DTP’s (Democratic Society Party) recent congress has demonstrated that the party has marginalized itself, radicalized and ceased to be a part of democratic solution process. While the DTP has repeatedly claimed that the party supports democratization and that the Prime Minister should take risks in that regard it pointed to the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) and Imrali (the island where the former leader of the PKK is imprisoned) for a solution to the ongoing clash. It has been observed that since the provocative speech Leyla Zana delivered at the Turkish Grand National Assembly so as to create chaos and agitation in 1991 instead of doing politics in the parliament, the party has not gleaned lessons from history.
This political movement chain, of which DTP is the last ring and that first came into political life with HEP (Society’s Work Party) in 1990 and entered the parliament with DEP (Democratic Party), has constantly used its democratic space to legitimize the terrorist organization instead of articulating Kurdish people’s problems and cultural rights within political limits.
DTP Today
Having a cursory look one can say that the usual instruments of politics are meetings, protests, demonstrations, holding government’s activities under scrutiny, offering bills to the parliament and shaping public opinion. Yet, a political party cannot claim to be doing politics by ‘evaporating’ itself and acting as the ‘shadow cabinet’ of a terrorist organization. The dilemma that the DTP has fallen into and the danger awaiting the party can be most clearly understood in light of the words Ahmet Turk, the party’s co-leader, uttered days before the party was established in 2005: “The parties that we have formed so far failed to deliver trust. It was hard to say anything positive about the rule of law and democracy within those parties. Therefore, we have failed to deliver trust to Turkish intellectuals. All the parties we have formed were thought to be protégés. This is also why we were not taken very seriously by our counterparts. We need to bring a new perspective thenceforth. We cannot be involved in politics by being a protégé of anyone anymore.”
Although the raison d’être of the party and the route it was to follow were clarified this way the DTP points to Imrali as the appropriate address to bring the bloody conflict to a halt by saying that “everybody is curious about the roadmap Ocalan [the former leader of the PKK] is going to put forward” today. On the one hand, it aspires to be ‘Turkey’s party’ by claiming, in the words of former party co-leader Aysel Tugluk that “the DTP is the party of 70 million living in Turkey” and “we will embrace and defend all issues as fervently as the Kurdish issue” but then the party often advocates the terrorist group. For example, it could give a green light to violence by saying, in the words of Emine Ayna, “in cases where states do not recognize rights and freedoms violent and armed reactions are legitimized.” Therefore, is it any possible to concur with Ahmet Turk’s claim that “the DTP is a party [to the solution], knows Kurdish people well, knows the expectations of the society, correctly reads Turkey’s sensitivities”?
The fact that DTP ‘blinks’ to Imrali, awaits directives from the PKK, and declares killed terrorists as martyrs manifests that the party has not gone an inch forward since 1991. In light of the findings of a survey done by BILGESAM among 8538 people of Kurdish origin that half of DTP’s electorate does not trust the party what does the DTP, which claims to represent and articulate Kurdish interests in the parliament really do in terms of politics?
Consequently, the DTP has been trying to use its democratic ground and political space as a “Trojan horse.” By narrowing down the political limits it gives the green light to non-discriminatory terrorist attacks that are even condemned in the Middle East. Because it does not openly condemn terrorism or chooses to ignore terrorist attacks the goals the party had set before, being the voice of 70 million people, delivering trust to Turkish intellectuals, being taken seriously by its counterparts, not being a protégé to anyone and drawing lessons from history, are being questioned again. The DTP as such cannot even be Kurdish citizens’ party, let alone appeal to the whole Turkish society.
*This piece penned by Ihsan Bal was first published in HABERTURK newspaper on October 09, 2009.
A Time Collapse in the Kurdish Problem
