Terror and asylum: Turkish Kurds in Britain
by James Badcock
[ politics | opinion - september 02 ]
On a chilly March evening in London's Finsbury Park, Kurdish people gathered to celebrate the Newroz annual festival. As night fell, thousands welcomed the new year with flaming torches and hopes that the fire would purify the past and herald a better future.
There are an estimated 50,000 Kurdish people living in the UK. Most are from Turkey or 'the North' as many Kurds say when asked where they are from. They refer to the North of Kurdistan, a non-existent country despite the reality of at least 30 million Kurds.
Most have come here as refugees to escape the brutal war in Turkey's south-east region between the PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party) and the Turkish army between 1984 and 1999. Some 30,000 were killed and over four million forced to leave their homes.
Mehmet, 28, grew up in Karakocan, a small Kurdish village in the war zone. Twelve years ago his family had to leave. They moved south to a city, and eventually to London. He told me that the Turkish army burned Karakocan down because they had been giving PKK rebels food and shelter. He says the people were powerless to decide what they should do:
"Life was so hard, you couldn't do anything or explain to anyone. There were not many people around, no TV, no news, no nothing. You try to say something and the national army will kick you around, put Sellotape on your mouth and give you a hard time."
He makes the point that at least here he can raise a flag, make a protest and never get punished by British policemen. "In Turkey when you open your mouth, you get a punch." Although Mehmet appreciates the freedom to proclaim his Kurdishness in Britain, he would rather circumstances were different and he was not here at all.
This is a view shared by Deniz, a 30 year-old who left his studies in Turkey eight years ago for Britain. "Nobody wants to leave their homeland, their family, to live in exile with no possibility of returning. Everybody has got their reason for leaving; mine was political."
He also mentions the requirement of military service for all Turkish men. In the war against the PKK guerrilla army, Deniz claims that Kurdish conscripts were especially favoured by the government as they were "expendable". Turkish authorities claim to have killed 23,000 'separatist terrorists' since the clashes began in the mid-eighties. Kurds say that most of this number were ordinary civilians, guilty only of being Kurdish.
Deniz, now a community leader in North London, shows me some photographs he says were taken by a Turkish conscript as a memento of his period in the army. In each, uniformed men pose with decapitated bodies at their feet. The soldiers are smiling as if in a holiday snap. They are holding the heads of those killed by the hair, like trophies.
The imbalance of the two sides is a theme Mehmet picks up on. He claims that the Kurds are alone in their struggle for freedom and the recognition of their rights. "For the last 25 years we have had a serious fight and we have lost a lot of people... [Turkey] are responsible. They have TV and news, they know how well they do the politics, and Israel and the USA are behind them - and we have nothing behind us."
In response to this 'information gap', in 1994 a team of filmmakers, TV producers and Kurdish students formed to create an international Kurdish language television station that could be viewed by Kurds right across the globe. MED-TV was based in several European capitals, including London.
The representation of a Kurdish perspective during the conflict was bound to be controversial, especially as broadcasting in the Kurdish language was illegal in Turkey. One of MED-TV's London staff, Gill Newsham points out that such is the sensitivity over the Kurdish question, Turkey "would have tried to stop it even if it hadn't been broadcasting into Turkey".
Turkey's president at the time, Süleyman Demirel, was reported saying that the granting of licenses to MED-TV by European nations was an "injustice to Turkey". He asked: "Is there any doubt that the PKK guides these broadcasts?" The station was widely referred to in the Turkish press as 'PKK-TV' and Turkey applied pressure on the European governments concerned.
According to MED-TV, Turkey's prime minister Tansu Ciller, on a visit to Britain in November 1995, delivered a dossier to John Major asking for the closure of the channel. In September 1996 the studios in Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Germany and Britain were raided simultaneously by security services. Gill Newsham describes how the armed plainclothes agents who searched the premises "were told they were training terrorists and holding guns and money for the PKK". The police found nothing and made no arrests.
Workers at the main studio in Brussels were not so fortunate. According to Gill Newsham, some were badly beaten and held for six weeks under "vague charges", which were eventually dropped. Despite the lack of evidence for any breach in security, Gill claims that her and other colleagues had their flats broken into and a few things taken on the same day, and that she was regularly followed home.
Finally, on 23 April, 1999, the Independent Television Commission (ITC) pulled the plug, revoking MED-TV's license to broadcast from Britain on the grounds that it was "inciting violence". Gill Newsham accepts that "mistakes were made due to inexperience", but insists that they had worked with the ITC to correct the problems and give the staff the necessary training.
Meanwhile, Kurds continue to flee Turkey due to repression of their political movements. Ozan, 27, arrived in Britain in the back of a lorry in January, having paid £3,000 for the ride. He was a member of the non-violent pro-Kurdish HADEP Democracy Party, but having caught the attention of the police, he was unable to shake them off, despite moving around the country from Ankara to Izmir and Bakirkoy. He was arrested and held several times for short periods of up to six days. "I was never in court", he says when I asked him what the charges were.
He has friends who are still in prison and a cousin serving a 16-year sentence for membership of the PKK. Ozan was a student involved in a campaign to promote the use of Kurdish in education, strictly prohibited by Turkish law. According to the Human Rights Foundation of Turkey, 20,000 students were dismissed from their schools and a thousand were arrested during last winter's protests.
Suat, a 35 year-old civil engineer, came to Britain in 1993. He also got involved with HADEP when it seemed as if the PKK were going to defeat the government and "all Kurds thought they were going to get their rights". His activities were on a small scale, like leafleting, but he was arrested along with 45 other students during the 1992 Newroz celebrations. He says he was threatened and beaten before being released.
Arrested for the second time, he realised that life was not going to be the same from then on. "After they arrest you, they never leave you alone. They are always behind you, hanging behind you." It could have been worse. Suat says his cousin was more seriously involved in HADEP and was shot dead by the police. "He disappeared for two years and then we found him in the forest".
Suat was born in Agri, a village in the north-east, but his family moved away and he grew up in Istanbul, part of the 20% of the city's population made up by Kurds. He says the Kurdish question is a kind of unmentionable taboo in Turkey and even with his Turkish childhood friends he could not raise the subject. "They are allergic to Kurds. When they hear about the PKK, they get angry, their face changes - they go red."
Mehmet makes a similar point about the reaction of Turks to the Kurdish language. "If you speak Kurdish, it seems as if you tease them, as if you push them, injure them." He concludes that in Turkey, Kurds "are just second division people". Despite this, all the Kurds I spoke to assured me that relations with the Turkish expatriate community in London are fraternal, with the emphasis on their shared culture rather than their differences.
Back at London's 2002 Newroz celebration, a power-cut midway through the first song of the concert did nothing to dampen the crowd's spirits. Many began to chant slogans in support of "Opa", the PKK's jailed leader. In the past, membership of the PKK was a chief cause given by Turkish Kurdish asylum seekers on arrival in Britain. Since the passing of the Terrorism Act of 2000, membership of the PKK has become a crime in this country.
Despite being on a ceasefire since 1999, the PKK was included on a list of proscribed terrorist organisations. Not only is being a member illegal, but also speaking in support of that organisation or wearing an item of clothing with the name on it. Well-known supporter of the Kurdish cause, Harold Pinter, described the act at a meeting last July as "pernicious, dangerous...and truly prejudiced".
Senior parliamentarians are also worried by the provisions for inclusion. Shirley Williams described the PKK in the House of Lords last year as "an organisation which specifically and publicly abandons violence, [which] is surely discouraged by then being proscribed as a continuing terrorist organisation."
Liberal Democrat Foreign Affairs spokesman, Michael Moore, supports the ban on the PKK and its recent addition to the European list of outlawed terrorist groups. Referring to Turkey's drive to reform before joining the European Union, he hopes it will help "unlock one of the obstacles to progress".
A Foreign Office spokesman accepted that there may be a dilemma for a Turkish Kurd arriving In the UK today, persecuted for their membership of the PKK. Should such an individual be considered for asylum or immediately arrested? However, he could not comment on such a hypothesis as asylum requests are considered on a 'case-by-case' basis.
Kurdish human rights lawyer, Kerim Yildiz, feels that the Government are failing to meet their obligations under the Geneva Convention on refugees by not taking into account the "whole background" of violence and human rights abuses. He adds that the detention of asylum seekers on arrival is unlawful.
It seems clear that as long as Turkey refuses to recognise its largest minority community, more Kurds will look to Britain for refuge. It is a last resort. As one refugee put it: "To be honest, I don't know what we are doing here. We have a land and they don't give it to you. We have a language; they don't allow you to use it."
