Vahap Coşkun

The Turkish original of this article was published as “Biz yapmadık, bağımsız birimler yaptı” on 30th July 2015.

Who violated the de facto truce that had been in place for the last two years and a half? Who was it that started the firing? Who pulled the pin of this new conflict? This is the question at the top of the agenda. PKK supporters become furious at the suggestion that it was the PKK that violated the truce. Bringing up the various errors committed by the government during the Solution Process, they insist that it was actually the government that terminated the truce. Their favorite argument has to do with the position adopted by President Erdoğan vis-à-vis the “Dolmabahçe Agreement.” They claim that both the truce and the Solution Process were really as good as over when Erdoğan rejected the Dolmabahçe Agreement to say: “There is no such thing as a table, and there are no sides sitting around it.” Hence the responsibility has to be not the PKK’s but Erdoğan’s.

If negative statements by one or the other side were to be enough to terminate the Solution Process, it should have ended long before this. For the PKK leaders themselves have repeatedly announced that “the Process is over” or that “you cannot make peace with the AKP.” They have also woven some very insulting similes around Erdoğan. Cemil Bayık, for example, is on record for saying that “the real caliph for IS is not Baghdadi but Erdoğan.” Demirtaş for his part has compared Erdoğan with Hitler. Again, Bayık has further suggested that Erdoğan should be confined to an insane asylum. But all these did not cause the armed conflict to get a fresh start. Yes, some very harsh accusations were being traded, but somehow the struggle was being confined to the political stage without guns beginning to go off yet again.

For what kept the Solution Process going was the absence of any deaths predicated on the refusal by both sides to attack the other in conscious and deliberate fashion. Over 6-8 October 2014, though, there were numerous deaths and things did come near breaking point. Still, difficult as it was, the Process was somehow kept on track. But in the wake of the IS-perpetrated massacre at Suruç, the PKK took a step the outcome of which was a foregone conclusion. It held the state responsible for the massacre. It killed two policemen at Ceylanpınar, and loudly proclaimed that it was responsible.The truce came to an end right then and there. Subsequently, the PKK intensified its attacks on soldiers and policemen. The government replied by ordering strikes against the PKK camps outside Turkey and carrying out various operations against the PKK and related organizations inside the country. (Cengiz Alğan and Yıldıray Oğur have written in great detail about just how the fighting started again, painstakingly noting and dating every single step on the way.)

“The Palace Gladio”

Regardless of how much PKK and HDP circles might object, it is very clear that it was the PKK who kicked the table over. By executing two policemen at home, the PKK lit the fuse for the ensuing conflict. This is how the public has seen it, thereby coming to hold the PKK responsible for the resumption of the fighting. This act has come to embarrass the PKK in the face of both domestic and international public opinion. In turn, this has led to two consecutive explanations intended to mask the PKK’s responsibility in the murder of these two policemen.

First, Selâhattin Demirtaş has come up with a conspiracy theory. A “Gladio” connected to the “Palace” has been pursuing a dirty war, he has declared. Approaching Ceylanpınar in this context, he has argued that that the policemen were sacrificed to a bloody game hatched by dark connections. Hence these deaths should not be laid at the PKK’s door, says Demirtaş.

Conspiracy theories might serve a purpose if there is anything at all in the dark about, or a certain mystery or whiff of secrecy surrounding any particular incident. But if everything is absolutely clear and out in the open, they turn out to be useless. This is the case with Ceylanpınar. Everything took place before the eyes of the entire country. A group calling themselves “Apo’s vigilantes” broke into the two policemen’s homes before dawn and murdered them. The HPG declared this to be “in retaliation for Suruç” on its own official web site. The PKK for its part did not say anything to the contrary for a long time, thereby acknowledging its responsibility for the act.

In the face of this situation, for Demirtaş to resort to claims that cannot possibly be proved, and to try to put the finger on some “deep” connections, can neither persuade anybody nor help provide a fig leaf for the PKK. It is not good to take people for fools. Nothing can possibly come of this. If, instead, Demirtaş had sincerely admitted that what was done was done by the, and had criticized it as indeed it deserves to be criticized, he would have poured some water on the growing fire and also brought more credit to himself.

“Units independent of the PKK”

After Demirtaş’s statement, KCK Foreign Relations chief Demhat Agit granted an interview to the BBC’s Turkish Service where he asserted that the attack on the two policemen had not been carried out by the PKK: “These are units that are independent of the PKK. It has been clarified that they are local forces who are not under us and who have got organized among themselves. We have no qualms about owning up to anything that we have done. If there is any action that has been carried out by the PKK/HPG as such, it can always be explained why, and there can be a self-criticism if necessary.”

For a start, we should note that Agit has actually gone and contradicted Demirtaş. The latter was pointing to some mysterious dark forces, while Agit is saying that the murders were committed by “local forces who had got organized among themselves.” But secondly, Agit’s claim about “local forces” also has to be laid on the table. It is an assertion that has repeatedly been made in the past, and which seems to be extremely functional. Whenever they do something which seems to have cut the public to the quick, the PKK immediately trots out this argument and hides behind it in order to reject any responsibility for it.

The fact of the matter is, however, that the PKK is an extremely hierarchical and disciplined organization. That, indeed, happens to be why it has been able to survive and grow into a formidable force over forty years in as tough a geography as the Middle East. In an organization like the PKK, no local unit by itself can embark upon an action capable of totally transforming the course of events. The PKK is not a setup where just anybody can carry out attacks likely to have a direct impact on the fate of the entire organization. The PKK knows just what an action like Ceylanpınar means; it is easily capable of estimating how the state is going to respond. All in all, it is out of the question for local units independent of headquarters to have undertaken such an action with all its weighty consequences by themselves. Instead of transferring the blame to any such local units, what the PKK has to do is to stop the clashes that it has started.