Resolving or managing the Kurdish question?

The Kurdish question has proved to be very difficult to resolve since the actors involved are not prepared to take the risk of finding a solution.

Both the government and Kurdish nationalists are accustomed to “living with the problem” instead of taking the risk of the unknown, a settled Kurdish question.

I have reached this judgment on the basis of the fate of the 2009 opening that was torpedoed by the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and abandoned by the government when national and regional conditions were really ripe for a solution.

There is now talk of a new government strategy on the Kurdish problem. Even if there is such a “new strategy,” I do not think it will produce a solution. This is so because the government is not prepared to take political risks to address the Kurdish question. The view of the government is that the Kurdish question is not the making of the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) and thus no one can blame the party for not finding a solution to it.

Besides, the Kurdish question does not seriously disturb the AK Party's governance of Turkey. The ruling party can live without finding a solution to the Kurdish question. Last year's election showed once more that the continuation of the Kurdish question does not prevent the AK Party from winning elections. Even among Kurds, the AK Party receives as many votes as the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP).

Will that be the case when the AK Party takes bold steps to solve the Kurdish question? That much is not guaranteed. The ruling party fears that a form of final settlement may alienate the Turks, and especially the nationalists, resulting in the risk of losing its nationalist constituency to the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP).

It is ironic that the political party that came to power 10 years ago with a view to challenge the status quo today sticks to the status quo on the Kurdish question. Indeed it is ironic to defend the status quo on the Kurdish question when it is in a position to challenge and change it, but this is not surprising at all because the status quo is regarded by the AK Party as “manageable” while a solution is “unsettling.”

What is also important to note in the “new strategy” is the emphasis made on the new decision not to talk to jailed PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan and the PKK. In the near past, we know that the government engaged both Öcalan and the PKK through the National Intelligence Organization (MİT) and the special representative of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, then-Prime Ministry Undersecretary Hakan Fidan. The government will no longer talk to them. Why? The reason for this policy change might be the fact that the former talks produced no results. But it may also be equally true that the recent crisis between the judiciary and MİT could have triggered such a decision on the part of the government. That is to say that the government may be concerned that a perceived “negotiation” with the PKK and Öcalan is not only politically risky but also legally problematic, given the divergence of views between the judiciary and the government. If this is true, then we can infer that the government has given in to the pressure of the judiciary and that it is even more unlikely now that it will go along with a solution model.

The government instead seems willing to talk to the BDP, the “extension of the PKK,” as described by the prime minister himself. So long as the BDP is portrayed as totally dependent on the PKK, it is not realistic to expect it to act independently and hold genuine negotiations with the government.

The bottom line is that the government has come to the end of its “democratic initiatives”; for the last two years or so there has been no attempt at democratizing the Kurdish issue. Instead, the government seems to have adopted a tough perspective of crushing the PKK presence and eliminating its organizational network in cities through operations targeting the Kurdish Communities Union (KCK). In response to this approach, the PKK has not surrendered but challenged the government in cities, as demonstrated during Newroz, in a quest to show its strength.

To sum up, the new strategy is not a strategy but part of “managing the Kurdish question,” limiting its damage and distancing its political risks on the part of the government.