The fragile Kurdish peace

Last Sunday, a young Kurdish protestor who masked his face entered a Turkish Air Force base in the predominantly Kurdish province of Diyarbakır. He climbed up the pole, reached out to the Turkish flag, and took it down. The military personnel, somehow, could not stop him. Later, the chief of staff announced that the soldiers at the base had refrained from shooting the militant, as he was a teenager.

The incident, however, has turned into a national controversy, adding to the growing tension in the southeast between the government and Kurdish militants. The leader of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), Devlet Bahçeli, said the youngster who brought down the flag should have been “shot right in his forehead,” voicing the reaction among Turkish nationalists. Bahçeli also condemned the government over the “peace process,” which he sees only as treason to the homeland and surrender to terrorism. Kurdish nationalists, on the other hand, accuse the same government of not moving forward with the “peace process” and using it only to buy time.

In other words, the government of Tayyip Erdoğan is in a dire strait regarding the most lethal problem of Turkey — the Kurdish question. But no matter what we think of Erdoğan and his policies on other issues, he should be supported to continue with the peace process, because the alternative, which is a re-escalation of the conflict, is quite scary.

The conundrum is that there are entrenched political camps in Turkey, which do not help the problem. Many of Erdoğan’s opponents, who have many good reasons to oppose him on various issues, oppose the peace process as well, simply because they have become deeply suspicious of whatever Erdoğan does. They...