The future for the Kurds in Turkey
by James Badcock
[ politics | opinion - october 02 ]
"The Kurds are the victims of history", according to Middle-East expert Dr Magnus Ranstorp. They have been divided by the formation of international borders and nation states, creating minority communities often played off against the other in the battles for supremacy in the region. Any solution for 'Kurdistan' and the 30 million or so Kurds would require a number of conflicting interests to be reconciled.
The Kurds of Iraq have established de facto self-rule in the 'No-Fly Zone' of Northern Iraq. Its future is unclear beyond the current status quo of US defence against potential attack by Saddam Hussein's government. The larger Kurdish community in Turkey has found itself caught up in a war between the PKK and Turkey, costing the lives of over 30,000 people.
Another regional specialist, Dr Kamil Mahdi, explains that there has been a tendency of Kurdish movements "to take their cause across the border and try to form alliances with regional governments. This has militated against a broad Kurdish movement, and made any solution much more complex." Kurdish factions in Iraq, themselves at war in the 1990s, have co-operated with Turkey in opposing the PKK.
Tansu Ciller, on becoming Turkey's first female prime minister in 1993, promised a "mother's love" in the treatment of the problems of the peaceful "silent majority" of the Kurds. It was suggested that a Basque-type model of limited autonomy might be offered, but the war between the PKK and the Turkish army continued unabated.
The 15 million plus Kurds of Turkey are still not recognised as constituting a national minority in Turkey. The constitution of Turkey, recently updated in preparation for candidacy of the European Union (EU), talks about the "indivisible integrity of the state". Turkey's desire to join the EU means that political reform is imperative. The principles of EU entry require full democracy and human rights, yet there is no specific demand on Turkey to resolve the Kurdish question.
The European Accession Partnership document (2000) outlines a need to lift the remaining state of emergency in the Kurdish region and ensure full human rights and cultural diversity. The Human Rights Federation of Turkey called 2001 "the most oppressive year" of recent times. It highlighted the continuing displacement of Kurds from their villages, the absence of effective de-mining activity in the border region and the legal proceedings aimed at closing down the pro-Kurdish HADEP People's Democracy Party.
Plaid Cymru MP, Elfyn Llwyd is against Turkey joining the EU until the human rights agenda has been satisfactorily addressed. He accepts that on the British political scene, there are those who say we should be "arguing for Turkey's membership, [saying] you will never change them from the outside". Llwyd's concern is how to "kick someone out once they have been in four or five years".
Others are convinced that without a solution to the Kurdish problem, there can be no real progress on human rights. Kerim Yildiz, Executive Director of the Kurdish Human Rights Project, is in favour of Turkey becoming an EU member, "but not without implementing all the conditions first... The Kurdish issue is one of the first issues that Turkey needs to tackle."
A Foreign Office spokesperson said that Britain is a "strong supporter" of Turkey's membership, although it needs to meet the Copenhagen criteria on democracy and rights. Recent constitutional amendments are "further steps towards [those] criteria".
The following of the accession programme's 'roadmap' is proving to be anything but a smooth ride in Turkey. Prime minister Bulent Ecevit's government has been hampered in the implementation of its "mini democracy package" by the opposition of its coalition partner, the Nationalist Action Party (MHP). Earlier this year, they refused to back the abolition of the death penalty, determined to see the imprisoned PKK leader, Abdullah Ocalan, hanged.
The Turkish government is currently deeply unpopular, with the Islamic Justice and Development Party topping opinion polls. Party leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been banned from standing for parliament and told he must stand down as leader owing to a former conviction for 'inciting hatred'. In the same way the secular establishment closed down the Welfare Party after winning the 1997 elections, and its successor, the Virtue Party in 2001.
This suppression of popular Islamic sentiment is a risky strategy, but it also shows the knife-edge Turkey is walking between courting the West and reverting to what some might consider its cultural and religious heritage. Official support for Israel provokes angry pro-Palestinian demonstrations on a regular basis.
Pro-Kurdish campaigner Lord Avebury believes that the "mainstream of Turkish opinion is not necessarily in favour of joining the EU" and that one of the reasons the Islamists have done well in elections is because they appeal to ordinary Turks "who cannot see the advantages of joining an organisation which seems alien to their culture."
Opinion polls, however, show that the majority are in favour of EU membership: around 70% in surveys conducted in 2000 and 2001, although only 17% said they were well informed about EU enlargement. Dr Kamil Mahdi stresses that "Islamicisation does not necessarily preclude future membership... the Islamic parties may enter the mainstream."
There is no doubt that Turkey is sensitive to the idea that the European nations should dictate to them what they must do. The MHP leader, Devlet Bahceli, was reported in the news magazine, Middle East International saying: "We strongly oppose the notion that we should fulfil every EU demand to become a member." There is a feeling that Turkey will never be accepted in the European club, once defined by the then-EU president, Jaques Delors, as "a product of Christianity, of Roman law and of Greek humanism".
In May of this year, Turkey threatened to review its military agreements with France in protest at a railway-station poster in Paris portraying its senior military commander beside the Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and others considered enemies of press freedom. The poster, part of a campaign by Reporters sans Frontières, was removed, but the pressure group said that Turkey's reaction proved it was "unfit" for EU accession.
The US is apparently less demanding on the subject of human rights. When prime minister Bulent Ecevit visited the White House in January 2002, neither human rights nor the Kurdish question were on the agenda. During the trip, Ecevit exalted in an address to the National Press Club: "We provide living proof that Western-style democracy can thrive in a predominantly Muslim nation". President Ecevit's ill-health has since caused him to be hospitalised twice, adding further uncertainty to the political situation in Turkey. In July his coalition government disintegrated as the popular foreign Minister Ismael Cem formed a breakaway party leading many of the prime minister's centre-left party members to defect with him. Early elections seem inevitable.
What of the Kurds themselves? In the current climate of concern over security, the PKK have found themselves on the EU list of banned organisations. This despite the group's recent change of name and reiteration of their commitment to peaceful means. Before his arrest in 1999, PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan had stated that outright independence for the region was not his immediate objective.
According to Dr Ranstorp, Ocalan's conciliatory message was a form of "bargaining for political gain vis a vis pressure from Turkey." Even from prison, Ocalan is a powerful figure and a symbol of the delicate nature of the present moment in the history of Turkey. Dr Ranstorp says his capture was "a double-edged sword, throwing Kurdish factions into disarray but also uniting and mobilising them."
If Turkey carried out the death sentence on Ocalan, they would distance themselves from European acceptance. While still alive, the Kurds cannot regroup and the prospect of a negotiated settlement seems as distant as ever. Speaking at a meeting in the UK Parliament, Dr Ismet Cheriff Vanly, president of the Kurdistan National Congress, expressed pessimism about the chances of peace given the current political situation in Turkey: "It appears that should the price of a Turkish adhesion to the EU be the recognition of the Kurdish people and their rights, the Turkish military would not be willing to pay it".
Dr Ranstorp agrees that the present situation of a slow drift towards EU membership without a solution for the Kurds is unsustainable. For so many years, obsessed by the need to crush the armed resistance, Turkey is paralyzed now they have the leader in their grasp. The country is "stuck in limbo" over what to do with Ocalan, but "there will have to be a re-adjustment in policy towards the Kurds."
Kurdish human rights campaigner Kerim Yildiz is equally pessimistic about the short-term, but insists there will have to be negotiations between Kurds and Turks: "Because I do not see, without tackling the Kurdish issues, how Turkey can make progress on human rights. You cannot have two systems in one country... in Kurdish regions there has been a state of emergency in place for 70 years. In itself, it is a violation of Turkey's international obligations."
Just what the result of any such negotiations might be is hard to know as presently "there isn't a democratic platform to discuss a possible solution of the issues", according to Yildiz. Since the pro-Kurdish HADEP Democracy Party won local elections in the Kurdish south-east, the party has been fighting its enforced closure in the state courts.
Turkish Kurds living in Britain as refugees say they only ask for basic human rights: "We ask for our freedom, our own land, we want to use our own names and do our own jobs," according to London resident Mehmet. Suat, another Turkish Kurd living in Britain, is guardedly optimistic: "I think things will change, but the Turkish mentality needs to change. They have to accept that Turks and Kurds live together."
Turkey is undoubtedly at a critical moment in its history. Kerim Yildiz feels that there is no middle ground and a stark choice has to be made between the way of force and democratic principles:
"Either Turkey will say 'I don't care about international law, international institutions, the EU or aid from outside so I'm going to use an ethnic cleansing policy to destroy the problem', or they will say 'I want to save the country and have real equality between Kurds and Turks and I want to continue to take advantage of the EU'."
Yildiz is adamant that the debate presently raging in Turkey must result in a clear outcome: "They don't have a third choice. It would be isolation from the international community."
While an independent Kurdistan appears to be an impossible dream, for millions of Kurds the right to be Kurdish in Turkey would signify a momentous awakening. If Turkey can be a good European, Turkish Kurds will have cause to celebrate.
