Dear Sir S-2
Before you go on to argue and discuss with a Turk in any issue concerning the Turkish government, or anything "Turkish" thereof, here are some tips and guidelines even if we Turks like them or not....
In my perception, the Turkish political system can be summarised as a Preatorian Democracy. The system and the elites need, even require imagined or real threats in order to justify its continued existence. PKK is a reality for our every day lives. How an end, at least a plan to end can not be realized is a taboo in Turkey. It is safe to discuss it in public, read it on newspaper, but it is NOT safe to direct such questions to members of the ruling elite. There is an official reality, and a perceived reality which is immediately distorted by official channels in order not to create a question "Why?" in people's mind. If you are given the answer before you ask the question, you simply do not ask it anymore.
Turkey has suffered succcessive national traumas as a result of coups by successive military generals, and has been very successfully transformed into an apolitical country. Turkey has not faced this reality. The people responsible for such traumas are generally regarded as "great men".
The average Turkish citizen is ignorant of world affairs, heavily doctrinated, and educated well in material sciences and little to none in branches of social sciences. Thus, we have an extremely self-centric notion of reality, where all manner of actions by other countries are perceived as a threat to the existence of the nation, or the sovereignty or the country. For a Turk, national history -what little of it is revealed- ends with Ataturk's death in 1938. We are a nation whose past and identity has been cerefully and purposefully destroyed.
Now we will revert to the discussion at hand.
Successive Turkish governments have repeatedly announced that they would accept only a unitary Iraq. In saying this, nobody imagined that the unitary Iraq would contain a KRG. Turkish rulers imagined that unitary meant what it meant in Turkey.
Naturally, this binds other alternatives in foreign policy and alternative approaches. Now, we can not "openly" move in a friendly manner towards the KRG because it undermines what was said earlier. Therefore, we are forced to revert to backdoor channels with reduced effect. Even if we wanted to establish tangible links with the KRG via Baghdad government, this would create immeasurable problems in domestic politics.
Quote:
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To whom shall the Kurdish enclave go? What's THEIR alternative but to declare independance? Were I Turkish, I'd ASSIST such an endeavor. It's primacy as a kurdish state neuters any trans-national movement such as the PKK. It's existence offers a place to which Kurds of any nation can migrate if unwilling/unable to tolerate the prevailing rules of the land. It's vulnerability offers leverage and cooperation, not confrontation, to assure it's continuance.
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A possible solution could not have put in any better words than this.
I will not argue on this issue any longer. Having been, worked, fought and bled in SE Turkey, I can only propose that we Turks stop to think for a moment, accept that we made horrible mistakes in our politics and policies, and build a new approach where PKK will be abolished through popular support and cooperation.