Let’s hear from you, AK!

I know the headline does not make much sense, but with the headline of yesterday’s Claw Mark reading ‘Let’s hear from you, TAK!’ the allure of finding something that rhymed proved irresistible.
(Look at how unprejudiced I am. I am calling you by the name you love and do not deserve.)

Dear people from AK,
You have had, and still have, plenty to say in the aftermath of the bomb attack which claimed the lives of 44 of our citizens at Dolmabahçe Stadium by the organisation that calls itself the ‘Freedom Falcons’, and that indeed fully lives up to the name ‘falcons’ when it comes to its talent for silencing ‘doves’. Many of your number - from your teacher who thrusts hangman’s nooses into primary school kids hands and photographs them, to your media that has launched a witch hunt against the Kurdish political movement’s legal party that wages its struggle in the parliamentary arena, the HDP, declaring it to be a ‘terrorist organisation’, and your minister who proclaims, seemingly oblivious of the fact that he is a statesman and that the ‘rule of law’ is enshrined in the constitution to which he has sworn allegiance, that the state will take revenge - are treating the vile Dolmabahçe attack as a ‘gift from God’.

I have no intention in this article of raking over what you are doing, why you are acting in this way and why you are making a political appetiser out of the country’s deep grief.
Instead, let us, calmly, without hollering and shouting, and without cussing and swearing, seek out the answer to a caustic question.

***

It was not long ago at all. For whatever reason, you had embraced the notion of solving the Kurdish problem, not with arms, but through negotiation and agreement. Let us call these ‘peaceful methods’ for short.

So much so that your ‘Chief’, on proclaiming the famous ‘Dolmabahçe Accord’, said, ‘This is a summons that I have awaited with longing for years.’
Well said.

Military coffins ceased coming from the South-East and people ceased gathering to express their condolences in Kurdish homes.
However, a mere two months had elapsed after the ‘Accord’ before your Chief made another pronouncement on 24 April 2015:
- What Dolmabahçe Accord? Where did such a thing come from? There exists no accord or such a thing. It is inconceivable for this government to come to an accord with a terrorist organisation. It did not.

And so, the ‘peace table’ was knocked over with a single kick.
You know what came next. The HDP got 80 seats in the 7 June election and left your party unable to form a single-party government. Your Chief roared, ‘This election doesn’t count. Let’s have another one.’ Another election was held. The HDP still managed to win 59 seats.
As of that day, the fight against the PKK has mutated into the fight against the HDP. The HDP, with its 59 MPs, was treated as a ‘party deemed not to exist’ in Parliament.
This did not suffice and things went further.

Elected mayors were removed from office and civil servants were appointed in their places. Some of the former were detained. That did not suffice, either. Most of the HDP MPs were stripped of their immunity. That did not suffice, either. Ten HDP MPs were remanded in custody. They were joined by another two MPs yesterday. As if this were not enough, two of those detained are that party’s co-chairs.

What can all of this signify?
I will reply in the shortest and most level-headed sentence possible:
The Kurdish political movement has been forbidden from waging political struggle in the parliamentary arena.

Yes, it has been well and truly for-bid-den.
So, if you forbid a political movement from waging political struggle, have you not given the green light to terrorism?
Is this not what is happening today?
Ever heard the saying: ‘Sow the wind and reap the whirlwind’?