A victory is being portrayed on television. Maps are opened, arrows are drawn, words grow harsher. In the studios, eyes gleaming, they say “we won.” On social media, there is an almost festive atmosphere. Yet every time I look at the screen, I see not something breaking off from maps, but from my own face.
There is a strange coldness within this language of celebration. A language that does not touch the skin, does not reach the heart, bypasses the conscience and connects directly to anger. And this strikes most deeply at the heart of Kurds, as it does to mine as a Kurdish citizen of this country.
It is a language that silently removes us from the thousand-year-old story of this geography, that pushes us outside the “we,” that begins an invisible exile.
Yet the place you call Syria is not just what appears on the maps on television.
It must be known that;
Syria is the sister of a mother in Mardin who still says “was left behind there.”
Syria is the uncle standing on the other side of a gravestone in Nusaybin.
Syria is a yellowed photo brought from Qamishli, hanging on the wall of a house in Cizre.
The same surname, the same lament, the same wedding, the same mourning. Borders were drawn with rulers, but kinship was not drawn with rulers.
Every sentence spoken today about Damascus is not merely a foreign policy sentence. It also touches the table of a home in Diyarbakır, the heart of a mother in Van, and the contact list of a worker in İstanbul. A people humiliated there is a relative who lowers their head here. A silenced voice there is a buried sentence here.
But today, in a state of victory intoxication, you are tearing apart this map of kinship.
The words pouring from the screens are colder than the bombs dropped across the border. Because bombs wound bodies; this language wounds the bond. You are wounding Kurds’ emotional bond to this country, their feeling of “this is my home too,” their emotional citizenship.
Don't forget this: A state can protect its borders with tanks.
But a country loses its heart through language.
The language being used today is not one that strengthens Turkey; it is a language that diminishes Turkey from within. This is a language that tells us Kurdish citizens, “you are not a core part of this story, you are a temporary parenthesis.” And when such a language is formed, no position gained is real. Because a state that loses its people cannot defend its land or its future.
Expecting the ruling power to wake from this intoxication of victory would be naive. But the opposition, especially the founding party of this country, must stand up right here. The Republican People’s Party (CHP) and Özgür Özel must loudly, clearly, and firmly express words that let Kurdish citizens know they are not alone. They must erect an unequivocal political barrier against this toxic language.
Because the issue is no longer Syria.
The issue is no longer border security.
The issue now is whether Turkey belongs to a single people.
If Turkey begins to use Damascus as a mirror when looking at its own Kurds, then that day it is not merely conducting a flawed foreign policy; that day, we will see that the internal contract of the Republic has in fact been broken.
And when a country breaks its internal contract, it no longer achieves victories.
It merely begins walking toward greater problems.
Today, in the Grand National Assembly of Turkey and on television screens, the only real sentence that must be spoken is this:
Kurds and their relatives are not a subject of this country, they are among its founders.
Any policy that fails to say this aloud—whether knowingly or not—is a policy that expands Turkey on maps while shrinking it in spirit. (MY/VK)
