April 27, 2008 | BEJAN MATUR
Imagine that you live in Diyarbakır. If you did not vote for the Democratic Society Party (DTP) in the last election, you must have chosen the Justice and Development Party (AK Party). You did so for a number of reasons.
You held that any option besides voting for one of these two parties would not alleviate your problems with the system. You did not have another option. You voted for either the DTP, which relied on ethnic politics, or the AK Party, which you believed would bring economic services to your region. You believed that you had two options. Did the party you voted for in the last election disappoint you? Did the DTP ignore you by failing to adequately represent you? Then you have the AK Party, which provides services for you. Or did the AK Party for which you voted, thinking it would generate economic benefits for you, upset you when it approved a cross-border operation? Then you have the DTP, which has remained opposed to such operations from the start. Even though you aren't fully content, you always have a political option that will transmit your objection and opposition to the regime. You always will have. You had this option even during states of emergency.
Despite the election threshold and other obstacles that undermine democratic values, there has always been another option; the voters have chosen one of the political parties that would convey their demands to the political sphere, including the Social Democratic People's Party (SHP), Republican People's Party (CHP), People's Democracy Party (HADEP) or others. This time the situation is far graver and more serious than it was 25 years ago, when the country was governed under the rules of a state of emergency. The two parties that represent 95 percent of votes cast in the southeastern region of Turkey are facing the imminent danger of closure. Both parties, which together represent almost the entire Kurdish electorate, may be banned from politics. How would you feel about this? Would you not feel humiliated, denied or ignored as an ordinary citizen? This sense of exclusion and the accompanying feeling of concern and worry are becoming more prevalent and dominant in the region. The current mood may only be compared to the feelings prevalent in the 1990s, when people tasted fear and outrage in connection with frequent extrajudicial killings. This is why you would sense that you might be stabbed whenever you walked on a street in Diyarbakır. Undoubtedly, the hopelessness and the pessimism that took the city captive is related to this unpredictability and uncertainty.
Interestingly, this also applies to all of Turkey. The policies of the DTP and the AK Party as regards democratization and EU membership mostly overlap, just as the policies of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and the CHP are alike. The latter pair lags behind social demands and goals. And now Turkey seeks to ban the first two, which would have served as the key to resolving the country's most complicated problems. But I think that one point is missed in this matter. Those who seek to benefit from the closure attempts are focused on the short-term advantages involved in the ban. At least for now, they fail to appreciate the long-term repercussions. I believe the Kurdish question will remain forever unresolved if the DTP and the AK Party are banned. Those who favor party closures will not be able to deal with "separatism," an issue they make frequent references to.
Turkey is a country unable to resolve its problems. This has almost become an inherent characteristic of the state. What happens today makes us appreciate the size and magnitude of the potential for the exacerbation of the existing problems -- and not only the lack of will to resolve these problems. I wonder just how those who brag of increasing this potential will fill the void that will be created in the event of the closure of the two parties that serve to transmit the demands of local people to the political center. Think about what will happen when the DTP, which puts emphasis on Kurdishness and reaches out the voters by promising it will transmit the demands of the Kurdish people as regards their cultural identity to the political sphere, is banned from politics, or how people will react to the closure of the AK Party, whose policies are still popular, despite reduced support following the operation in the region. It seems that those who are eager to ban these two parties seek to ensure this: the people in the region have problems with the regime anyway, they have never reconciled with the state and there is no sign that they will. So some effective alternatives, rather than election thresholds and other obstructions, to fully ignore them should be considered. Imagine there is no DTP or AK Party in the region…
It appears that some hold that it would be easy to resolve the Kurdish question if only there were no Kurds, just as a minister for education allegedly remarked that it would be so easy to run the ministry if there were no students. Maybe they are right; their minds are playing a trick on them. Their concerns over separation or division to which they pay the utmost attention must have blocked their minds. Their minds are so blocked that they fail to appreciate that what they considered to be a resolution will actually trigger the realization of their fears. That is to say, the closure of two parties that represent 95 percent of the voters in the southeastern part of Turkey will force the electorate to make a choice vis-à-vis the regime. That the Kurds have so far not been alienated is not something that has happened by the design of the regime or politics. But this was how history progressed. However, demands by the masses -- the voters -- who were left no option to become alienated by the center, should no longer be considered a preference. If this is the case, why do we react to Osman Baydemir, who once noted that the Kurds feel emotionally alienated by Turkey?
Maybe it is time to attribute different meanings to these remarks. These remarks, which were the subject of prosecution and legal processes, should be excused, simply because this is exactly what is being provoked. From now on, nobody can blame the Kurds for alienating themselves from the state and developing as interest in other centers of attraction. Kurds now no longer even have a choice. They have one option to consider: to alienate, to separate. If the Kurds still remain attached despite all these negative developments, we have to ponder this. When and how will we lose the Kurds, really? Which evil act will alienate us from the Kurds? This is what I see: What is being attempted today is undermining the position of Turkey -- and not the Kurds. Kurds have already lost what they have lost. But the wielders of power who are used to winning all the time have to consider what they would lose. It will at least be better for those who, with the possibility of winning all the time in mind, seek to ban political parties to reconsider this issue one more time.