News & Comment
Öcalan's Message and the Possibility of a New Solution Process

News:

Mehmet Öcalan said after his visit to Imrali: "My brother Abdullah Öcalan said, ‘We have our own projects, we did not destroy the solution process. We can solve this problem in 6 months. This is a blind war. This blood, these tears should stop. You can state these to the press.'"

Comment:

After the 15th of July process in pretext of fear of safety and of no information HDP, just like in 2012, started an indefinite hunger strike. The government gave permission to Abdullah Öcalan's brother Mehmet Öcalan to see his brother on the occasion of Eid al-Adha and in order to prevent PKK from using his health for their purposes. After this meeting Öcalan's statement ended the hunger strike and HDP with those who are close to them began using statements like that they should return to the solution process. Will it be possible to restart the solution process? Will it be possible to maintain the ceasefire?

After the 7th of June election the solution process has been put into the fridge, PKK has declared "self-rule" in cities where HDP got majority vote and has declared that they have begun armed resistance in the cities. The government kept telling to the people that in order to disarm PKK, armed campaign and operations were necessary. Since then 8000 people died in the operations and attacks. The government prevented PKK from declaring independence in the cities with these operations and weakened PKK-HDP's power in the region.

The government sees that their hand has been good when dealing with PKK since the elections, that PKK is weakening in this period and will continue weakening and that HDP's public support is reducing with it. Again it is hard for the government to consider a political solution in these days that a cross-border operation under the pretext of ISIS and PYD is ensuing. All of the government representatives have said on every occasion that the operations will continue. Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım said that, even when development projects are declared with regions people, they would continue their fight with terrorism and stated that there is no Kurdish problem, the Kurdish people have a PKK problem with this statement: "There is no solution, they lost that opportunity." Also the government sacked a lot of HDP's municipalities with the state of emergency decree laws and started investigations on more than ten thousand civil servants.

PKK-HDP has been losing blood since the 7th of June elections. Their practices in the solution process have alienated them with the people and because of that they did not receive an effective support from the people for their street stunts, shop closing, civil disobedience, fight calls. Duran Kalkan, one of the leaders of PKK, is trying to resist with his statements like: “Those who try to take control of the peoples’ municipalities by force should know that they are object to force as much as the force they have been using. Civil servants should support us, children should go to school,"and attacks he made in many cities.

Even though the government’s solution plan of the PKK problem is political, it does not seem like this will be possible in short term. Both the operations and the dead people, and the process that is under way in Syria and PYD's existence in the border region, also the existence of the American-English conflict is not the solution it is rather the main reasons of the conflicts. Also because Öcalan is not in complete control of the organisation, his statements will, for now, not be taken into consideration. But in the future Öcalan may be needed for peace.

The basis of this problem is the existing human based system. The solution of the problem is restarting Islamic life and annihilation of the Kuffar's interventions on our region and foreign instigation of violence. Indeed this is easy for Allah (swt). We pray to our Lord to send help soon.

Written for the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir by

Musa Bayoğlu