The expected Nowruz announcement has finally been realized. The content of the message and its language will probably be extensively debated as a text and mindset analysis over the coming days.
Based on the text it is clearly visible that the PKK and its leader strove to develop a discourse distanced from a crude Stalinist one. While it pursued the building of the “ancient Kurdish identity,” its emphasis on the banner of Islam, Canakkale, and national struggle likewise reflected the search for historical background for the peace discourse. Its carefully selected wording which criticized single identity nation-building politics in terms of modernity and western colonialism rather than blaming the government and regime directly can be explained through the sensitivity of the current process.

Neither historical origins can be found nor a future be built when religious references are bypassed in discourses regarding brotherhood, peace, and coexistence in the region. However while the Nowruz announcement associated this fact with the past, it indicates that the future’s design will once again be limited within the modern paradigm it criticizes. As in allusion to Turkish intellectual Cemil Meric’s depiction of foreign ideologies as straitjackets, such an approach resembles removing the ideological straitjacket imposed on society by Ankara only to offer an ideological straitjacket tailored by the Diyarbakir elites…

Moreover, the speeches of the politicians on the platform were dominated by a language that was extremely nationalistic, and far behind and more secular than that in the Imrali letter.

Above all, if Kurds and Turks did not become enemies on these lands and a civil war did not erupt, despite the state’s ideological devices and the PKK’s violence, this cannot be understood without the common references of historical and religious unity. Rather than peace between two peoples, the real issue is peace between two organizational structures.

Concretely, the Diyarbakir Nowruz serves as a turning point due to the proclamation of the end of the period of armed struggle and the withdrawal of armed units.

The withdrawal of armed elements and the end of bloodshed is of such importance as to push other discussions into the background. It is necessary to prevent the people of this land from losing their lives in the name of ignorant ideologies and to prevent two Muslim populations from entering into blood feuds due to elitist politics. As long as this conflict which is imposed on us continues, the search for solutions and models restricted by the modern paradigm will be imposed; there will be dissociation from the origins of shared civilization.

It is imperative, while opposing persecution, not to fall into the trap of projects which will have the people wear newly tailored ideological straitjackets.

The alternative to the top-down modernization project which created Turkish nationalism is not yet another nationalism.

�lgili Yaz�larEnglish, Siyaset