The Democratic Initiative and the DTP's Capacity to Use This Channel
The Democratic initiative dates back to the beginning of this millennium. Turkey's 9-10-year EU accession period laid the foundations for this initiative by helping Turkey to gain confidence and solve its historical problems.
With the democratic initiative, Kurds are supplied with opportunities to solve the disputes and problems in a peaceful manner, and it is a bridge to overcome the differences between Turks and Kurds. Yet the DTP, which was seen as a channel to realizing the needs of the Kurdish society and to giving them a voice in the Turkish Parliament, did not use this chance and they focused on Abdullah Ocalan. They preferred to care about Ocalan rather than the Kurds. They declined to act on behalf of the Kurds and resolve the issues in a peaceful manner.
Recently, the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) was closed. Kurds in Turkey number approximately 15 million, and 25% of this population voted for the DTP. That is to say, most of the votes of the Kurdish population went to the AKP and to the other parties.
The DTP was in Parliament for 2.5 years. In this time period, although they were given the chance to settle the problems with a mutual and democratic understanding, they answered this offer by saying they did not have the right to say something, and Ocalan was the person who must be communicated with. This led the Kurdish people to question whether the DTP cares about them or about Ocalan most.
The KCK operations are not something new. Today's operations are the fourth wave of these operations. The first wave took place nearly a year ago. The KCK includes the semi-members of the DTP; part of the party is tied to the KCK. We cannot say that all DTP members are also members of the PKK and KCK.
The KCK operations of today are late reactions. And this created such an image that the Turkish government gave up, and terrorists do whatever they want to do and create their own rules. These people must be stopped. Despite all this, the democratization process must be continued.
Intellectuals like Umit Firat claim that they were unable to freely express their opinions. It is not true. They have been given the opportunity to express themselves. And in my opinion, in the next 5-10 years or so, we will see more Turkish-Kurdish initiatives and more tolerance. Till now, so many amendments have been made. For example, nine packages have been accepted not only concerning the Kurdish issue but also about standards of democratization. So it can be seen that the government paradigm is changing. Furthermore, the democratic initiative was not created in six months. It is the result of a 9-10-year process. We can just say that it was formulated within these six months. There will not be any retrogressing in this process and democracy will be given more and more of a chance.
Protests and violence started a month before the DTP's closure. These are reflections of the DTP being used as a tool of Ocalan and the PKK. Here the main issue of the government is not the violence. The first thing on the agenda is to create a pluralistic environment in which all parties can have a voice. The violence and protests are the secondary issues. What is more, it is not possible to say that all DTP followers are seeking violence and that all of them are supporters of terrorism and the PKK. And each of the people who voted for the DTP did so for his/her own reason, so there was not one specific reason for voting for the DTP.
As we can recall from the past experiences of military initiatives and such till now, all but the democratic initiative failed. So the government should continue on this path.
In order to have a much healthier system, first the law on party closure should be more limited and the reasons for party closure should be reduced to the use of violence and illegal activities. Second, any party like the DTP or the BDP must separate itself from violence. It should conduct its political activities against a background of legitimacy. More specifically, a party should make a distinction between itself and the PKK.
The EU also told the DTP to “speak on behalf of Kurds, not Ocalan.” If they had followed this advice, which now applies to the BDP, they would still exist today. If the DTP continues to act this way then it will lose its supporters, whom it must not take for granted.
After the closure of the DTP, some deputies claimed that they would resign and return to the people, but the public resisted it. The public elected them as their representatives in the parliament, so they had to stay there. It was a sign that they also began to hear the public. And if they continue in this way by hearing the public rather than Ocalan, then it will be much easier to reach the target of the democratic initiative.
According to some polls, the AKP is losing support. This is not because of the democratic initiative itself, but because the AKP could not put it in practice coherently. In addition, the economic problems and the effect of financial crisis have influenced this decrease. But the public approval of the AKP is still over 32%.
When we look at the polls on the democratic initiative, the public approval was around 60-70% at the beginning. But now it is around 40%. I believe that after the operations the public approval for the democratic initiative will increase.
If the government manages to win the upcoming 2011 elections, it will be because of their success in their efforts. There should be an improvement in the practices of their policies so that they will get the public approval as they did before. On the other hand, the AKP is lucky that the opposition party is immature. They have no concrete vision, no political perspective, no sense and no idea. They are only opponents and also weak opponents. In this respect, Mustafa Sarigul may be emerging as a new, better opposition with his Turkey Change Movement (TDH). Lastly, the economic policies and economic developments will also affect the re-election of the AKP.
The democratic initiative will never drop behind but it may halt from time to time. Any retrogression might cause a break down in the state and this would be like falling down from the peak level of a mountain. In this case, all the bones would be broken into pieces. There will absolutely be ups and downs in this democratic initiative process; however, it will continue through the rise to power of any party from any fraction because it is deeply rooted in the society – no one can stop it anymore.
There are big differences between the 1990s and today. First of all, there was not something called the democratic initiative in the 1990s, and the amnesty issue was not something more than a bargaining. Second, it was a state-manufactured project being implemented from the top down. But when we look at today's situation, it is totally different: it comes from the public, from the bottom up. Third, Turkey is more confident and more aware about what to do now. In contrast, in the 1990s, we could not see the whole picture. We were just looking at a small part of it and evaluating everything according to that small part. But now it is different. Also, the Turkish people are more capable of empathizing with the Kurdish people, which creates a mutual understanding. So the motivation of today's movements comes from the society. And all these are so promising when we look at today's situation compared to the 1990s or so.
