The meeting between President Erdoğan and the delegation of the DEM party, İmralı, on Thursday is important in order to answer the question of how the process started in the Kurdish question, which was often asked after the operation on 19 March, will be continued. Erdoğan's meeting with Pervin Buldan and Sırrı Süreyya Önder, who make up the DEM party's İmralı delegation, together with İbrahim Kalın, the head of the National Intelligence Organisation (MIT), and Efkan Ala, the deputy chairman of the AKP, is also noteworthy because it was the first meeting with the representatives of the Kurdish political movement since 2012. One of the most frequently asked questions about the process, which has been led by MHP leader Bahçeli on behalf of the ruling bloc since October last year, has been "Where does Erdoğan stand in this process? With this meeting, Erdoğan directly took responsibility for this process on behalf of the government for the first time, or rather, he had to do so. On the other hand, in order to understand the developments that forced the government to initiate and continue this process, Erdoğan's meeting with the DEM delegation should be read together with two events that took place on the same day: The talks between Turkey and Israel in Azerbaijan and the arrest of two other journalists (Murat Ağırel and Timur Soykan) who had criticised the government. These two events reveal the relationship between this process and regional developments as well as the government's domestic political calculations.

It is known that Bahçeli's statements calling for Ocalan's intervention were mainly based on the developments in the region. He then linked the strengthening of the domestic front against these developments to the goal of maintaining the presidential regime.

What were these developments in the region?

Israel continued its aggression and occupation in the Gaza Strip by attacking other forces of the "Axis of Resistance" led by Iran and became the main actor in the policy of reshaping the region. Israel took this role to a new dimension with its influence in the overthrow of the Assad regime in Syria and the subsequent attacks and occupations in Syria.

Since 2014, the US imperialism, the biggest supporter of Israel, has been pursuing a policy aimed at breaking Iran's regional power under the name of "fighting ISIS" and continues to cooperate with the Syrian Kurds within the framework of this policy. This cooperation of the USA with the Kurds on the basis of its own regional interests is one of the main points of disagreement between the Erdogan government and the USA.

The first expectation of the Erdogan government, which is the biggest supporter of HTS (Hayat Tahrir al-Sham), which has taken over the government in Syria, was to dismantle the SDF (Syrian Democratic Forces) and the Kurdish autonomous administration in Rojava. However, the US and Israel's preference for continued cooperation with the Kurds to keep HTS under control has significantly frustrated this expectation.

The struggle for spheres of influence between Turkey and Israel in Syria was one of the main topics on the agenda of the Trump-Netanyahu meeting in the US last week, during which Trump told Netanyahu that he could be a "mediator" in their problems with Turkey. The meeting between Turkey and Israel in Azerbaijan is noteworthy mainly because it took place immediately after Trump's statement. The attitude of these two powers to avoid direct confrontation and confrontation is concretised by the fact that they are united on the axis of US regional interests.

The US and Israeli stance, as well as the fear that the clashes could lead to the HTS losing control, is forcing the Erdogan government to back down from its aggression against the Syrian Kurds, at least for the time being. The "unity" talks between the PYD, the main component of the SDF, and the ENKS (Syrian Kurdish National Council), which includes parties allied to Barzani and considered "reasonable" by the Turkish government, are part of this process. On the other side of this process are negotiations for the liquidation of the PKK. The reconfiguration policy, which aims to encircle Iran, makes it very difficult for the PKK to continue in its current form. PKK leader Öcalan's statement that he insisted on the PKK convening a congress despite security concerns in his Eid meeting with his nephew and DEM deputy Ömer Öcalan should be read in the context of these developments.

The components of the Kurdish movement see the developments in Syria and the liquidation of the PKK as two parts of the same process. Therefore, they try to treat the process of liquidating the PKK as a part of the participation in democratic politics in Turkey and the solution of the Kurdish question. The Erdoğan government, on the other hand, wants to make the partial concessions to the Kurds in Syria on the basis of the adherence to the regional policy of the US imperialism into a basis for the continuation of this repressive regime and to prolong its own life in this process that it calls "Turkey without terror".

The difference between the attitudes and expectations of the two sides can be seen in the statements made after the meeting between Erdoğan and the DEM delegation.

While the statement made on behalf of the DEM party expresses the hope and expectation that 'violence and conflict will end and the democratic and political sphere will be strengthened', AKP deputy chairman Efkan Ala, who was present at the meeting, explains the government's expectation as 'the terrorist organisation will convene its congress by the end of April and dissolve itself with all its elements'. Ala does not attribute any responsibility to the government for the end of the operations or for the legal basis of this process.

Erdoğan's meeting with the delegation of the DEM party, which did not get what it wanted from the 19 March operation, especially due to the strong democratic reactions of the people, shows how much the government needs this process for its domestic political calculations. In a political atmosphere where the democratic reaction of millions of people against the political operation carried out by the CHP's presidential candidate İmamoğlu has increased, Erdoğan had to intervene directly in order to keep the expectation of the trial alive and to divide the opposition through this expectation. While Erdoğan was meeting with the delegation of the DEM party, the journalists Murat Ağırel and Timur Soykan, who had been summoned to testify by the prosecutor's office, were raided and detained, which revealed two aspects of this policy of the government. While the government is trying to create expectations about the process through the Erdoğan-DEM party meeting, it wants to perpetuate Erdoğan's presidency and this repressive regime by solving the democratic opposition and not the Kurdish problem.

CHP leader Özgür Özel pointed to this aspect of reality when he said that the government, which justified the inclusion of Kurdish municipal councillors in the municipalities of Istanbul through the "urban consensus" in the last local elections as "terrorism" and justified political operations, could not solve the Kurdish problem, which is a democracy problem.

However, the fact that the government feels obliged to continue this process on the one hand and is not able to take steps that could create expectations in this process (for fear that these steps would strengthen the struggle for democracy against its own repressive regime) on the other hand also puts the government in a dilemma. The fact that Erdoğan had to meet directly with the representatives of the Kurdish political movement after an interval of 13 years is a result of this dilemma.

The people's movement that arose after 19 March and united all democratic forces, even if it is in retreat today, was an important experience to answer the question of where the solution to this dilemma and contradiction lies.

Regardless of Erdoğan's intentions, the meeting he had to have with the DEM party not only showed us the power of the democratic opposition, but also showed once again that the democratisation of the country and the solution of the Kurdish question can only be achieved through the joint struggle of the popular forces and not by expecting the government.