Now the PKK needs to think

MEHMET ALİ BİRAND

I did not expect the “Returner Project” to encounter brisk reaction this fast. If, whoever prepared this scenario, either the PKK or DTP, would have perceived and evaluated messages coming from the public, especially on the second day, correctly, then this process would not have come to such a halt.

The responsible ones are the DTP and the PKK.

We might have been at a different point if they had not turned the event into a show and conducted a meeting on top of it.

If you were to pay attention, you’d notice there was no problem on the first day. As the dimensions of the event increased on days two and three, reactions grew. The event started to get out of hand as news spread saying they would march to Ankara and give a letter to Parliament, and a similar ceremony was planned for the group expected to arrive from Brussels.

For now it was the right decision to postpone the group’s arrival from Brussels.

Now we all need to take our heads in our hands and think.

PKK needs to abstain from exaggeration

 The PKK needs to re-evaluate how to proceed from now on. They must have understood that they should abstain, just out of spite for the Turkish public, from displaying as heroes those who came back to Turkey and from events agitating mothers whose children were martyred. If the PKK is after a real solution it should evaluate future steps very carefully. Öcalan’s road map has paved the way for disappointment, based on exaggerated attitudes in the first phase.

Government should plan more carefully

 The government should plan the following steps in a more careful and sensitive way. It is better understood now that these arrivals have been planned between the Turkish Republic, the DTP or PKK resources and most probably through the MİT. This means either no attention has been paid to necessary details of the event or the PKK has behaved differently. So anyway, at least events from now on should be better controlled.

Opposition should not provoke

 The MHP, CHP and part of the media should decide whether or not they want the PKK to put down its weapons. If they do they should still oppose but not use a language provoking the country in such a way that could push it into a civil war.

This process won’t stop

 Once more Pandora’s Box has been opened. The process will continue. And it is obvious that this process won’t come to a halt to start all over again, as the prime minister puts it. We will stop for a while and move on again, maybe we will stop and resume several times but this chapter will not be closed all together. We will not miss this opportunity.

PKK and Öcalan need to make up their minds about DTP

There is a problem that the PKK and Öcalan need to solve immediately.

What do they want to do with the DTP?

Will they continue using them as a wallflower at “Returner Events” or allow them to proceed with political negotiations and have a say in decisions to be made.

This is the basic question…

From the outside it seems that the PKK and Öcalan couple listens to the DTP but does not take it serious. If they had taken it serious we wouldn’t be at this point.

And we still have a long way to go.

The PKK and Öcalan seem to only think about themselves and not about the Kurdish issue in general.

Maybe Öcalan is just trying to escape İmralı.

PKK leaders try to flee to Europe and other members try to escape from prison.

The DTP has nowhere to go. It seems their function is limited to just defending, on television or in the media, the decisions taken in Kandil, and that’s about it. They don’t even consider thus the danger of closing the party.

They should beware that as long as they cannot finish this chaos among themselves, they won’t get far.

Maybe they do know and want it that way.