RIDING THE STREETCAR NAMED DEMOCRACY

"Do not expect justice where might is right."
~ Plato.

The democratic Ankara regime is in the process of eliminating the DTP in the same way that it has eliminated previous Kurdish parties. One must consider carefully the reason why DTP refuses to "denounce the PKK as a terrorist organization" as Erdoğan has put it. This is the same Erdoğan who obtained a military waiver so his son never has to serve in the TSK. This is also the same Erdoğan who said in June:

"Has the struggle against 5,000 terrorists inside Turkey come to a close, so that we can now start dealing with the 500 in northern Iraq?"

And who now says:

"There are 3,500 terrorists sheltered in northern Iraq. We want to see concrete steps from Iraq, not empty talk. We need to deal with this problem for good. We don't want the death of any soldiers."

Why are you worried about dead soldiers, Recep? "Military service is not a place where you just take it easy."

Ahmet Türk admits there is a "lynch party" against DTP. Although CHP's Baykal tries to play the fox and compare DTP to Herri Batasuna, the proper response to Baykal would be to slap him across the face with the IRA model. Since Baykal wants to use a European model to justify a military over a political solution, someone needs to tell Baykal that just as Turkey is not Spain neither is it anything like the rest of Europe. Or that Europe never became truly democratic until after the Peace of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years' War and the Eighty Years' War. By that accounting, Ankara's current conflict has only gone on for 23 years and there are quite a few more decades of war to go.

A friend has suggested that the Ankara regime will engage in machinations against DTP to reduce the number of parliamentarians to under twenty, the number needed to form a group in the TBMM, with ÖDP parliamentarian Ufuk Uras willing and able to fill in for one DTP parliamentarian. On the other hand, I am skeptical and believe that Ankara is far too democratic a regime to permit any Kurd to remain in the TBMM. Consider that the "new" draft constitution is merely a "veneer" covering the 12 September constitution.

While Gareth Jenkins has it completely wrong on PKK's being extinquished as a result of a Turkish invasion of South Kurdistan (More than likely it will fuel an even greater increase in PKK recruitment. İlker Başbuğ himself admits the failure of TSK after 23 years.) and on the ambush of the poor, innocent "conscripts" that were actually Bolu terrorists, he's on the right track with suggesting that the Ankara regime will shut down DTP. It would appear, however, that Şirnex parliamentarian Hasip Kaplan may be thinking of what it will take to reach a Turkish Peace of Westphalia:

“If Turkey goes across it will not be a cross-border operation but a war between peoples,” said DTP MP Hasip Kaplan. “The dictators, soldiers, and oppressors who have led the Turkish republic for the last 84 years have tried to silence the Kurds. But they couldn’t succeed”

Atta boy, Hasip! Man, you gotta love those Şirnexîs.

In preparation for tomorrow's World Poverty Day, an earlier report by Jenkins on poverty among Kurds in Turkish-occupied Kurdistan is worth a read, particularly for those who labor under the delusion that there is any type of inequality in Turkey:

The unemployment rate stands at 70% of the adult population in the shantytowns that surround Diyarbakir, the largest city in the predominantly Kurdish southeast of Turkey, according to a recent study by Istanbul’s Bosphorus University (Milliyet, September 29).

[ . . . ]

The recent survey by Bosphorus University covered 5,706 households, comprising 36,221 people, in five of Diyarbakir’s poorest neighborhoods, where most of the population are first-generation migrants from the countryside.

The survey found that 309 households (5.4%) had no income at all, while 1,787 (31.3%) had total income of less than $200 per month. Almost all of those who had jobs were working in the unregistered economy, mainly as day laborers on construction sites and as street vendors. Only 933 households (16.4%) had total monthly income of more than $400, which is considered the poverty line in Turkey. In contrast, a survey by the Turkish Statistical Institute (TURKSTAT) found that average household expenditure in Turkey as a whole stood at just over $1,000 in 2006 (Radikal, September 19).

[ . . . ]

Perhaps most importantly, the survey suggested that few of those interviewed had much hope of a better future. A total of 63.4% of those who had migrated from the countryside said that their economic situation had deteriorated since moving to Diyarbakir. When the heads of the households were asked whether they were hopeful of an improvement in their lives, 29.2% said that they were; 20.2% thought that the situation would become worse; and 50.6% did not expect any change at all (Milliyet, September 29).

When will the regime get around to charging the researchers with Article 301? I mean, democracy cannot survive with this kind of truth told.