MİT has loomed large

Looking at newspaper reports, we are facing an extremely complicated situation. Facts are not entirely known and they will not be for a long time.

If reports are true and the charges attributed to the National Intelligence Organization (MİT) are such as filtrating inside the KCK, which is the Kurdistan Communities Union, the alleged urban wing of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), participating in peace talks with the PKK in Oslo and looking for ways for a solution, then we have to congratulate MİT. 

You may or may not find it ethical, you may like it or not, but these are the primary duties of a nation’s intelligence organization. The MİT has done what it needs to do. 

It has infiltrated an organization that the political power believes acts against the interests of the state. While it was doing so, it may have caused its agents to plant bombs and participate in demonstrations. What is important is that it has reached the correct intelligence. 

Similarly, it was an exceptionally correct approach that the MİT conducted peace talks with PKK representatives in Oslo within the framework of the political power’s approval. This is precisely what contemporary intelligence organizations do. 

This is what is required. The MİT’s mission is not chasing after opponent leftists – as it used to do – or orchestrating unresolved murders.

This incident demonstrates that the police intelligence / office of the specially authorized prosecutor / MİT triangle is not yet operating properly and their jurisdictions and capacities have not yet been clearly defined. 

Listen to Şerafettin Elçi

Head of Participatory Democracy Party (KADEP) Şerafettin Elçi is a Kurd and has never denied his Kurdishness. Because he spoke Kurdish in Parliament with his guests in 1979 while he was the public works minister in government, he was in trouble and served two years in jail. He has always been against PKK terror and looked for a peaceful solution to the Kurdish issue. He has always been the one to prioritize common sense among Kurdish politicians. 

Elçi gave an interview to Ezgi Başaran from daily Radikal published on Monday (Feb. 6), an interview that everybody needs to read. Especially the state should read this interview because the messages given there are extremely striking. I have selected some extracts I find crucial: 

State has invited armed struggle 

“... Some people who have rejected arms all their lives, who have stood away from violence have been jailed for years because they have only expressed their views. You cannot blame people for taking arms in such an environment. I have always excluded violence as an individual and as a party but if it weren’t for the armed struggle, it wouldn’t have been possible to discuss the Kurds and Kurdish issues in today’s Turkey.”

“…The state has to know this: One unjust incident inflicted upon a Kurd causes hate toward the state at least in hundreds of people…”

 “...Solution depends on the prime minister… But he has a serious vice. He does not come from a democratic background because the envelope of the Turkish-Islam synthesis is Islam. Its essence is chauvinist Turkish nationalism. This is what concerns me…” 

 “The only way is to convince the PKK and also the Kurds in the diaspora. The PKK cannot accept a formula that Öcalan has not approved. [Masoud] Barzani can play a very important role because the guerilla must take him into account. Also, every Kurd trusts Barzani. Barzani would not adopt a formula that would harm Kurds not would he try to make the PKK accept it…”