Despite an attack by Kurdish militants killing four soldiers, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan voiced determination on Sunday (30 August) to push forward his plan to grant more rights to the country’s largest minority.
Background:
The Kurds are ‘a nation without a country’. According to the CIA ‘factbook’, 18% of Turkey’s population of 77 million people are Kurdish. Similarly, 15-20% of Iraq’s population of 30 million are Kurds, and so are 7% of Iran’s 66 million population. Up to two million Kurds are estimated to live in Syria.
After the US-led war that brought down the regime of Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s Kurds enjoy a high degree of autonomy, parliamentary democracy and the highest living standards in the country. ‘Iraqi Kurdistan’ is even allowed to have independent foreign relations.
Turkey’s Kurdish problem, which has fuelled separatist conflict in the mainly Kurdish southeast, has long been an obstacle to Ankara’s EU membership ambitions.
According to the Turkish press, the Kurdish conflict in Turkey has cost the lives of about 40,000 people since 1984, resulted in more than 17,000 unsolved murders, wasted billions of dollars in military expenditure and countless billions more in missed opportunities.
The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which launched a campaign in 1984 for Kurdish self-rule in the southeast, is believed to number 4,000 fighters. It has been weakened recently by Turkish military operations against bases in northern Iraq.
PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan was captured in 1998 and was sentenced to death, before the punishment was converted into life imprisonment.
“I see this attack as an attempt to axe, to prevent the democratic opening process,” said Erdogan, adding that those initiatives are doomed to fail.
The prime minister added that the army’s struggle against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) would continue unabated. PKK is a separatist military organisation recognised as a terrorist group both by the EU and the USA.
Last month, Erdogan said his government was preparing a “package” of reforms to boost the rights and freedoms of Turkish Kurds. Although few details are known, the two main opposition parties, the Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), slammed the announced opening.
According to the press, the measures include allowing political campaigns in the Kurdish language, providing opportunities for Kurds to learn their mother tongue, allowing the Kurdish language to be spoken in prisons, restoring the former names of thousands of Kurdish towns and villages, and ensuring Kurdish language and literature teaching in two universities – Mardin Artuklu and Diyarbakir Dicle.
Plan under fire
Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) deputy chairman Mehmet Şandir said that granting political freedoms to ethnic groups would turn Turkey into a “hell of minorities,” the Zaman daily wrote. MHP, which has a nationalistic platform, won 14% of the vote in the 2007 elections.
“If you grant political freedoms to all the ethnic groups in Turkey, whose number is claimed to be 36 by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, then you will turn Turkey into a hell of minorities. Unfortunately, Turkey is today being dragged to a very dangerous point due to a reckless act by the AK Party,” Şandir reportedly said.
The authorities rebuked allegations that the announced plan was a result of US pressure and a ‘secret’ US plan to defuse regional problems affecting Iraq, embraced by the ruling AKP.
The Turkish armed forces, which traditionally play the role of ‘guardian of secularism’, indicated there were some “red lines” which must not be crossed.
“The Turkish Armed Forces [TSK] will not allow any harm to be done to the nation-state and the unitary state structure,” Chief of General Staff General Ilker Başbug was quoted as saying by a Kudish online website.
Government defends its ambition
Speaking to editors-in-chief of major newspapers on 28 August, Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arinç said the process was a national project and emphasised that Turkey needed to solve its issues on its own.
Arinç, however, conceded that Washington supported his country’s plan both logistically and psychologically, against a background of US troop withdrawals from Iraq by 2011, looming Iraqi national elections in January and the future prospects of northern Iraq, where Kurds enjoy substantial autonomy.
“Maintaining the territorial integrity of Iraq at a time when terror is wreaking havoc among Kurds, Shiite and Sunni Arabs is in the interest of both Turkey and the US,” the deputy prime minister said.
Rejecting contacts with Abdullah Öcalan, the jailed leader of the PKK, Arinç however indicated the government’s readiness to work with DTP – the Kurdish Democratic Society Party, which he said should not be considered as a terrorist organisation.
“If you consider the DTP a terrorist organisation or an illegal structure, you are putting over two million voters who cast their ballots in favour of this party in the same place as the terrorists,” he stressed.
Arinç said he was visiting DTP mayors as parliament speaker, despite objections from Ankara-appointed local governors. He added that he had long suggested that Erdogan meet with DTP leader Ahmet Türk.
Positions:
The Turkish press wrote that the government’s efforts to provide some sort of answer to Turkey’s long-pending Kurdish question had led to a frenzied altercation instead. Columnist Andrew Finkel wrote for the Zaman daily that Erdogan had embarked on a reform process from which he could not withdraw.
“His credibility is at stake, and he must either succeed with his overture or step aside. The opposition parties […] are content to pursue policies which divide Turkey into camps,” Finkel writes.
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, called on the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) to accept peace with Turkey and lay down their arms, saying the Kurdish people faced a historic opportunity to be accepted into Turkish society.
Talabani told Reuters he perceived a “new climate” in Turkey toward the rights of its Kurdish people, and that he supports its leaders in their efforts to end the 25-year conflict with the PKK, whose guerrilla fighters have bases in the Iraqi Kurdistan mountains.
“The Kurds are trying to convince the PKK to accept the peace proposals of the Turkish government, then to lay down their arms and go back home to participate in political activities in Turkey,” said Talabani.
Azad Aslan, editorialist for the Kurdish Globe website, argues that the governing AK party in Turkey is under pressure from the EU to deliver on the democratisation process in Turkey. He also saw the development in the context of Turkey seeking to acquire regional power status.
“It has already joined the G-20 bloc and was given the green light from US Congress to develop nuclear power. Turkey signed the crucial and strategic pipeline project of Nabucco and got strategic positions in energy transport and energy corridors. Due to its geostrategic position, Turkey can play a regional role both in the Middle East and Central Asia. This new regional position necessitates Turkey to resolve its internal affairs and questions – the Kurdish question ranking top among them,” Aslan argues.
Mentioning the developments in neighbouring Iraq, Aslan also stresses that “while five million or so Kurds in one part of Kurdistan enjoy collective national-political rights, it would be difficult to grant only individual-cultural rights to more than 10 million Kurds in Turkey”.
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