The AK Party and its objectives

It seems that the winds of the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) bloc are blowing toward a coalition with the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), as indicated by the public statements and messages. However, I think this is being generalized by the influence of the wing that has an inclination toward the MHP within the AK Party. I would like to reiterate my conviction that Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu will roll up his sleeves and take into consideration all eventualities in an effort to form a government. However, I do not believe that a coalition will emerge from the existing picture, and even if it did, it will not last long. Therefore, if Turkey holds early general elections once again in November, it will have chosen the most efficient way in terms of bringing things on track.

Certainly, every kind of coalition option will be evaluated. On the other hand, what kind of a benefit will the AK Party have if it comes to terms with the MHP, while MHP Chair Devlet Bahçeli still makes statements like: "…Will the president remain within the constitutional framework? Will he move to the altitude of 1071, i.e. to Çankaya? …They will give up Turkey, heading toward destruction with the fabricated demands of the reconciliation process. There are also the Dec. 17 and Dec. 25 corruption scandals. That is to say, give Bilal, take the power… Will Erdoğan's AK Party continue after they give us these?"

Is the AK Party giving the green light to form a coalition with a party that makes such remarks? Or, does the MHP chair talk differently behind closed doors on the one hand, while trying to satisfy his base on the other? The greatest danger concerns what he said about the reconciliation process. The AK Party took a great risk by initiating the reconciliation process. However, this risk does not mean that the process is wrong. Putting the reconciliation process into cold storage or forming a coalition with the MHP just because the Kurdish votes for the AK Party dropped would mean that the AK Party has to admit that it has done wrong. Pro-security policies will gain importance, which will be of no use apart from strengthening the Republican People's Party (CHP) and the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), and Kurds will completely break away from the AK Party.

However, history should be written correctly and what has been done for the Kurds under the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan should be remembered. Ninety percent of the demands for democracy, which were verbalized in Turkey during the 1990s, have been actualized over the past 10 years. The removal of state security courts and the emergency state, permitting TV and radio broadcasts in the Kurdish language as well as the establishment of a Kurdish institute were among major demands. The work called "Turkey's Kurdish Question Memory," which was prepared by Hüseyin Yayman on behalf of the Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research (SETA), thoroughly tells of the progress that has been made in the Kurdish issue. Yayman suggests that the AK Party cannot explain it, although it made a revolution.

Those who were personally victimized by this issue and who experienced assimilation policies know this very well. Yaşar Kaya, the chair of the closed pro-Kurdish Democracy Party (DEP) and the first owner of Özgür Gündem daily, returned to Turkey after 21 years of exile. He said, "Major changes were rapidly actualized during the AK Party period. Amendments were made and steps were taken in law, human rights and democracy. A number of laws were passed, democracy invigorated and Turkey became a livable country."

In an interview before the elections, Seyyit Haşim Haşimi, who served as the mayor of Cizre between 1989 and 1994, a period where the Kurdish question became gangrenous and the streets witnessed hot conflicts day in and day out, said, "Thanks to the AK Party, the state has for the first time come to abandon its wrong policies regarding the Kurdish question. No one has realized this. All the political parties that pursued one-day policies in the past became an instrument to the state's wrong polices regarding the Kurdish question. The state absorbed those political parties and gathered them. The most fundamental chance regarding the Kurdish question was actualized thanks to the AK Party… The civil and military bureaucracy, capital circles, media and citizens of the country have come to support the resolution of the issue thanks to Erdoğan's strong political leadership."

Let us note that we could not use the word "Kurdistan" even to refer to the region that was controlled by Masoud Barzani in Iraq in the early 2000s when I started journalism. I remember how many times this word was removed from my articles at those times. Whenever a journalist said "Mr. Öcalan," even by mistake, he was judged or almost lynched. This atmosphere changed in Turkey under the leadership of Erdoğan. The AK Party should remember all this and should not step back from the way on which it made progress.