So Who Exactly Opposes Disarmament?

Rastinews — Plenty of quarters are critical of the process. Most of their objections target one thing: the government has taken no real steps forward - if anything, it has designed a regional policy hostile to Kurds, above all in Rojava - and, of course, the substance of the February 27 declaration, titled "Call for Peace and a Democratic Society."

I have yet to come across a single person who has voiced objections to the process openly and loudly, even by implication, suggesting the armed struggle should continue.

So does criticizing the process amount to defending armed struggle, or opposing disarmament? Of course not. Even those who accuse critics of the process of opposing disarmament know this perfectly well.

The claim is morally dubious, too. It is plainly deliberate, aimed at discrediting criticism of the process. In that sense, it is nothing less than a perception operation.

Unfortunately, one person who has done exactly this is Ruşen Çakır, a journalist I long considered objective. He did not name a single person who opposes disarmament. That was not out of any scruple about protecting sources - there was no one to name. I had watched his programs with real appreciation for years. I went back to the episode where he raised this point twice, wondering whether I had simply misheard him. The second viewing left me angrier still, convinced this was no innocent aside. He is not the only one doing this, but I name him because I have followed his work closely. Those targeted by criticism of the process, or who take it personally, may well resort to this kind of manipulation to deflect it - that is no surprise. But why would a journalist do the same?

Branding critics of the process this way is, in effect, painting a target on their backs. Objecting to a scheme capable of derailing the government's own arrangement is enough to make you the government's target.
The accusation carries a colonial undertone as well: those accused of profiting from the war and resisting disarmament are also labeled "Kurdish nationalists." That label alone reveals the depth of the distortion, since "nationalist" is deployed here purely to produce a negative impression. Yes, some critics of the process do describe themselves as Kurdish nationalists, but Kurdish patriots and leftist, socialist voices make up the clear majority.

A plain Kurdish nationalist might approach the matter by asking, "What's in it for me?" - and there were people who took that line in the previous process, too. But today, the overwhelming majority of those objecting to the process are acting on principle and ideology.

Every one of those accused, even targeted, bases their objections on what the process's various actors have actually intended and said.
As far as I can tell, even the sharpest critics of the process are mostly saying one thing: "If you were always going to arrive at this point, why choose a path that cost so many lives? Why was so much blood spilled?"

In other words, most of those objecting to the process are actually saying the armed struggle was wrong from the very start. Accusing them of "opposing disarmament" is therefore deeply problematic, and plainly made in bad faith.

Don't people have the right to say this? Doesn't the "democratic spirit" everyone keeps invoking grant them that right? I myself have said from the outset that this process was launched to protect and prolong the government's own hold on power, shaped by a mindset of denying Kurds even a single elected village headman if possible. I believe what is actually in force is an approach that, even as Turkey grows more authoritarian, has no intention of granting Kurds so much as a crumb of rights.

My own position, cautious and distant at first, has only grown clearer over time. But in making all these criticisms, have I ever once said the armed struggle should continue? Have I ever hinted that weapons should not be laid down?
Quite the opposite - I have criticized the armed struggle for years. I believe the moment for disarmament passed long ago, and that the delay has caused grave harm. Yet even as I support disarmament on the principle that it is never too late to cut one's losses, I still object to this particular process.

Because "disarmament alone" is not enough for the government. It also wants the abandonment of political demands and positions, and the February 27 declaration does exactly that. That is the crux of the entire process.
When the February 27 declaration was announced, I turned to the friends beside me and said, "This declaration will, unfortunately, make it harder for the organization to disarm." The written text announced the abandonment of political positions and demands. That is precisely why Bahçeli called it "correct from start to finish, and commendable."

Of course, no single person has the power to retreat from, or renounce, the fundamental and inalienable rights of the Kurdish people. And indeed, both organization circles and DEM Party officials went on to maintain their political positions and demands in the period that followed.

Frankly, I have asked myself more than once: did they even read the February 27 declaration? If you accept its content, you cannot go on maintaining your political positions and demands. And if you don't accept it, then object to its content openly, and take that objection directly to the other side. So, did we see any such objection in the minutes of the talks? No.

In a piece I wrote earlier, I laid out the following observations about the call's text, point by point:

Read paragraph by paragraph, the call's text shows that Öcalan was persuaded by the state, and that what is being called a "paradigm shift" actually amounts to a retreat from his own approach to defining and resolving the Kurdish question.

First, the organization's founding reasons are presented almost as an excuse, and then it is argued that those reasons no longer hold. Kurdish-Turkish relations are defined as "an alliance spanning a thousand years, in which the voluntary element outweighs the rest," with capitalist modernity accused of trying to tear that alliance apart for the past 200 years. The organization's popular support is attributed to the closure of democratic political channels. Finally, a whole range of issues, from administrative autonomy to cultural demands, are labeled an "extreme nationalist deviation," said to be out of step with the historical sociology of society.

The rest of the call consists of abstract statements that anyone could have written or said. Personally, I find none of these assessments accurate.

Real socialism certainly influenced the PKK's founding, but the fundamental reason the organization grew was the Kurdish question. One could say Öcalan was influenced by the Turkish left and built an organizational structure accordingly, but the underlying reason the organization took root and expanded was not enthusiasm for socialist revolution - it was the Kurdish question itself.

Had the PKK acted from the start purely on a claim to socialist revolution, it would likely have remained just one of the era's small organizations. What actually drove the organization's growth was the persistence of the unresolved Kurdish question - and that question remains unresolved today.

The thesis of a "thousand-year voluntary alliance" is also historically shaky. For a large part of that millennium, the hegemonic power was the Ottoman Empire. And before the French Revolution, modern national consciousness did not even exist. Speaking of a "Turkish-Kurdish national alliance" in today's sense is therefore an anachronistic reading.
The fact that Turks and Kurds fought together to open the gates of Anatolia, or acted jointly at certain points in history, does not justify calling it a "thousand-year voluntary alliance." Those alliances were both time-bound and pragmatic.

The claim that capitalist modernity aims to break up a Kurdish-Turkish alliance does not reflect reality either. The last 200 years have in any case been a period marked by the emergence of nation-states, the collapse of empires, civil wars and world wars. Moreover, in the span running from the Ottoman era to the Republic, numerous strategic partnerships were formed with the West over the denial of Kurdish identity. So if an alliance was in fact struck, it is the Ottoman Empire and Turkey that allied with capitalist modernity on the Kurdish question.

Explaining the organization's popular base through "the closure of democratic political channels" is likewise contradictory. Democratic channels are not closed today; casting a vote to express one's will, or entering the political arena, is free. But the will of those who vote is seized through trustee appointments, and the arrest of those who enter politics has become routine. The trustees keep coming, politicians remain hostages, prosecution files pile up, and the right to mother-tongue education goes unrecognized.

The most striking part of the call is that autonomy, federation and cultural demands are labeled "an extreme nationalist swerve." This is where the liquidation of political theses and demands truly lies hidden.

Setting aside political autonomy, I don't think anyone could defend presenting even administrative autonomy, or cultural demands, as "an extreme nationalist swerve." And indeed, no one has openly defended this so far — most people simply chose to look away.

What is the point of writing all this alongside a call to lay down arms and dissolve? Place these passages next to Bahçeli's statement that Öcalan, in seeking status, has kept his word and done his part in Syria, and it is not hard to understand.

Perhaps everyone held some expectation when the process began, and for that reason no one voiced open objection. But it is striking that the same equivocal stance continues to be maintained today.
All the written statements to emerge from İmralı after the call have in fact served to legitimize this approach. A good part of the debates over "communes" and "transcending Marxism" also served to obscure the real direction being taken.

Of course the government will shower such a call with praise, because this call is documentary proof that the state persuaded Öcalan. Let him be persuaded to lay down arms — I raise no objection to that myself; on the contrary, I support it. But the matter does not end there. What Öcalan has said and what he is trying to do is not confined to a call for disarmament; it also entails abandoning political theses and demands. Watching the İmralı conversations that Atilla Uğur filmed with a hidden camera, still circulating on social media, one cannot dismiss the view that Öcalan has begun doing what he promised to do. In what is Öcalan's most important interview, the one he gave to Mehmet Ali Birand in the Beqaa Valley, he said: "You have a crisis of leadership, we do not; no one can oppose so easily, a leader is always someone who can transcend the existing situation and the status quo." I believe that the state/government delegation placed these very words of his before him and asked him to stay true to them, that Öcalan was persuaded over the course of years-long talks, and that, naturally, every manner of promise was made to him verbally.

While this process was under way, what did the government do in Rojava? What initiatives did it take? Did the process not make it harder to insist on the gains achieved there? Did it not disrupt diplomatic efforts? Did they not propose "the Syrian Arab Republic" as Syria's new name? Do Kurds in Syria not have to march today just to secure their own language?

If you say "Öcalan is talking with the state, saying certain things to ease the atmosphere, but his real intent is different" or "it doesn't bind us," then stop calling him "the sole interlocutor on the Kurdish question"; call him "the sole authority on the PKK's disarmament and dissolution." If what you are practicing is Machiavellianism, its true masters are Öcalan's interlocutors, Erdoğan and Bahçeli. Why does the process keep stalling, why does it keep hitting one deadlock after another? Because it is being shaped to suit the government's needs — after all, they have largely dismantled Rojava, at home they came within a hair's breadth of removing the CHP as an alternative to power by drowning it in its own internal troubles, they have considerably broken the opposition's sense of common cause and society's will to resist, their plans are running like clockwork, and as that happens, the need felt for the process changes too.

But if, despite every negative indicator and development, you believe that Öcalan has the government wrapped around his finger, that he is saying things they like to hear while serving the Kurdish people's rights, that the government is allowing a process that benefits the Kurdish people — then at least don't accuse those who don't believe it, those who criticize it. When you're proven right, you lynch those who criticized the process, you trample them. Then we'll say: "that's your right."

Bahçeli's reaction, branding as "maximalist demands" the demands raised by DEM Party Co-Chair Bakırhan — that trustees be removed, political hostages released, and legal steps taken on education in the mother tongue — sums up this approach.

Suppose these demands are indeed maximalist. Is voicing them not a democratic right? Is it not politics? If politics itself cannot be practiced, if it is not even possible to raise demands without someone pre-judging whether they may or may not be granted, does this approach not amount to denying the very reasons the problem exists, and to banning the right to democratic politics as well?

Today the government's approach is becoming ever clearer: "Let those in the mountains lay down arms, but let those in the plains not engage in politics either."

Does this approach not then amount to the government making the process conditional? We see that while the government says "this is not a give-and-take process, it is not a negotiation, there is no bargaining whatsoever, it consists solely of laying down arms unconditionally and without preconditions," it is in fact obscuring the very condition it has itself set. The government is openly saying: "let both arms and politics be abandoned."

Yes, we too say: "the time for armed struggle has passed, or armed struggle was wrong from the very start and should be abandoned, let arms be laid down unconditionally — but if the government wants more than that, then no one should step forward to pledge more on behalf of the Kurdish people, no one should say the Kurdish people are giving up their basic rights, no one should break their will, breed despondency, damage the spirit of political struggle, or disregard the principles and values built at such heavy cost; let every kind of demand for status be freely voiced through the Kurdish people's high political consciousness and democratic organization, let the struggle be waged through every democratic means." When we say this, if someone comes out and says "you want war, you're profiting from war," we certainly don't doubt their capacity to understand — but we do doubt their intent.

The objections of those who criticize the process are, for the most part, along the lines described above; I expect that a great many of these are not simply my own personal views but the views of a large share of politically engaged Kurds, and no one can be branded pro-war or accused of opposing disarmament for voicing them. To level such an accusation is to serve the government/state side of the process, to criminalize political demands, and it is simply dishonorable.