Turkey, Kurds and the European Union
by James Badcock
[ politics | opinion - september 02 ]
Turkey is a divided country in more ways than one. Among its 66.5 million inhabitants, there are approximately 15 million Kurds and other less sizeable minorities, including Armenians and ethnic Georgians. Geographically, Turkey is what remains of the once vast Ottoman empire, straddling modern-day Europe and Asia.
In the influential book 'Clash of Civilizations', Samuel Huntington quotes Turkey's former prime minister, Tansu Ciller, speaking in 1993 of her nation as both a "Western democracy" and "part of the Middle East". It, she continues, "bridges two civilizations, physically and philosophically". This, Huntington says, is an over-optimistic view. He classifies Turkey as a "torn" state, in which a real contradiction exists between the country's essentially Muslim culture and the European leanings of its secular political elite.
The ultimate confirmation of Turkey's status as a fully-fledged Western democracy would be entry to the European Union (EU). In 1987 Turkey applied for membership, but not until December 1999 did it become an official candidate. The terms of the EU's amplification process were set down in the 1993 Copenhagen Document, which stresses the need for democracy, human rights and respect for minorities to accompany economic criteria.
Speaking in March, Foreign Minister Jack Straw said that Britain had "long supported" EU membership for this "loyal and faithful ally". Turkey is, however, still only at a "pre-screening stage" as the limited reforms it has made do not go far enough, although Mr Straw felt there were "encouraging signs that [the] reforms are beginning to develop momentum".
Michael Moore, Liberal Democrat Foreign Affairs spokesman, is less optimistic. He describes Turkey as the "least well-advanced in terms of meeting the political criteria" of the prospective EU nations, the rest of whom "have moved onto consideration of the economic criteria."
The road Turkey has to travel to live up to the hopes of its international allies is long indeed. The Accession Partnership document (drawn up in 2000) outlines short-term aims designed merely to steer the country in the right direction. Turkey is maintaining the moratorium on use of capital punishment, but to actually qualify for accession, Turkey would have to offer all its citizens full human rights by lifting the state of emergency in the Kurdish region and align the constitutional role of the controversial National Security Council as an advisory body to the government in accordance with the practice of EU member states.
Veteran Kurdish campaigner Lord Avebury accepts that "the general consensus is that there have been improvements in human rights, specifically a reduction in the frequency of torture, executions and disappearances." Despite this, he says that the international procedures for examining such significant change in Turkey are neither satisfactory nor transparent.
The agreement also requires the removal of restrictions on non-Turkish language broadcasting. Recently however, the only Kurdish-speaking TV station was banned for a year, while radio stations playing popular Kurdish songs have been shut down on the basis that they are disseminating "separatist" propaganda.
The use of minority languages is still unknown in education or any public sphere. In Istanbul last year, Lord Johnston, Committee Chairman of the European Council Parliamentarian's Assembly, pointed out that the EU demands high standards: "As we support the right of Turkic people in Macedonia and Kosovo to speak Turkish, we support the right of Kurds in Turkey to speak Kurdish."
Another cause for concern for Kurdish supporters is the lack of specific focus on the Kurdish issue. Dr. Ismet Cherif, President of the Kurdistan National Congress, said in a speech last year that the EU plan is "inadequate to resolve the specific question of a large oppressed nation" and highlights that the "Cyprus problem" gets a specific mention in the Accession document while the Kurds do not.
The island of Cyprus is a longstanding bone of contention between Turkey and Greece, presently divided into a Turkish and Greek part. Whatever the result of current negotiations to unite Cyprus, the Greek Cypriot leader, Glafkos Clerides, has been assured that the Greek-speaking, internationally recognised capital of Nicosia would represent the new member state. The Turkish Cypriot leader, Rauf Denktash has said that his half of Cyprus will not join the EU as long as Turkey is excluded.
The resulting situation is a stand-off, with the two old enemies taking increasingly aggressive positions. Turkey has threatened to formally annex the Turkish North, while Greece says it will use its veto to block the entire enlargement process if Cyprus is not included.
Plaid Cymru MP Elfyn Llwyd is sure that "if Turkey comes to an amicable settlement over Cyprus, that would herald their membership. The US want a medium-sized base in Turkey and would like to maintain the UK's foothold in Cyprus." Lord Avebury also believes that US interests are of prime importance behind the scenes, pointing to "strong pressure, particularly from the US, to get Turkey into the EU and play down any factors which do not contribute to this end".
The recent addition of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) to the EU list of banned terrorist organisations will only serve to convince Kurdish supporters that every effort is being made to accommodate Turkey at the expense of the Kurds. The inclusion of the PKK on lists of proscribed organisations in France, Germany and the UK had already attracted controversy as the PKK have been on a voluntary ceasefire since 1999.
Days before the EU agreed to outlaw the party, the PKK announced, in Brussels, that it was changing its name to the Congress for Freedom and Democracy (KADEK) "to campaign peacefully for greater Kurdish rights". Osman Ocalan, brother of the jailed PKK leader, Abdullah Ocalan, was reported in the Turkish press as threatening "horrendous resistance" to the ban and that Europe and the US must be seen as "responsible for the war".
Dr Magnus Ranstorp, of St Andrew's University Centre for the study of Terrorism and Political Violence, classifies the PKK as a "guerrilla group using terrorist tactics", while acknowledging that Turkey could be said to engage in state terror: "all blame cannot be left at the door of the Kurds".
The course of events leading up to Ocalan's capture is interesting to recall. Syria, long the safe base of PKK exiles, asked him to leave, whereupon Ocalan flew to Italy, Russia, Greece and, finally, Kenya. There he was arrested in what Magnus Ranstorp calls a "joint-venture" between Israeli and Turkish secret services. Ocalan has said: "When I was up in the skies, all the airports of Europe were closed to me". The bitterness towards Europe is keenly felt.
The price of Turkey's military victory over the PKK was colossal, in sheer economic terms, besides the human cost. The war against the rebels was costing the Turkish government at least $10bn a year by the late1990s, money spent on maintaining the second largest army in NATO at over half a million men.
The US proved itself a staunch ally during the conflict. Between 1993 and 1997, the Clinton administration approved $8.3bn worth of weapons sales and 'giveaways' to Turkey, including frigates, helicopters and F-16 fighter parts. When the US Congress stopped credit for Turkish arms purchases in 1998, they continued to receive large quantities of free or heavily discounted 'surplus' weaponry.
In 2001 the Turkish economy finally went into meltdown. The lira was devalued by 50%, inflation soared to 80% and hundreds of thousands lost their jobs or lands. Some semblance of stability has now been restored, due, in part, to the delivery of a $16bn package from the IMF, making Turkey their highest borrower. The US was said to have been instrumental in the securing of the emergency loan.
Turkey's leaders know that, in the present atmosphere, their stock with their NATO allies is high. They are a key state in the so-called 'war on terror'. There exists a threat of Islamists potentially benefiting from instability and the suspicion among ordinary Turks of their pro-American and pro-Israeli foreign policy. The Islamic Welfare Party became the leading parliamentary group in 1995, but has since been banned.
Externally, Turkey is vital in any future attack on Iraq; now more than ever as Saudi Arabia has said it will not allow US planes to use their airbases unlike in 1991. Turkey is the West's Muslim partner, evident in the firm support of both Britain and the US for Turkey's recent nomination as the next commander of the international security force in Afghanistan.
The usefulness of Turkey to the West is obvious, while the internal strife against the Kurds has forced Turkey to seek help outside. Regional specialist Dr Kamil Mahdi, of Exeter University, says "the inability of the government to solve the [Kurdish] problem has led them to project it onto the international arena... and has made Turkey more dependant on the US, especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union."
By helping the US in Iraq, Turkey also gets to exert control over the Kurdish political scene across the border, where Kurds live a form of self-rule in the 'No-Fly Zone', and where the PKK had military bases. In the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War, Iraqi Kurds fled towards the border with Turkey, fearing reprisals from Saddam Hussein's army. Dr Eric Herring, politics lecturer at Bristol University, says that Turkey was the "prime mover" behind the 'safe haven' policy, whose "principal aim was to get Kurds to return to Iraq or stay in it, even if it put their safety in jeopardy."
Turkey had no desire to take in hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Kurdish refugees with its own war with the Kurdish PKK in progress. With allied planes patrolling the no-fly zone, Turkey seized on the absence of an Iraqi military force to take the war to the PKK base camps inside Iraq.
Turkey began their invasion in the summer months after the Gulf War. The New York Times reported the use of napalm in the flushing out of rebel camps. More raids have been cited during the 1990s, involving up to 10,000 troops. Neither the US or UK governments acknowledge the occurrence of Turkish cross-border raids, but John Pilger has described it is an "open secret" in the US.
This violation of the 'No-Fly Zone' has been observed by British and American pilots.
In October 2000 the Washington Post reported how pilots return to base when "there is a TSM inbound, that is a Turkish Special Mission heading into Iraq." Dr Eric Herring spoke to British pilots on a non-attributable basis. "They were all very unhappy about what they had seen, especially as there had been no official explanation."
Much was made of the need to protect the Kurds of Iraq. The Kurds of Turkey, however, were not part of Britain and the US's peace plan for the region. As Turkey waits on the threshold of the EU, Turkish Kurds must hope that Europe will be their safe haven.
