Who should lead the ‘Kurdish solution’?

 “Good things” don't happen on their own; they need “good people” who make them happen. Those “good people” should also know this; the steps taken regarding finding a solution to the Kurdish problem and the initiatives to this end are not being received negatively with society overall; quite to the contrary, they are being absorbed rather well. The most striking example of this is the lifting of capital punishment after Abdullah Öcalan was sentenced to death. Furthermore, an establishment of dialogue between the Kurdish administration of Iraq, formal-level relations with Iraq's ethnically Kurdish president, mutual visits and talks and TRT's Kurdish channel all point to the fact that there is societal support for the steps being taken and reactions will remain limited.

However, it may not be possible to manage an overall perception that a solution package (or Kurdish initiative) will come into being as a result of negotiations with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). Therefore, the main basis for an encompassing “pre-solution strategy” should be political and social reforms. Among these reforms, there needs to be an emphasis on equity in constitutional reforms and a clear ban of ethnically motivated discrimination, alongside the “normalization” of Kurdish in the public arena and initiatives to make the language more visible.

However, as contact or negotiation with the PKK has become a prominent issue, receiving priority (or portraying such an image) will cause the period of resolution to become unmanageable in addition to increasing the “political bill” to an amount that cannot be withstood.

The second leg of a solution strategy requires (or should give the appearance) that while conducting the contact, talks/negotiation, laying down of arms and amnesty aspects of the process, the presidency leads the negotiations and not the government. The stance displayed by President Abdullah Gül thus has been conducive to actualizing this mission. With the president's first tour being to the Southeast, his becoming the first president following Turgut Özal to establish close ties with the people and nongovernmental organizations of the region and the dialogue he has created with Iraq's Kurdish President Jalal Talabani have all helped ease his playing an active role in this period of resolution.

The president, through playing an active role, can also fulfill the desire of Kurdish constituents to face a power that represents the government instead of “sensitive and timid” political actors.

As the main actor in the Kurdish initiative, the government may enter a phase of unsustainability when one considers the political risks and costs associated with the procedure along with the limitations on the predictability of developments and lack of opportunity for supervision. One of the ways in which the process can be made sustainable is by putting forth an authority that is above politics or the government. This should not mean that the Kurdish problem should be entrusted to powers above politics. On the contrary, I am speaking of a solution strategy in which the will of the government is in full support and legal and political steps are being taken; however, the “ownership” of the solution project is entrusted to the president.

Let me state right away one of the reasons for this. In a Kurdish solution wherein the government appears to be in the forefront, those who don't want to leave the glory of having enacted a solution in the government's hands may sabotage the efforts even if the solution seems very near and possible. In other words, those in opposition to the AK Party will not allow it to experience the honor and benefits of having solved the Kurdish problem. These include the PKK and the DTP in addition to the known opposition to the party, be they organizations, individuals or groups.

Therefore, in order for the period of solution to be managed in a politically risk- and cost-free manner by the government, and, in the event of negotiations being successful, for the “sharing of glory” of having found a solution not to be transformed into a factor for sabotage, it is more appropriate that the president is “shown” as the “address” for the solution.

27 July 2009, Monday

Opposition party appeals to military, not people

As I keep saying, the No. 1 problem in Turkish politics is the absence of a viable and democratic alternative to the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party).

To have a functioning democracy, one needs to have an alternative political movement that is capable of challenging the ruling party. Otherwise, there emerges a dominant-party system that is not healthy especially in countries like Turkey, where democracy is still in the process of being consolidated.

But the main opposition party, the Republican People's Party (CHP), does everything it can to distance itself from the democratic majority of the country. The latest example of this is its insistence to take the latest amendments in the Turkish Penal Code (TCK) and the Code on Criminal Procedure (CMK) -- which bar the trial of civilians on any account by military courts and enable the trial of military personnel who are suspect of forming gangs, terrorism, and crimes against the Constitution, which includes military coup attempts, by civilian courts -- to the Constitutional Court.

What is wrong with this new law? It is a move that enhances the civilian and democratic character of Turkey, and as such is applauded by the European Union. But somehow, the CHP is annoyed by this. Can you imagine a social democratic party advocating the trial of civilians by military courts, where, apart from military judges with law degrees, a professional officer sits as a member? They are also courts where the members are hierarchically subordinated within the military.

Moreover, CHP leader Deniz Baykal argues that coup attempts should be tried in military courts. Imagine a military institutionally committed to staging a coup and left to try its own coup-makers!

We had, in fact, a perfect trial of coup makers by a military court in 1958. An army major, Samet Kuşçu, raised the alarm on the group that was planning to stage a military coup. Nine high-ranking officers were arrested and tried by the military court. The verdict was fantastic: the nine were cleared off the charge while the informer, Kuşçu, was dishonorably discharged from the army and sentenced to two years in prison for slander. But in May 1960, when the military staged the coup, the nine officers tried and released were one of the cells of the junta, and the head of the court, Cemal Tural, was also among them!

So Baykal seems to be satisfied with the justice of those who are prepared to commit a constitutional crime. There can be no other leader claiming to be a social democrat that has such faith in possible criminals within the military. I wonder what the members of Socialists International think about their Turkish colleagues and why they continue to maintain the membership of the CHP in this worldwide organization of social “democrats.”

Allying with the military does not pay off in democratic elections. This should have been properly understood by CHP leaders over the last 50 years, during which they have never won an election to form a majority government. People love and trust their military, but whenever they go to the polls they vote for the party that sits furthest from the military. So what the CHP has been doing does not make sense politically.

The CHP has been stuck with 20 percent of the vote as the main opposition party. This has not changed in the 2004 local elections, in the July 2007 general elections and in the March 2009 elections. Unless the CHP parts ways with the authoritarian elements within the military, it cannot legitimately claim to be a democratic actor that can attract people's interest.

13 July 2009, Monday