A confusing picture

The paradoxes and contradictions of the ruling Justice and Development Party's (AKP) approach were illustrated once more last week when the composition of the "wise people" commission was revealed. While Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan frequently and very publicly berates the media on a broad range of issues, 26 out of the 63 commission members handpicked by the prime minister are media commentators. In a country where respected journalists are often sacked by media owners fearful of incurring the government's displeasure being selected for such a position clearly carries some risk. Forming a commission that is truly representative of Turkish civil society is probably an impossible task, but the government could certainly have reached a better gender balance: less than 20 percent of commission members are women.

Setting up this group was a strategic masterstroke on the part of Mr. Erdoğan, who has now shifted to the "wise people" some of the responsibility of "selling" the peace process to the population. Convincing Turkish citizens that ending the Kurdish conflict is well worth a few compromises and does not threaten the survival of the nation involves undoing decades of negative rhetoric by Turkish politicians, including many hard-line statements issued by the prime minister himself in the past couple of years. Today, the tide has turned and those who warn about possible pitfalls on the road ahead are deemed to be "against peace" or "jealous" that they were not included in the commission.

It is, however, possible to want peace and support the ongoing process without suspending judgment and criticism. In fact, some gray areas of systemic shortcomings need to be highlighted for any lasting settlement to be reached. The same government that is bravely taking major steps forward is also the one that, only recently, adopted an unconvincing report on the Uludere debacle, which dismisses the killing of 34 civilians, most of them teenagers, as an unfortunate accident. Accounting for the mistakes of the past and seeking justice for the victims of abuses committed by state actors should be among steps taken toward restoring trust in the Turkish state.

Nor should this approach be limited to the Kurdish issue. A lasting peace can only come with a radical change of mentality, underpinned by a constitution that supports individual freedoms. But while the AKP is trying to address the Kurdish issue on the one hand, prosecutors are investigating Rober Koptaş, the editor-in-chief of the Armenian weekly Agos, and writer Ümit Kıvanç on charges of "insulting Turkishness" for suggesting that the verdict in the Hrant Dink assassination trial was flawed.

We know what the government expects from the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) -- a full withdrawal and disarmament -- but how much exactly is the AKP prepared to offer?

The new constitution is a key element of the peace puzzle. The drafts submitted by the two main opposition parties, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and Republican People's Party (CHP), largely maintain the status quo. The CHP's inability to come up with a new vision means that the party risks becoming increasingly irrelevant. But while the AKP's draft offers better guarantees on many fronts, the presidential system the ruling party advocates would further concentrate powers in the hands of one man. As the prominent professor of constitutional law Ergun Özbudun has pointed out, the AKP proposal would also give political parties a bigger role in the selection of members of the country's high courts, and therefore politicize them further.

A new narrative is clearly emerging in Turkey, but the Kurdish peace process still has to be fitted into the broader framework of Turkey's overall democratization. For the time being, this picture remains blurred, riddled with contradictions and undermined by an authoritarian streak too frequently on display.