Eyes are on PM Recep Tayyip Erdoğan once again. The Prime Minister announced the so called "democratisation package" will be presented around the end of this month.

The PM said it is pointless to "criticise the package without knowing its content", and this is certainly the case. What is not pointless though is reminding the delusion and feel of deceit felt by millions when the previous package, the so called "Kurdish Opening" or "Kurdish Initiative" was announced in 2009.

Indeed it was a time of great expectations. Feelings were running hot because on the one hand it was known that Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan had been working on a Road Map for negotiations to start, and on the other hand the AKP government had seemed to be following on the same path with its "opening". Indeed things were different. The government, taken aback by Ocalan's detailed Road Map confusingly rushed on to present a package which as in fact intended to "defuse" the powerful Road Map. Indeed the "Kurdish Initiative" proved to be an empty package and the Road Map's content was not made public for many months.

Despite the blow, Kurds did not desist and continued to work for peace. So did the Kurdish leader, Ocalan, from his prison cell.

A meticulous work led on more fronts, political, strategic, national and international which aimed (and was successful in this) among other things to change a climate of hostility towards Kurds so well known both in Turkey and to a certain extent abroad. The Kurds worked to establish themselves as the referent for peace. The AKP was forced to catch up with Kurds every time they proposed something on the way to peace.

This is still so.

The new so called "democratisation package" is a sort of "genuinely test" for the government. Forced by Ocalan's precise and timely proposals for peace (and from the like wise timely and punctual response from the guerrillas), the government had to come up with something. 

“Since we came into power 11 years ago, - said Erdoğan - we have been bringing many reforms in terms of democratisation. We are working on another reform package nowadays. With this package, we will provide very important rights". We will soon see if these are just words or if indeed this time the government is ready to be serious about addressing the Kurdish question and, more widely, the democratisation issue in the country.