalı’s Diyarbakır impressions, published on Al Jazeera Turk over two days.
Diyarbakır views the Kurdish question through an entire Middle Eastern geography. In Yırcalı’s words: “After the Peace Process had been proclaimed, as the expected measures kept being delayed and the process became more and more drawn out, the negative impact of the Syrian factor became progressively larger and larger… It is now fairly clear that for the Kurds of Turkey Rojava became the object of a somewhat naïve sense of affinity and appropriation, so that the hopes, fears and expectations of the Kurdish people found microcosmic expression and representation in Rojava, and northern Syria came to embody a whole dream of Kurdestanization.” Hence “while the Kurdish people might develop an inner reaction against the PKK over the [recent] clashes, Syria constitutes a soft underbelly, a weak spot over which there is no criticism of the organization whatsoever.
As for the state, through its failure to reach a correct understanding of or by altogether overlooking Rojava’s value for the Kurds of Turkey, it has committed an irreparable mistake and ended up deeply wounding the Kurds’ conscience. It all comes to be read as the extent to which the AKP is disturbed by the Kurds deploying in Syria, and coming to achieve positions and status. The rather harsh reactions emitted by the AKP especially after the Kurdish capture of Tell Abyad, followed by [Turkish] tanks rolling up to the border, is interpreted that along the Syrian border it is not the Kurds but IS that is the preferred neighbor.” Such sensitivity has generated a certain “tolerance” for the Kurdish movement. People do observe that the PKK is “imposing its own tutelage on Rojava,” that it is militarizing the public order, and that it is “endangering peace inside Turkey for the sake of its own power,” but they nevertheless prefer to see the organization maintain its existence. At the same time, while they express a certain desire for the HDP to grow stronger and begin to carry its weight in civilian politics, they also concede that Demirtaş is not going to be able to act independently as the HDP is not going to be able to escape the PKK’s influence. Thus, hope once more comes to be pinned on Öcalan. It is estimated that he together with the government might open a path for the HDP to advance on.
Meanwhile, Diyarbakır’s take on the AKP is increasingly more questioning and skeptical. People are looking for a connection to trust, a will to grasp and hold on to, but clearly the credit previously extended to the ruling party has been considerably eroded as a result of all the zigzags and ebb-and-flow. Davutoğlu’s proposition about how “Turks and Kurds could cooperate to gain power and influence in the Middle East” has obviously had a positive reception. But the prime minister is regarded as being in Erdoğan’s shadow, with all key decisions being taken by Erdoğan. The latter, Yırcalı notes, is seen as the person who launched the Peace Process but also toppled the negotiating table. At the same time, and despite everything, Erdoğan is also identified as the one person capable of enabling a return to the Solution Process.
From all these partial analyses, the conclusion would seem to be that 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. The various sides and leaders are all viewed equally soberly through the same dissecting lens, and nobody is given more than his due. Diyarbakır is where voters are much more mature than politicos.