AKP dancing on thin ice

Even diehard opponents of the ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, indeed want to believe that the “opening” of the state has a chance of success.

The opening started as a “Kurdish” one, transformed into a “democracy” one, then became known as the “brotherhood and tranquility project” and nowadays has evolved into a “national unity and brotherhood project.”

As Turkey proceeds with this ambiguous road map, not only the separatist terrorism threat and the Kurdish problem could come to an end, but the age-old suffering of both Muslim and non-Muslim minorities could be resolved and Turkey be elevated to a higher and more advanced level of democracy.

At Parliament on Friday evening, and since then at party headquarters and elsewhere, the prime minister has been trying to explain to the nation that his government is determined to resolve each and every one of the country’s most intractable problems – problems that were either neglected or somehow could not be resolved over the past many decades. The prime minister says he wants the nation to believe that if it would help to end the shedding of even one drop of blood, he is ready to terminate his political career.

The prime minister and a selected AKP delegation, 40 men strong, will tour all of the country’s 81 provinces to try and explain the “opening” or the “project,” which unfortunately could not be unveiled by either the premier or Interior Minister Beşir Atalay, the coordinator of the drive, at the special parliamentary debate. How can the premier and Atalay explain the project and try to obtain public support for it without revealing what it indeed includes?

So far, the AKP government has disclosed that the process includes allowing political parties to campaign in languages other than Turkish – that is, in Kurdish; creating the legal framework to rename residential areas in line with demands by locals; establishing an independent human-rights institution; setting up a commission to combat all sorts of discrimination; creating an independent body tasked with receiving and investigating accusations of torture or mistreatment by the security forces; requesting parliamentary ratification of the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Malpractice; and establishing a national center for the prevention of torture.

The remarks of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Atalay, as well as those of other AKP spokespeople, underscore that the intended “reforms” listed above are just a glimpse of what the process would eventually entail. Further moves, they have indicated, will be disclosed depending on the “digestion capability” of the Turkish nation.

Excluding the intent to allow political campaigning in Kurdish and the renaming of settlements with their old names if residents demand it, none of the moves the government has said it intends to undertake in the period ahead are directly linked to the Kurdish issue. If realized, however, such moves will definitely help enhance Turkish democracy and thus must be appreciated.

Allowing the use of the Kurdish language in political campaigning and renaming settlements will, however, create some very strong thunderstorms in the country, particularly among the nationalists, patriots and die-hard secular and Kemalist opponents of the AKP. Still, none of the “reforms” that Erdoğan and his ministers have thus far listed as elements of their “opening” are among the key demands of the “ethnic Kurdish politics” or the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, terrorist machine.

The government has not yet publicly said this, but its plans also reportedly include allowing the use of Kurdish as an education language and the inclusion of the characters “q,” “w” and “x” in the Turkish alphabet by amending the laws on the “integrity of education” and the Turkish alphabet. (These are two of the Republican revolutionary laws under constitutional protection.) Such moves would make the PKK and the “ethnic Kurdish politics” happy. Yet, while such steps might not be enough to satisfy their expectations, they might make the AKP find itself engulfed yet another closure case against it in the Constitutional Court, on charges of amending the revolutionary laws under constitutional protection.

The chief prosecutor of the Court of Appeals has reportedly already started examining the latest wiretapping scandal. Some claim if he can verify “illegal wiretapping under political orders,” a closure case might be opened against the AKP.

The AKP is indeed dancing on thin ice. Can it enhance democracy, bring an end to separatist violence and respond to the woes of ethnic and religious minorities without sacrificing sacrosanct characteristics of the Republic? Or is it acting with the courage of the ignoramus and putting at very grave risk its own future, as well as the national and territorial integrity of the country?