The real danger: A revengeful generation

CAN DÜNDAR

Ankara was shocked yesterday when the undersecretary of the National Intelligence Organization (MİT), together with his predecessor and deputy, was called in to testify. What was interesting was that among those shocked were members of the Cabinet. 

Let’s quickly remember what happened: 

In the operation against the KCK, the Kurdistan Communities Union, the alleged urban wing of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), group leader Abdullah Öcalan’s lawyers were also arrested in November. The lawyers were charged with forwarding the PKK leader’s orders abroad from an Internet cafe in the Beyoğlu district of Istanbul.

Who were those they forwarded messages to? They were PKK administrators negotiating with the state in Oslo. In other words, the message traffic was conducted with full state knowledge. 

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What is more, there are some who claim the state knows some of the PKK’s actions beforehand. 

In the record that was leaked from the Oslo talks, the MİT deputy undersecretary said that the organization was aware the PKK was stockpiling bombs in metropolises. 

It is said that those agents placed inside the KCK by MİT were involved in some activities and when police caught them, conflict erupted between the two institutions. It appears that when the government sided with the MİT in this conflict, yesterday’s operation was carried out. 

It could be that such statements and suspicions must have resulted in the two undersecretaries and one deputy undersecretary of MİT, who had conducted the dialogue with the PKK, ending up being called by the prosecutor’s office. 

Consequently, what is being questioned is not the intelligence officers, but the government’s (or the state’s) decision to negotiate with the PKK. The government’s surprise yesterday is probably because of this. 

When viewed as such, the mentality that leaked the records and the mentality that has dragged MİT into the courthouse could be said to be operating with the same intention. 

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The Justice and Development Party (AKP) has mismanaged the dialogue process, just as it has mismanaged the “Kurdish initiative” process. 

Let’s say the initiative move tripped over the psychological hurdle created by Habur; well then, what about the process of talks with the PKK? 

The public did not demonstrate a major reaction as expected; the real problem here was incompetence.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, on one hand, was sending his special representative to negotiate with the PKK, while, on the other hand, he was declaring “If it were up to me, I would have hanged Öcalan” at election rallies in town squares. 

This double game was revealed in front of everyone with the leaked voice recording.

What was experienced yesterday should be seen as the aftershocks of that half-finished process, as well as a general power struggle. 

Since MİT did not launch the negotiations on their own, and since the officers will tell the prosecutor that they conducted negotiations on political orders, the political authority issuing this order will be made accountable. 

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When the government was “caught” secretly chatting with an “enemy” that was booed at town rallies with cries of “Let’s hang him,” it attacked the KCK structure that it had been condoning for four years. 
Will this solve the Kurdish issue, or escalate it? 

Let me give an example: Şerafettin Elçi was arrested after the 1980 coup for Kurdish propaganda. He became a government minister seven years later. 

He was sentenced because he said, “I am a Kurd. There are Kurds in Turkey.” Thirty years later, he became a deputy in the parliament of a state that accepts “There are Kurds in Turkey.” 

Now, he is giving a completely different warning, in the interview he gave to Ezgi Başaran from daily Radikal: “Our generation is the last chance for a solution. Because after us, there comes a generation who only thinks of the gendarmerie, the police and the prosecutor when the state is mentioned, a generation full of revenge and resentment; a very angry generation.” 

While we are arguing about a “religious generation,” a “revengeful generation” is being raised in the southeast.

Will it be suppressed by arrests alone? 

What was that phrase?

Was it, “Men dakka dukka” (The Arabic phrase the prime minister used to warn Bashar al-Assad, “What goes around comes around”)?


Can Dündar is a columnist for daily Milliyet in which this piece appeared Feb 9. It was translated into English by the Daily News staff.