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hroughout its 21 years in power, the AK Party (Justice and Development Party) has spent a lot of time and taken the highest risks to find a peaceful and lasting solution to the “Kurdish question” in Turkey. In this period, almost all options for reaching a lasting solution have been investigated. The AK Party governments have reacted rapidly to the changes in Turkish politics and the region, renewing their tactical and strategic approaches.

Both Turkey’s Kurdish citizens and actors fighting against terrorism have made significant gains as a result. The losers of this process have been the PKK terrorist organization, whose operation capacity within Turkey’s borders has been significantly limited, and the capacity of foreign actors that support this organization and its counterparts under different names.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan acknowledged the problem and described his government’s approach with his Diyarbakır speech on August 12, 2005, when he was still prime minister. Erdoğan claimed responsibility for the problem and in the following years, took important steps to find a solution.

Within the boundaries of the rule of law and democracy, Erdoğan took a crucial initiative to resolve the Kurdish question which was renamed the “National Unity and Brotherhood Project” in early 2010. With the initiative, vital legal and political steps were taken to eliminate discrimination against Kurdish citizens arising from their fundamental rights.

The “resolution process” (March 2013-July 2015) was a peace initiative conducted with the representatives of the PKK terrorist organization, namely Abdullah Öcalan, the leader of the organization held in İmralı Prison). Many taboos that had been upheld and proliferated throughout Turkey’s Republican history were broken during this period. However, in the summer of 2015, the PKK ended its last ceasefire and declared a “revolutionary people’s war.”

Following the end of the resolution process, the Turkish state launched a multifaceted process of combating terrorism, and the security approach once again became the dominant perspective. However, this struggle did not reverse the democratic gains of the Kurdish citizens in the past 15 years. In the first place, the terrorist organization’s presence and power came to end. Subsequently, Turkey carried out extensive cross-border operations against the PKK in Syria and Iraq.

Operation Euphrates Shield (August 2016), Operation Olive Branch (January 2018), and Operation Peace Spring (October 2019) dealt significant blows to the PKK’s presence in Syria while the Claw operations significantly limited the presence of the PKK in Iraq. Turkey’s cross-border operations and the dismantling of the PKK’s top leadership with UCAVs have yielded effective results.

Yet, as long as regional powers and Western states continue to support and shield the terrorist organization and its branches in Iraq and Syria, this struggle cannot produce a lasting and decisive result. That said, today, the PKK has largely become an externally supported threat and the effective struggle of the Turkish security forces has blocked it from carrying out terrorist attacks.

Ideological divergence became visible

A major transformation in the last two decades was the economic, cultural, and ideological diversification of the Kurdish social fabric. The climate of security and stability paved the way for economic development that brought about a process of class stratification and divergence of interest among Kurdish citizens. Kurdish entrepreneurs and investors no longer want to be threatened by or pay tribute to the terrorist organization. Support for public order, law, and the state among Kurdish citizens is growing.

The PKK terrorist organization, which had previously established illegal “courts” in the region, is now seen by the people of the region as a threat to public order. Now, Kurdish families care more about their children getting a better education and living a safer, more peaceful, and prosperous life. On the other hand, the PKK concentrates on deceiving and kidnapping children from poor, uneducated families. The struggle of the Diyarbakır Mothers, in this regard, narrows the terrorist group’s organizational capacity. Ideological divisions within Kurdish society have become increasingly visible.

The CHP-HDP collaboration

With Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu becoming the Republican People’s Party (CHP) chairman, the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) and the CHP have been experiencing a rapprochement. Their collaboration, which first showed its impact in the 2018 local elections, has become more deeply rooted over time. HDP supporters have secured employment in metropolitan municipalities run by CHP mayors and have established spheres of influence in various administrative units. This collaboration resulted in the HDP’s decision not to field a presidential candidate in the May 14, 2023 presidential and parliamentary elections in support of the Nation’s Alliance.

The CHP-HDP relationship has transformed the social bases of both parties and brought them closer to each other. However, this collaboration has also brewed opponents in both parties’ grass roots. The shaping of Kurdish politics through the language of secular, leftist, and ethnic nationalism now brings new alternatives to the agenda. As the PKK’s leverage and capacity diminish, Islamist, liberal, and conservative approaches will seek to find more space in the Kurdish political sphere. The process of Kurdish politics becoming polyphonic and multi-ideological has already begun, and this reckoning will gain momentum in the coming period.

The system of alliances emerging with the presidential system in Turkey will further diversify Kurdish political actors in the near future. This process could help free Kurdish politics from the yoke of the HDP and the PKK. Cross-cutting and intersecting relationships and alliances between different political actors could soften the language of politics, but could also pave the way for polarization. All these transformations will breathe new life into Kurdish politics and the AK Party’s Kurdish politics.

The recent electoral consensus reached between the People’s Alliance and the HÜDA PAR (Free Cause Party), which is an Islamic Kurdish party, is an excellent indicator of this. This relationship is likely to expand to other Kurdish political and social actors. This expansion will constrict the PKK’s area of domination and its political wing in the region, the HDP.

Climate of peace and changing priorities in the region

The new climate of peace that emerged with the establishment of security in the Kurdish region of Turkey has also changed the priorities of the region’s people. A strong infrastructure and reconstruction effort is underway in the cities of the region, particularly in Diyarbakır. Education, health, and infrastructure in the region are developing rapidly. Almost every city has a modern airport. The resources previously transferred from Turkey’s central budget to the fight against terrorism and the resources transferred by HDP municipalities to the PKK are now being spent to improve the living conditions of the region’s people.

These efforts not only reduced outward migration, but also transformed these cities once again into centers of attraction. Cities such as Diyarbakır, Van, Urfa, and Mardin have become centers of attraction for local and foreign tourists. Cities such as Hakkari, Siirt, Şırnak, and Batman are also rapidly changing. The arrival of new, large investments will accelerate as the climate of stability is understood to be lasting. The private sector will take over the initiative from the Turkish state in this regard.

While this change is appreciated by the locals, the PKK and its political and civil society extensions are still spreading the narrative that this change is a result of their own struggle. Unfortunately, we have to recognize that this propaganda has found a partial response and is still very effective in the region.

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n Friday, December 23, 2022, three people were killed and three others were injured in an armed attack on the Ahmet Kaya Cultural Center on Rue d’Enghien in the 10th arrondissement of Paris. The 69-year-old suspect was first arrested and then rushed to hospital. He was detained a day later. The suspect, named William M., is a retired mechanic with a long criminal record.

According to the statements by the authorities to the French press, the suspect was previously found guilty of an armed attack in the Seine-Saint-Denis region, a suburb of Paris, where heavily populated by Muslims. Later, his conviction was overturned on appeal. William M. was also found guilty of acts such as slashing with a knife and destroying immigrants’ tents in a racist attack against immigrants last year. However, the prosecutor’s office determined that the perpetrator was not motivated by extremist ideology, which is probably why he was released on bail earlier in December 2022.

According to the statement by French Prosecutor Laure Beccuau, the 69-year-old suspect “had a pathological hatred of foreigners, suffered depression, and had suicidal tendencies.” The suspect spent nearly a day in a psychiatric hospital before being brought back into police custody on Sunday evening, AFP reported. His father explained, “My son is mad!” When talking about the attack on television, the emphasis was placed on the suspect’s “madness” in capital letters with titles such as “The Suspect Is at the Psychiatric Unit.”

Did this discourse surprise anyone? Whenever there is a terrorist attack, today, if the perpetrator is European, he is portrayed as “mad,” but if he is Muslim, he is depicted as a “terrorist” who is mentally sound and in full command of his actions. As for the representation of the criminal act, the first is called an “attack” while the second is “terrorism.”

In Norway, for example, Anders Behring Breivik, who was on trial for the murder of 77 people, was also labeled “mad.” In his defense, he said that his actions were “a defense” against Islam, which he claimed was taking over Europe. He explained that this was not a crime, and that he was defending Norway against multiculturalism. Today, the language of politics adopts cultural racism instead of ethnicity-based racism. This is not limited to the far right, but permeates the center-right and center-left parties in Europe.

With French President Emmanuel Macron’s early practices, hostility towards Muslims in France gained legitimacy like nowhere else in Europe. It is enough to take a look at the documents prepared by the Macron government, namely “Reinforcing Republican Principles” and the “Imam Charter.”

The French state stigmatized Muslims as a separate entity based on cultural nationalism and even racism, and defined Islam as a threat to French identity. According to a report published in the French newspaper Libération, there have been 20 attacks, both major and minor, with racist motives in France since September 2022. These, of course, are only the ones recorded. If the suspect had not been involved in this latest attack, despite his criminal record, he would not have made the news.

In his statement, the suspect explained that he originally wanted to carry out an attack in Seine-Saint-Denis, north of Paris, an area with a dense immigrant population, but gave up on the grounds that there were few people around and the way he dressed made it difficult for him to hide his gun. Instead, he went to the Seine Denis neighborhood of Strasbourg, in the heart of Paris, where Kurdish, Turkish, and Arab immigrants have their shops. When he saw the “Ahmet” of the “Ahmet Kaya Kurdish Cultural Center” in the 10th district, he attacked!

According to the news published in the French press, the Ahmet Kaya Kurdish Cultural Center is a place under the control of people close to the PKK today. French police conducted a search there in February 2007 and arrested 13 people for allegedly financing terrorism in an “organized gang” in the Paris area. In 2014, the center was ordered to be closed down by the Supreme Court due to financing terrorist activities. At the time, the center remained open as a result of large demonstrations in support of appealing this decision. Some may know that the PKK collects racket from Kurdish shopkeepers in Paris, and if they do not, their security is imperiled. Since the 1990s, this is such a commonplace occurrence that it often occurs in front of customers.

William M. attacked with apparent anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant motivations, but in this post-truth age, which has been strengthened by social media since the 2000s, the PKK and its media organs as well as French politicians turned the narrative into an “anti-Kurdish” attack. The PKK, which is defined as a terrorist organization by Europe but protected by many European countries including France, was once again presented by French politicians and media as the representative of all Kurds. Sadly, no one emphasized the real anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant motive of the attack.

In his message, Macron said, “The Kurds of France were the target of a heinous attack in the heart of Paris. Our thoughts are with the victims, the people struggling for their lives, their families, and loved ones.” Antony Blinken, U.S. Secretary of State, tweeted “My thoughts are with the Kurdish community and the French on this sad day.” French politician Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who was a member of the National Assembly for the 4th constituency of Bouches-du-Rhône from 2017 to 2022 and who narrowly missed continuing on to the second round in French Presidential Election in 2022, said he “does not believe in coincidence when it comes to the assassination of Kurds in Paris.”

PKK media organs and organizations in Europe called on their sympathizers to protest in Place de la République immediately after the incident. Politicians participating in the protests marched and gave speeches, accompanied by PKK flags and Abdullah Öcalan’s posters. Some of the protesters, who had gathered from all over Europe, engaged in violence, forcing the police to intervene.

The statement by the police unions reacted to the violence by saying, “In the heart of Paris and Marseille, protesters burned cars, smashed stones and threw them here and there, and 53 police officers were injured on Christmas Day.” Indeed, the situation was summarized in Kurdish and French from the social media account of Sezai Temelli, a HDP MP in Turkey and former HDP Co-Chair, as follows: “Paris is on fire, let it burn!” Temelli wrote this comment, which he later deleted, as a reply to a social media post by journalist Clement Lanot, who wrote under a photo of a burning car, “There are very violent events taking place during the assembly of the Kurds. Burnt cars, bullets and tear gas.” It wasn’t just Paris – reality itself was turned upside down!

The anti-Muslim and xenophobic perpetrator openly attacked the “Ahmet” component of the Ahmet Kaya Kurdish Cultural Center. But even this attack, which caused the death of three people and the injury of three others and was apparently motivated by racist and anti-Muslim motives, was exploited and dismissed on the premise of the conflict between Turkey and the YPG, the Syrian branch of the PKK and France’s ally. Reality is turned upside down and hostility towards Muslims is turned into “enemy of Kurds.” Yet, for William M. and his like, it doesn’t matter whether the target is Kurdish, Turkish, or Arab, providing the target is Muslim.