Addressing the party’s parliamentary group meeting on Tuesday, HDP Co-Chair Pervin Buldan made some startling comments about the campaign being waged against the HDP and Interior Minister Soylu’s claims.

In her speech, Buldan pointed to recent endeavours by Minister Soylu to employ photographs of talks HDP people had held in the “solution process” beknown to and sanctioned by the state and government to foster a perception hostile to the HDP and portray them as “terrorism collaborators.” By telling Soylu, “If only you had asked your general chair about those photographs before appearing on television,” Buldan gives a reminder that this process was conducted with President Erdoğan’s knowledge and at his behest.

However, two points Buldan raised as her speech progressed demand explanation and, hence, deserve to be raised and discussed here.

First, Buldan says, “The one showing the photographs clearly has his sights set on Erdoğan’s office. Do not wage your war on the back of the HDP.”

These words are redolent of statements, “A trap is being set for Erdoğan” emanating from Selahattin Demirtaş’s lawyers in relation to the Kobanê indictment– and, in letters he has sent and comments he has made, Demirtaş, in deviation from this analysis, holds Erdoğan as being the one with prime responsibility for this process.

At this point, our question to Buldan is: Is Soylu bypassing Erdoğan in airing these photographs, his sights set on the latter’s office, or is he doing so in keeping with the latter’s own actual instructions and political goals?

It is clear that, just as yesterday the “solution process” was conducted at Erdoğan’s behest, the policy that is today gunning for this process is once more being conducted at Erdoğan’s behest. For Erdoğan, who yesterday was unable to achieve his goal of instrumentalizing this process in furtherance of his political aims – creation of the presidential regime and regional expansionist aspirations, wishes today, in gunning for the solution process and the Kurdish movement, to redesign politics inspired by the goal of setting up a new regime. Thus, just as the Kobanê indictment was brought down from the shelves following an interval of six years, Soylu’s perception-fostering endeavours through these photographs are also being enacted under Erdoğan’s very instructions. For, as also seen in the most recent Garê operation, the power holders, their room for movement restricted by economic crisis on the one hand and by political constraints on the other, wish both to neutralize the HDP by fostering the perception of “terrorism collaborators” and to split the bourgeois opposition through recourse to nationalism.

The “one man” – Erdoğan – is ensconced atop the centralist-authoritarian-oppressive single-man regime through which the machinery of state is directly enmeshed with the monopolistic bourgeoisie’s interests, and the likes of Soylu may only take their place in this regime as the “single man’s men” as can be recollected from Soylu’s “resignation affair.”

Without beating about the bush, saying that Soylu has his sights set on Erdoğan’s office by airing these photographs does not merely gloss over the true intent and political goals behind these photographs – the construction of a fascist regime – but, by portraying Erdoğan as being external to events, serves those who are trying to create expectations by means of him.

Second, and of crucial importance, is Buldan’s talk of making known when the place and time comes what the power holders had promised in the “solution process.”

Buldan says, “We will for sure make known what they promised us in the solution process when the place and time comes. It would be unconscionable of us if we did not make known what we, our party and our delegations were promised, what pledges were given and what we were promised if the solution process attained success.”

One of the parties to the “solution process,” PKK Leader Abdullah Öcalan, has been held in solitary confinement since – if we exclude the brief period following the hunger strikes in 2019 – negotiations were abandoned and the process was ended (2015). Just now, hunger strikes are being staged in many prisons in opposition to this policy of solitary confinement.

The HDP is threatened with closure and one case report after another is drafted with reference to HDP parliamentarians. Erdoğan does not confine himself to defending the appointing of trustees in place of popularly elected representatives in the region, but quite openly says this practice will continue from now on. There are constant threats of fresh operations to the accompaniment of propaganda that the Kurdish autonomous regions and the Kurds’ attainments in Rojava imperil Turkey.

There is an endeavour to make these policies targeting the Kurds, the internal oppression and external operations, into the basis for the construction of a fascist regime.

The bourgeois opposition’s disposition in the wake of the Garê operation to question the power holders’ policies for solving the Kurdish problem by force, even if with reference this operation, and the enduring debate is conducive both to revealing who ended the solution process and also to showing that a solution to the problem through peaceful means is possible and to defanging the reactionary propaganda.

Against such a backdrop, Buldan says they will announce what the power holders promised them in the solution process when the place and time comes.

Well, when if not now!

There is a responsibility to make known what took place in this process not just as a requirement of democratic politics, but at the same time to the Kurdish people and the peoples of Turkey who have paid a heavy price over this process.

Our exhortation to Pervin Buldan: out with it!

(Translated by Tim DRAYTON)