Turkey's Problem

The Justice and Development Party (AKP) has radically changed since the 2011 election, which gave it a mandate for a third term. It has turned into a completely different party. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his senior advisers have opted to ignore Turkey's real problems, real targets and real agenda items and to swiftly create a "one-party" and "one-man" regime. Turkey's problem since 2011 is Erdoğan and the AKP.
Democratization moves have stopped. The initiative and reform packages have been suspended. Relations with the European Union have been frozen. Although they initially addressed voters with the motto "We are Turkey together," Erdoğan and the AKP have lately been ignoring Turkey's ethnic, religious and cultural diversity.
A similar change has been observable in foreign policy. While the AKP initially claimed that it was guided by the principle of "zero problems with neighbors" in foreign policy, Turkey soon became contentious with all of its neighbors. The AKP dreamed of creating a Sunni axis with which to assume a “big brother” role in the Middle East. Due to this neo-Ottomanist, adventurous mindset, Turkey has turned its face away from Europe to the Middle East, getting involved in the bloody and chaotic atmosphere of the region.
The only exception to this process was the Kurdish settlement process. As it was laboring to establish a one-party regime, the country's most important problem -- i.e., the Kurdish issue -- constituted a serious impediment to the AKP's plans. It was impossible for the AKP to overcome it by just denying it. The dominant state mentality that used to treat it as nothing but a terror or security problem had already gone bankrupt. People had started to question why their relatives were dying.
A real democratic solution and peace had emerged as Turkey's urgent need. If they had really wanted to, Erdoğan and the AKP would have settled both the Kurdish and Alevi issues. But they didn't. They just pretended to solve them while using them to further their political expediency, even though these issues need to be treated with supra-political sensibility.
They used Alevis to fuel polarization and they made it clear to the pro-Kurdish movement that they would settle the Kurdish issue only if they lent support to its one-party and one-man project.
They assumed they could control the pro-Kurdish movement via Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan. Some pro-government columnists developed theories to support them. "Erdoğan may be authoritarian, but what matters is that he is settling the Kurdish issue," they suggested.
If the pro-Kurdish movement had become a satellite of the AKP, would Erdoğan really have solved the Kurdish issue? For instance, if the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) had backed Erdoğan's ambitions to become a president in a presidential system, what would have happened? This seems to be a very speculative question. In my opinion, Erdoğan would still not be eager to solve the Kurdish issue and the HDP would be left with unrequited love. He wouldn't solve it because the only way to solve the Kurdish issue while protecting Turkey's territorial integrity is to establish and maintain an authentic, sound and functioning democracy. How can a mentality that would introduce dictatorship and fascism to Turkey settle the Kurdish issue?
Indeed, it became obvious in the run-up to the June 7 election that Erdoğan tends to talk about solutions only if they play into his hands and only if he can use them to further his personal interests. In Turkey, governments tend to adopt a statist, nationalist discourse and resort to "counterterrorism" in an effort to maintain their power when they are exhausted and have nothing to offer in power. This is what Erdoğan and the AKP do by pretending to be in power even though they have lost power.
Turkey's main problem is neither counterterrorism nor anything else. Turkey's problem is the AKP, which is obsessed with staying in power at all costs, and Erdoğan, who believes his only exit is to introduce a presidential system and become its president. Counterterrorism and escalating statist nationalism serve only to cover up Turkey's real problem.

CAFER SOLGUN (Cihan/Today's Zaman)