The Transformation of Ocalan
Cengiz Candar writes that officials were once portraying Abdullah Ocalan as the “worst villain” and “greatest Satan,” but in the first days of 2013 Ocalan appears to have become “No. 1 partner” in efforts to resolve Turkey’s No. 1 problem.
Had there been a survey to determine the world’s most confused nation, Turkey would have easily ranked first. There is every reason to justify the schizoid state of mind of the Turkish public, be they Turks or Kurds. Only a couple of weeks ago, the country’s prime minister was questioning why PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, serving a life sentence since 1999 on Imrali Island near Istanbul, had not been executed, while signaling that capital punishment could be reinstated.
Officials were once portraying Ocalan as the “worst villain” and “greatest Satan,” demonizing him publicly in the harshest terms at every opportunity. Things changed in the first days of 2013. Ocalan now appears to have become “No. 1 partner” in efforts to resolve Turkey’s No. 1 problem, namely the Kurdish conflict, which is increasingly taking on regional dimensions.
In other words, as of the first week of the year, Ocalan is no longer a part of the problem, but the man at the center of “the settlement process” Ankara pins its greatest hopes on to end the PKK’s nearly three decades of armed rebellion.
The only armed-struggle group older than the PKK today is Colombia’s FARC. And at a time when even FARC has sat down for talks with the government and raised unprecedented hopes for peace in Colombia, the PKK’s persistence to exist as an armed movement in the world’s most sensitive geopolitical region has stood out as “anachronistic.”
