The long awaited Justice and Development Party (AKP) Congress has convened last Sunday. Successive TV appearances of Prime Minister (PM) Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had hiked the expectations regarding the novel and daring offerings he would place on the table for the future of the country. People who followed the event felt somewhat disappointed. He did not want to commit himself and his party to things that could not be accomplished in a short while. This is a prudent way of not disappointing people prior to successive elections coming up in the following three years. Municipal, presidential and general elections are impending.
However few solid proposals were mentioned for the solution of Turkey’s age old problems including the Kurdish issue. Yet commentators read between the lines and watched the convention hall and came up with a sundry of analyses.
First of all the composition of the foreign guests indicated a certain inclination of the foreign policy preferences of the AKP. The President of Egypt Mohamed Morsi, President of Kirgizstan Almazbek Atambayev, Iraq’s President of the Federal Parliament Usama Nuceyfi, Sudan’s Vice-President Ali Osman Mohamed Taha, Vise-President of Iraq Tareq Hashimi,Pakistan’s Chief Minister of Punjab Mian Shahbaz Sharif, Pelestine’s Hamas leader Khalid Mashal and last but not least Masud Barzani, President of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) of Iraq. Representing the West was ex PM of Germany Gerhard Schroeder, personal friend of PM Erdoğan.
What does this picture tells us? Thinking that PM Erdoğan said little to revitalize ties with the European Union (for the understandable reason that the term leadership is in the hands of the Greek Cypriot Government that is intent in blocking anything concerning Turkey), he seems to be gravitating towards Turkey’s near abroad in the Middle East to build new economic partnerships and political alliances.
Indeed the talk in the town is to forge closer ties with Egypt so that Turkey and Egypt may cooperate in reshaping the Middle East along the principles of self-determination (read this as resisting foreign intervention), economic development and building a common Islamic culture zone that would breed camaraderie and solidarity rather than antagonism and conflict.
The second issue that concerns both Turkey and her neighbors is the Kurdish problem. Kurds were a regional reality but have turned into a problem after ethnic nation-states were born and Kurds were subjected to exclusion. After long decades of reaction and rebellion by the Kurds now that process is being rolled back and a new political reality is emerging based on equal citizenship and inclusive nationhood.
Mr. Erdoğan has promised all these and more in the booklet distributed during his two and half hour long speech. Use of Kurdish in government services, court proceedings and land marks is to take place soon. This all fine but still legal defense in courts in Kurdish is prohibited, speakers are litigated for delivering political speeches in Kurdish and Park names are changed because they bear Kurdish letters. In fact they are not Kurdish but Latin letters (like x,q,w) that are omitted when the Latinis alphabet was adopted by the republican administration back in 1928.
Now all this folly that cost many lives and long prison sentences to those who defended them are coing to end and some kind of normalization is expected to take place with partial education in Kurdish language at elementary and middle level schools.
Another message was invitation of Mr. Barzani to a country where he and the political entity he led was seen as a danger to Turkey’s unity and territorial integrity. Well, “too much water has passed under the bridge” since then as an old Turkish proverb says. Now the KRG is one of Turkey’s main economic and political partners and Mr. Barzani himself is viewed as a broker between Turkey and Kurds outside Turkey in setting their political course that would not be inimical to Turkey.
This is one way of looking at Masud Barzani’s presence at the AK Party congress. By including him into the group of regional leaders, the Turkish government has shown its intent in building a regional alliance with little reliance on outside powers, developing a new economic and political center of gravity and accepting the Kurds as a new political actor in this scheme. In this sense Mr. Barzani is viewed as a “wise-man” to help in convincing rebellious Kurds in helping the Turkish government in developing alternative instruments of reconciliation rather than resorting to violence in pursuit of their rights.
This rapprochement with the Kurds without necessitates the full integration of Kurds within Turkey into the political system that has excluded them until recently. In that regard the government appeared to have the intention but not a clear cut blueprint. It is every body’s hope that this blueprint is drawn up as soon as possible.


Prof. Dr. Doğu Ergil is a Professor of political Science in Fatih University \ Turkey, and also an expert on the Kurdish Question, and he is one of the well-known authors in Turkey.