For Starters

Rastinews — At a time when we badly need to speak out, in an atmosphere of mounting, many-sided pressure on freedom of expression, I came across Rastî. Reaching it felt like finding an oasis in the desert. Before I begin, my warmest greetings and respect go to Rastî's founders, staff and readers. I will now try to play my part in this space, and put down on paper what flows from my pen on current affairs.

I am a lawyer, but I will not speak on any subject — law included — as an expert or an authority. Instead, I will try to put my thoughts into words as an ordinary person. An ordinary person, yes, but one who speaks according to the weight, the needs and the responsibilities of the identities he carries. I am a Kurd, a father, a husband, a brother, a lawyer, a socialist, a democrat in my own way, and a defender of human rights. Without doubt, the identity that matters most to any person is the one that is denied, rejected and made foreign to him. So when I speak in this life, I will not speak first from the identities that are accepted, that are answered, that are allowed to live — I will speak, first of all, from the identity that is rejected.

And if we live in a time when Kurdish identity is more on the world's agenda than ever before, then that will be our agenda too. When the moment comes, we will talk about literature, music, philosophy, technology, the history of humanity and much else. But unfortunately, until our very identity — our Kurdishness — is recognized instead of denied, we will keep living bound to that identity, as if trapped inside it. This is a wound of existence, and until it heals, we remain diminished, and we will stay that way.

When a person sets out, he first needs to take stock: how did we get here, what state are we in, what do we hold in our hands, what have events brought us and what have they taken away? Let's sketch the picture in broad strokes, clear our heads, and then, once we have taken stock, search for the answer to the one question that never changes in the face of any problem: what is to be done? The answer to "what is to be done" is something we may look for in other pieces, since this article may not be enough to spell out every detail of that picture.

We arrived here through massacres built on denial, through killings by unknown perpetrators, through burned villages, through endless arrests, through torture, through exile, through political bans and the closing down of parties. The toll of the armed uprising is heavy too: close to 100,000 lives lost on both sides, more than 100,000 people imprisoned, more than 3 million displaced, 3,500 villages emptied, more than 17,000 killings by unknown perpetrators, and in Rojava, in the war against ISIS, close to 15,000 dead — plus around 3,000 missing during the occupation of Afrin.

Even before the PKK's armed struggle, throughout the history of the Republic, Kurds never accepted the fate laid out for them or the denial forced upon them, and they barely ever stopped. Depending on the conditions of the time, they organized, they rose up, sometimes reaching for arms, sometimes for the pen, but they never stopped.

At the point we have now reached, while Iran's Islamist regime keeps up its pressure and denial, Turkey and Syria are going through a linked process. In Syria, a once very promising picture has narrowed down to talk of a few weak and fragile rights, and it is still unclear what will become of them. In Turkey, as the authoritarian regime grows ever bolder, the Kurdish question is treated as nothing more than a matter of disarmament. In Iraq, the free, autonomous and even federal structure that has held for 30 years still has not escaped the grip of partisan and tribal politics. That, more or less, is the picture — and what is being done, said and written about it today gives us headaches, scrambles our knowledge, clouds our minds, and again and again drives us into revolt against everything and everyone.

POLITICAL CONFUSION

Whatever process is under way in Turkey — even if it were a genuine peace process, which in my view it is not, or even if it amounts to nothing more than disarmament — the toll it has taken calls for real mourning. Caught up in this state of mind myself, I have lately found myself listening to songs from the 1990s: "Vaye PKK rabû," Ciwan Haco's "Lawê min," Şivan Perwer's "Lo me çi kir" — I listen to them in a mournful mood, with a deep sorrow. But the other day, while driving, Cem Karaca's song "Beni siz delirttiniz" ("You Are the Ones Who Drove Me Mad") suddenly came to mind. Its lyrics are still relevant today, and listening to Cem Karaca's voice, which reaches into a person's depths through its own echo, I found myself thinking about his final years. "You too," I said to myself, and felt sorrow for him as well. Kurds, and Kurmancî speakers, despite everything that could drive a person mad, must hold on to their reason.

Afterward, I searched for a word to describe my mental and emotional state, and yes — the only word that fit was "confusion." Confusion is a clinical term, but nothing stops us from borrowing it here. Its medical definition can be summed up, broadly, as a clouding of the mind, an impaired ability to understand, difficulty gathering one's thoughts, and trouble making decisions. That is exactly what we are living through. Clinically, we may not be pathologically ill, but it is quite clear that we are living through a mental fog severe enough to cause memory loss — and the sole cause of it is political developments. That is why I call it political confusion.

Expressing oneself in times like these is just as hard; it is not only our minds that are clouded, everything we see is blurred too. We rub our eyes and look outward again and again. Neither the world outside comes into focus, nor does our mind, because our surroundings have turned to dust and smoke from manipulation, self-justification and attempts to paper over the situation — and as a result, inevitably, our limits fray. Acting with clear-headed reason, expressing one's thoughts without wronging anyone and without giving in to anger, becomes very difficult. Not wronging others is a sensitivity of ours; feeling discomfort is unavoidable, because in times like these, what irritates people most is the truth itself.

Those who take aim at the truth insult it instead of engaging with it, charging at it like a bull let loose in a china shop. At the same time, some circles who imagine they are telling the truth also resort to insult, instead of the truth or alongside it. In this way, the truth is besieged from both sides and strangled between them. Yes, expressing our thoughts is very hard, but resorting to insult is a form of helplessness — it means having no argument, or being unable to stand up to opposing arguments. Unfortunately, in this process, amid insults from both sides, the voice of those who do express their thoughts goes unheard.

THE FACTS CLOUDING OUR MINDS

Everyone, in the course of life, comes face to face with many upheavals; these are temporary things, they get talked about, they fade into the past, and come back to mind only when something triggers them. A person can even look back on them with ease, laughing, because what is tragedy while it is being lived becomes comedy once it is retold. But the identities that have become part of our lives, that have shaped our stance and given meaning to our existence, are not temporary, and there is no way to leave them behind. Even for the most apolitical Kurd, it is impossible to leave Kurdishness behind; for a democrat who is a democrat at heart, for anyone with a sense of common humanity, human rights — which allow every person to be seen and measured by the same standard — are fundamental values.

All of this stands in the face of a harsh assault, of attempts at erasure, intimidation and pressure. And not for a short time either — this assault has continued with great intensity for many years. Nor is there any will at the global level to protect these values; those who do defend them have been resisting and struggling for a long time, and of course everyone has grown exhausted, worn down, thrown off balance. If we were to name it after a film currently in theaters, it would be "One Battle After Another," continuing without pause.

But what creates political confusion is not just the harsh, unrelenting attacks; it is also the drift of people's moral compass toward the fringes, the fragmentation of political demands and theses, and the slide from once-grand slogans down to a point where people can no longer even hold on to their most minimal demands.

No one can step forward and tell a person who observes the world with a clear mind and weighs events on their merits that "everything is on track". No one can step forward and say "the gains made are as substantial as the balance sheet suggests". No one can step forward and say "what we defended yesterday, we defend today as well". No one can step forward and say "an effective and decisive policy was produced, the right steps were taken, real diplomacy was conducted, real organizing was done". No one can step forward and say "there is nothing wrong at all in the calls, perspectives, meeting notes and teleconference contents we have gained access to in this new process — everything is as it should be, everything is in its place". And most importantly, as we so often find ourselves confronting, no one can step forward and say "why are you speaking, what are you criticizing, what have you done" or "this is none of your business".

Set aside the right to speak of a person who sees himself as part of a problem, a stakeholder in it, someone living through it. At the purely intellectual level, as a duty of the intelligentsia, wherever in the world one may be, a person must be able to freely voice thoughts and assessments about a problem. The aim of most people who express views that displease certain circles is not to belittle anyone; they speak because the events pain them, because they live in distress, because they do not want mistakes made. Just as we call on our interlocutor to face the truth and name the problem correctly, we must also carry out a courageous reckoning with ourselves; whoever committed the mistake, we must accept that mistakes were made, so that seeing the truth becomes possible at all. Without this, no one gets out without first living through an interregnum.

Spelling out the details of the issues causing this political confusion is a subject for another piece, but a few examples are needed so that the matters we cannot pass over without debate are understood in broad strokes. Most of us, for instance, believed the armed conflict should have ended long ago, and at the time those who said so were harshly silenced. Today we learn from meeting notes that Öcalan told the parliamentary commission, "I would have ended it in 1993, but it didn't happen".

The notes from the Imrali meetings, unearthed during the first round of talks in 2015, are now within reach of almost anyone who wants them. Those who want to refresh their memory can go back and see how Öcalan calls on his interlocutors to be serious, spelling out what would happen and what would be done if engagement took place and the process concluded; they can see how the declaration of self-rule and self-administration triggered the urban war. Back then, people like me who said armed conflict must never resume again were held up as objects of hatred. Yet today Öcalan describes administrative autonomy and culturalist demands as excessive nationalism, and says culturalist demands do not even fit the sociology of this historic society. Let me be blunt: hardly anyone engages with the written texts that have come out of Imrali as closely as they should, or understands them, or wants to understand them.

One could say everyone assumes the written texts don't matter, and follows the process on faith — faith that behind the scenes there is surely some understanding in place and serious steps will follow — burying their misgivings inside themselves. But watching what those in power have done in Syria wears that faith thin. Everyone knows who pointed a rifle at whom in Aleppo, or on whose orders whose finger pulled the trigger. Despite the process, despite the calls for brotherhood, everyone knows who kept Kobani under siege. Two years ago Bahçeli said "Arab tribes should act together with HTS" — wasn't that exactly what happened? Yes, it was. At least a year and a half ago Bahçeli said "Syria's new name should be the Syrian Arab Republic" — didn't that very name appear on the backdrop behind the podium where Hakan Fidan and Shaibani held their joint press conference? Yes, it did. While the process was still under way, Bahçeli said "There has never been a Kurdish problem in Turkey, and there won't be one after this either" — wasn't that line included in the MHP commission's report? Yes, it was. And inside the country, as law and democracy are steadily dismantled, Akın Gürlek was made minister of justice. What more needs to happen before intent becomes visible and the truth sinks in?

It is plain that the process has turned into a trade in hope, and that is the message being sent: even the smallest steps will only come once everything is settled to Erdoğan and Bahçeli's liking. Many practices that sit outside democracy and outside the law need no legislation at all — ending them depends solely on a declaration of political will. That declaration is made, yet the practice is not ended; instead the line is "fine, we will do it, but there's a time for it, we're not there yet — you go ahead and do everything required, and then it will be their turn".

If our position is truly so strong, is it not all the more necessary to act with that awareness? If we know the Erdoğan-Bahçeli alliance is under strain both at home and abroad — the economic crisis unresolved, a formula for Erdoğan's re-election hard to find — should we not be careful not to become complicit in the wreckage they have created, and withhold strength and legitimacy from them until real talks actually happen? Is there truly no other possibility, or is this power, as Fukuyama put it, really "the end of history"?

Do those running this process today not see that it has been read against the grain of both democracy and status — against people who, until recently, were saying "the Kurdish problem cannot be solved without democratization: democracy for Turkey, status for the Kurds"? Are the moves being made in Syria not aimed precisely at ensuring the Kurds do not get even autonomy, if that can be helped? And is the sole reason behind the moves against the CHP not that the CHP might become an alternative to power, or reach that potential?

Since the process began, I have written pieces about it, and my basic position has not changed: I have always said that talks are held with these people just as they are held with everyone else, but that does not mean trusting them, crediting them, or taking them at face value.

In the political climate that has taken shape today, many people find themselves forced to choose between "being a good party member", "being a good Kurd", and even "being a person committed to the truth". It is fair to say many are caught in this bind, weighing even the finest details in an effort to get things right and avoid doing anyone an injustice.

In the pieces ahead, I will examine in detail the examples above that feed this political confusion, and the direction and intent of the government in Turkey — the calls, meeting notes, messages and statements that have come out of Imrali. I will try to explain what I understand each statement to mean, and discuss the outcomes they have produced, or their share in today's picture. I will share my thoughts on where the process may go from here. As noted above, I think the calls, perspectives, meeting notes and other statements are not being fully understood, and that few people actually engage with their content. Behind that lies the need to interpret and explain what has been said — instead of debating it directly, people respond to it with their own pre-formed views. We know why that need for interpretation exists: no one has the chance to openly debate the person who delivered the message.

I will bring my views to bear not only on political matters but, where relevant, on legal questions I know something about, and on other current issues as well.

As a final word, let me say this: if we are indeed living through political confusion, then this piece has surely taken its share of that condition too. I cannot say how much difficulty I had in setting down my thoughts, but I tried to keep them in proportion. I am not certain, though, how well I have succeeded.

Greetings and respect.