Mehmet Nuri Özdemir wrote for Gazete Karınca stating that the political and cultural problems of the Kurds have reached a level that unless the Kurdish issue is not solved in the region, it will directly affect the governments and the political regimes of the four countries where Kurds mainly live.
‘In the 21st century there is a Kurdish issue that “expands and spreads” regionally. Turkey is the most concrete and current example.’ Özdemir emphasized that recent demonstrations by civilian actors are related to the changing and transforming character of the Kurdish issue.
Özdemir stated the following in his article: ”The Justice and Development Party (AKP) has created a new Kurdish issue. As Kurdish politics became stronger, the AKP was unable to present any political arguement against it, and stop the growth of democratic Kurdish politics. Therefore, the government was inclined to punish all involved in Kurdish politics collectively. The Kurds were directly framed as “criminal spheres” by the government, as they produced opposing policies against the state’s traditional excluding practices.
In order to eliminate these opposition voices, judicial-law enforcement and media networks were put into action and various operations were implemented over a long period of time by the government.’
“It is noteworthy to observe the complete “criminalisation” of the Kurdish public sphere regarding the subsequent unlawful-trustee appointments and the ‘cleansing’ of cultural representation and punishment of Kurdish representatives.
AKP has it’s own policy and wants to impose on the Kurds differently from the state, including prisons increasingly built in Kurdish provinces since 2009 that have turned into camps of political hostages. Cities that have been turned into huge prisons with continuous military and security operations carried out against them to keep them under control. The seizure of the political will of the Kurds initiated against all kinds of elected Kurdish officials (from parliamentarians, Mayors, municipal councilors to non-governmental organizations (NGOs) representatives), the dismissal of Kurds in the public sphere, the re-building of districts of many cities with ‘gentrification’ and war policies, the rejection of native language and cultural institutions. On the other hand, the destruction caused by forest fires, building dams and operations of mine companies, surveillance, control over society 24 hours a day with the most advanced technolgies. All these practices are a common strategy during AKP’s time in power.”
‘AKP cannot do without Kurds’
The new allegiance regime summarised above and powerfully imposed on the Kurds is also the history of the new Kurdish issue. It has served as a solid prosthetic that has kept the AKP alive since its foundation. The AKP survived as long as it clung to the Kurdish agenda, and as long as it survived, it reproduced both the problem and the deadlock. AKP actors, who never refrained from using the components of modernity (state, nation, technology and military industrial complex) as coaches, never refrained from instrumentalising the problems of the Kurdish people for their own interests. AKP has become the most pragmatist political structure that exploits the emotional and psychological worlds of both Kurds and Turks by continuously using ‘peace’ or ‘war’ rhetoric, and making elections and politics on this basis.
Legal acts of denial
Turkey is a country that has been stuck in between utopia and the norm since the Tanzimat (Ottoman reform) period.
While Turkey turns its face to the ‘enlightenment utopias’ of the West and imagining a regime ruled by law, democracy and universal rights, while on the other hand, it has difficulty in transcending traditional Turkish norms.
Consequently, if there are no institutionalised democratic structures and rules of law which secure the system, individual behaviors and interests come to the fore. This floating situation violates local and universal law and creates privileges to the practices of the state and the temporary authorities regarding the Kurdish issue.
In this context, Kurds can neither live as equal or free citizens nor have any legal status as an ethnic structure.
Therefore ,”legal denial” not only adds continuity to a problematic relationship, but it also infects this unequal relationship with the social, cultural, political, diplomatic and economic relations of the country as a whole.
As a result, it is necessary to see that the AKP produces a new Kurdish problem, not a new solution process.
Although what happened in the last five or ten years is roughly referred to as a “no solution policy”, the current situation has exceeded the deadlock and reached the stage that produces a new problem.
At the current stage, the oppressive regime, has spread to the whole of society. “Tanzimat”. Of course, not everyone has to demand rights for the Kurds and the solution of the Kurdish issue in order to avoid possible risks; but at least do not accept the trampling of all democratic rights and acquired universal law principles’
