One of the most respected thinkers of the liberal left in Turkey, Murat Belge, assessed the outcome of the Nov. 1 elections in his column in the daily Taraf: "From June to November, we passed through an absurd half-year. ... All the loss of life became the most bitter item in the balance sheet of that lost half-year. At the end of half a year, in terms of the Kurdish question, we are at the worst point that could be imagined.”
Such a gloomy assessment does not nurture some people's optimistic idea that maybe the election results had a silver lining: that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the ever-confident Justice and Development Party (AKP) could manifest more flexibility and resume the Kurdish peace process. After all, Erdogan had stated that the peace process was in a deep freeze, but not dead. Therefore, when the circumstances allow, it could be revived and those election results that favored him so much could be helpful.
