Turkey's Masked Ball
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For today so far as we can see AK Party is doing what the majority of Turkish society, their voters asked them to do at last parliamentary election. As long as they reflect the desire of the majority I am pretty sure that peaceful days and the end of the Turkish masked ball is closer for Turkey.
It has been long time I did not write on Turkish politics for you the Babelians. The last thing I had written was on Turkey’s cross border operation Iraq’s Kurdistan mountains in 2008. Clashes between PKK guerillas and Turkish Army was main reason of worsening relation and soaring tension between Kurdistan Regional Government and Ankara.
Because of Turkish governments clever steps, relations became so much better than it was before. Currently is main commercial partner of Kurdistan despite ongoing clashes between PKK militants and Turkish soldiers. Turkey is planning to open an embassy at Kurdistan capiatal city Erbil next month. Iraqi Kurdish leaders are praising Turkey’s constructive steps to stabilize their country.
Two years ago DTP was the main party representing Turkey’s 15 million Kurdish population. DTP leader’s mistakes, attacks of PKK and Turkish deep states plots resulted with supreme courts decision to ban DTP. Then another Kurdish party, which is called BDP was established. Although the party was new, the leader were the same, even some more hawkish politicians found place on new board of the new party.
New Kurdish parties hawkish leaders did nothing to contribute AK Party leader, PM Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s efforts to democratize constitution which was prepared by architect of 12 September 1980 military junta. Recently a package of constitutional amendments were voted on Turkish parliamentary, non of the BDP lawmakers supported it.
Amendments were passed by votes of AK Party, DTP cooperated with natioanalist conservative parties CHP (In fact it calls itself social democrat party) and MHP. These three parties cooperation to stop a democratization package proved structure of Turkish deep state. Actually it is impossible to see Kurdish nationalist party, a Turkish nationalist party and a party which is calling it self as social democrat cooperating to defend juntas’constitution. The strange cooperation of DTP provided a crucial opportunity for Kurdish people to see hidden faces behid masks. According to the experts, Kurdish voters support for BDP will decrease at next election and AK Party will benefit from this new situation. Probably MHP will also loose lots of votes.
AK Party is a conservative party, and certainly it has lots of mistakes, we can discuss them at another article also. In this respect what Turkey needs urgently at the moment is a real social democrat party like Britain’s Labour, American’s Democratic Party or French Socialist Party which can defend other’s interests against ruling party AKP.
For today so far as we can see AK Party is doing what the majority of Turkish society, their voters asked them to do at last parliamentary election. As long as they reflect the desire of the majority I am pretty sure that peaceful days and the end of the Turkish masked ball is closer for Turkey.
e-mail : istanbul@cafebabel.com