ERDOGAN MEETS DTP

  For the Prime Minister Erdogan, “it’s been a very, very important meeting. We’re in the middle of a process. I believe this meeting has increased our hopes for the future.” For the co-secretary of DTP, Ahmet Turk, “it’s been an important day. We’re happy and hopeful beacuse we’ve finally been able to establish a dialogue”. Everyone considers the 5th of August meeting between the Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the delegation of the Kurdish party DTP as a historical one. What’s happening in these recent times in Turkey is certainly thrilling. Moreover, there are big expectations for the “road map” of the peace process that Ocalan should make public in the following weeks (probably on the 15th of August). In any case, something has definitely changed. All Turkish media talk costantly about a peaceful solution of Kurdish issue: even this, the fact that a new vocabulary is used in mainstream media, is in itself a historical fact. Last saturday, at the police academy of Ankara, journalists and intellectuals have gathered to discuss about the Kurdish issue and its possible solutions in a meeting organized by the Minister of Interiors Besir Atalay, the government’s main coordinator of the so-called “Kurdish initiative”.

Erdogan has underscored that “the project started by the government aims to put together theory and practice. This project – he added – will be made of several meetings with political representatives, NGOs, intellectuals and media: everyone can have an important contribute to give. Personally, I think that the one hour meeting with DTP has been useful to both of us, and that it will be followed by important steps in a near future. Probably it will not be possible to solve everything in the short term, but I think we will be able to make it in the short, medium and long”. In fact, the government’s strategy (not public yet) composes itself of three phases.

On his side, Ahmet Turk said he is hopeful for “important developments. We all have duties and responsabilities. Keeping this in mind we’ll go on working, with the aim of seeing happy days and the end of blood and death”. Turk added that Erdogan has met the delegation of DTP more as a party head than as a Prime Minister. A comment that could turn helpful for the Prime Minister himself, because of the many troubles he’s facing now in parliament. Apart from the nationalist opposition party MHP, who accuses him of betrayal and “concessions to the terrorists”, also the Kemalist opposition party CHP has criticized Erdogan stating, with the words of its leader Deniz Baykal, that “breaking the promise of not meeting with DTP, the government has opened the way for a dialogue with PKK”. But unlike MHP, the CHP has indeed not excluded of taking part to this dialogue.

Erdogan will certainly have to deal also with the army establishment. Nobody can say whether the army supports or not the government’s initiative, because everything has been brought on behind closed doors. However, it should be evident that the government and the army have always decided together on the Kurdish issue, especially on issues of national security and military operations. Recently they have collaborated to the creation of an Intelligence network between USA, Iraq, Kurdish regional government of Iraq and Turkey in order to fight PKK and possibly achieve its full elimination. The army establisment has supported AKP during the last elections, specially in the Kurdish areas. Thus, considering that the government’s initiative can still not be called as a “solution” or an “agreement”, it should be guessed that the army is not too far from the government’s positions on the Kurdish issue. To confirm this is also the fact that the General Staff officer has not released yet any negative declaration on the recent developments.

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