BY TAHA AKYOL
MILLIYET- President Abdullah Gul told reporters on his return from Prague that the Kurdish issue is Turkey's most important issue. This statement is very important. Of course, the founders of the Turkish Republic knew that it was the most important issue, but they never announced or mentioned it. Even Ataturk thought that there would not be Kurdish nationalism for many generations, as he told Henry Dobbs, an administrator in India, in 1926. The Kurdish movement developed as the 'left' in the 1970s, won municipal elections in four provinces, including Diyarbakir, in 1977 and burst out with a terrible terrorism in 1984. Finally, now Turkey's president has called it the most important problem and urged people within the state talk to each other much more clearly.
Turkey has been ruled by many civilian and military powers since the 1930s, but exclusionary and oppressive policies haven't solved the problem. On the contrary, they have only fuelled Kurdish nationalism. Some 40,000 PKK members were neutralized, but the terrorist group remains. Even former Chief of General Staff Gen. Yasar Buyukanit said that not even the entire Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) could clear the PKK from northern Iraq! This issue can be solved not by ignoring or excluding our Kurdish citizens, but by integrating them into the democratic system. Such developments indicate there will be a change of climate towards good things and a solution. But the continuation of PKK terrorism and the provocation of certain narrow-minded fanatics within the Democratic Society Party (DTP) might trigger problems. As Gul said, incidents could spiral out of control. Ethnic nationalism is insane, especially at larger levels!
The first step is the PKK's ending terrorism. Yes, the PKK can't be finished, but it is in trouble, faced by military and political difficulties. That's why the military should and must continue its fight against the PKK and force it to give up terrorism. But certain Kurds reject this, saying that if the PKK lays down its weapons, the state should forget about a solution. Nobody should forget that Turkey's democratic openings on the Kurdish issue came not in the 1990s, when terrorism went wild, but since 2000, when the movement saw inertia. The conditions of our day require a democratic opening, but PKK terrorism is an obstacle to this. So all Kurds should put pressure on the PKK to lay down its weapons unconditionally. Of course, the state should draw up a road map to facilitate their leaving their mountain camps and integrating the Kurdish potential into Turkey's unitary political system in line with terrorism's shift from inertia to laying down its weapons.