Rejecting the denial of Kurdish identity as professed by past governments, the AK Party opted to push for democratization to foster peace. However, the PKK, which tried to portray itself as the defender of Kurdish rights, sabotaged the process
After the deal between Washington and Ankara, the political pundits in the Western media are quite sure that Turkey has started to use joining the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham (ISIS) as a shield for another war, its fight against the outlawed PKK.
Well, when one does not fill in all the required blanks in a report, the argument can be as misleading as you want it to be. Of course, the one-sided commentaries and interviews with leading PKK figures or its advocates will help to strengthen false arguments.
The PKK matter has been Turkey's number one domestic problem for years, resulting in more than 30,000 deaths over the last 30 years. In order to completely understand what is happening right now between Turkey and the PKK, the history of the fight should not be excluded, nor should the major shift in Turkey's policy in the last four years.
During the rise of tension before and after the 2011 general elections, which saw a similar escalation of violence we have been living through in recent weeks, more than 60 Turkish soldiers and around 150 PKK members were killed in clashes. The PKK attacked the Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's election campaign bus in May 2011, Erdoğan, who was in a helicopter at the time. In August 2011, two months after the elections, Turkish jets attacked PKK bases in the Qandil Mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan. The PKK's roadblocks, kidnappings and ambushes aimed at Turkish security forces and civilians were common in the southeastern cities of Turkey. However, what makes this conflict more interesting than the previous ones at that time was that the Justice and Development party (AK Party), led by Erdoğan, had started a "democratic opening," a first-of-its-kind initiative in Turkey's Kurdish policy, in mid-2009, two years before the fight in question.
During the course of a couple of months in 2011, PKK forces were badly damaged and crumbled as expected. But instead of going back to the denial of the past after the Turkish forces' success against the PKK militants as the nationalist or republican governments had done in the past, the AK Party chose a different path and decided to continue with democratization involving Kurdish rights, to advance the constitutional and legal reforms and to look for absolute peace scenarios. Considering the outlawed PKK separate from the Kurds, Erdoğan apologized in November 2011 over the Dersim Massacre, which took place in 1938, almost a year before Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's death, on behalf of the Turkish state, describing it as "one of the most tragic events of Turkey's recent history." The peace talks were hinted at in 2012 and the launch of the Kurdish-Turkish peace process was officially declared in early 2013 at a time no one expected.
It took a while for strong public support favoring the AK Party government-sponsored peace efforts to be maintained after years of hostility. The AK Party was the target of the nationalist and republican opposition parties in Parliament and its leader, Erdoğan, was repeatedly denounced as "the traitor" due to his efforts for a permanent peace. We saw many sabotage attempts in 2013 aimed at preventing the success of the reconciliation process, like the assassination of three PKK administrators in Paris, revealing the imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan's secret talks in a national paper or the bombings of the offices of the AK Party and the prime minister in Ankara. We later understood that the mass arrests in the investigations conducted by Gülenist police officers and prosecutors nested in the state against the Kurdish Communities Union (KCK), an urban organization founded by the PKK, or the Gülenist prosecutors' request to interrogate the Turkish National Intelligence Organization (MİT) chief, Hakan Fidan, as part of the investigation related to KCK trials, were also attempts to avert the upcoming reconciliation process. Erdoğan made his famous statement in 2013, stating that he was ready to even "drink hemlock" if it would pave the way for peace.
The first condition for a healthy advancement of the peace talks was the disarmament of the PKK and the withdrawal of its fighters from Turkey. It was also declared in Öcalan's letter that was read to the public during the March 21, 2013 Nevruz celebration. However, the PKK never withdrew from Turkey and instead of laying down arms, expanded its arsenal. Indeed, the PKK has stockpiled around 80,000 long-barreled weapons in cities to be used in an urban war over the last two years, according to a recent official report, with some of them probably having been carried to Turkey from Syria.
The figures along with the recent killings of Turkish security officers by the PKK have shown that the PKK has no intention of participating in a permanent cease-fire or an ultimate peace. As a matter of fact, blaming the AK Party government for supporting ISIS after the Suruç suicide bombing that occurred 20 days ago in Şanlıurfa province and claiming credit for the killing of two security officers in retaliation is an indication that its fight against ISIS is a coverer for the PKK to gain international support and resume its war against Turkey. The continuation of the Syrian civil war was a great chance for the PKK to regain its strength, and they used it well. They played their part for the conflict's spill over Turkey's borders. Our never-ending war is back thanks to the support of the Middle East pundits in the Western media for the PKK based on their hatred of Erdoğan, who has been our biggest hope for peace, and now hundreds of Turkish and Kurdish people are about to lose their lives.
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