Tag: AKP

Posted By Mohammed Ayoob Wednesday, November 9, 2011 – 4:52 PM Share

Any time spent in Turkey and one cannot help but be taken in by the country’s economic dynamism and political vibrancy that is unique in the region it inhabits. With a 9 percent growth rate in its GDP in 2010, Turkey has become the fastest growing economy in the OECD and is projected to remain so until 2017. Its commitment to democratic governance was demonstrated in the elections earlier this year that kept the ruling AKP in power with almost 50 percent of the votes. That the Turkish democratic process has become irreversible was confirmed soon thereafter by the fact that the resignation of Turkey’s top four generals in an effort to unnerve and destabilize the civilian government hardly created a stir in the country. Even a couple of years ago such a deliberately contrived crisis could have provided the military brass with an excuse for staging a coup.

In the context of this upbeat picture, which has turned Turkey into a model for Arab democrats next door, the festering Kurdish issue has gained greater saliency both because of increased acts of terrorism by the PKK and, more importantly, because it strikes a highly discordant note in an otherwise bright scenario. The recent escalation of terrorist activity by the PKK can in part be attributed to its declining political appeal among Turkey’s Kurdish citizens who now enjoy cultural and linguistic rights that had been denied to them by the hyper-nationalist Kemalist elite in the first 80 years of the Republic’s existence. The PKK leadership feels that it is in danger of becoming politically irrelevant and has, therefore, escalated terrorist activity to prove that no solution to the Kurdish problem is possible without its participation.

Turkey’s economic buoyancy has also ensured that large segments of the Kurdish population both in the predominantly Kurdish areas in the east and southeast, as well as in the huge Kurdish diaspora in western and central Turkey (Istanbul is the largest Kurdish city with a reported Kurdish population of 2 million), now have a major stake in the well-being of the Republic. Finally, the rise in PKK’s terrorist activities can be attributed also to the ultra-nationalist backlash amongst a section of Turkish opinion that has put the AKP government on the defensive and forced it to slow down the reform process that could ensure further rights for the Kurdish minority extending beyond the cultural and linguistic spheres. The AKP’s foot-dragging on the issue has led to Kurdish disappointment and in some cases increased sympathy for the PKK fighters after an initial period of rising expectations bordering on euphoria.

Above all, it seems that the PKK’s recent activities are related to the accelerating process of constitutional reform set in motion by the AKP government after the recent elections. A Preparatory Constitution Commission of 12 members — three each from the four parties represented in parliament including the Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) — has been set up to produce a draft constitution to replace the military supervised and crafted 1982 constitution that can be debated in parliament and among the general public. The issue of Kurdish identity (or rather how the identity of Turkish citizens is to be defined in the new constitution) will be one of the main subjects to be discussed by the commission. If, despite the differences on this issue, progress is made toward greater acceptance of a multi-ethnic definition of the Turkish identity, it would take the wind out of the PKK sails.

The pro-Kurdish BDP, which has 36 members in the 550-member parliament (although six of them are currently in jail allegedly for supporting the PKK), was expected to be a major player in the constitution drafting process. However, it seems to have become hamstrung by its refusal to distance itself from the PKK and its leader Abdullah Ocalan, who is currently imprisoned in Turkey. In conversations BDP leaders repeat ad infinitum that no solution can be found without the concurrence of Ocalan and the PKK fighters who they refer to as “the young men in the mountains”. However, this formula is unacceptable to the other Turkish parties who consider PKK to be a terrorist organization. The BDP, which was beginning to be increasingly perceived as the legitimate face of Kurdish sub-nationalism in Turkey, has drastically reduced its effectiveness as the Kurdish interlocutor in constitutional talks by surrendering its autonomy to the PKK and appearing to many to be nothing more than the latter’s political arm.

Moreover, BDP leaders constantly repeat the formula that no solution to the Kurdish problem can be found except on the basis of “democratic autonomy”, which they stubbornly refuse to define. When pressed they say that this must be negotiated by the government with Ocalan. While the Turkish government may not be totally averse to such negotiations, as recent reports of talks between MIT, Turkey’s intelligence agency, and PKK leaders have revealed, it would be impossible for any Turkish government to publicly admit that it has been negotiating with what it terms a terrorist organization and its leader. The BDP could have adopted the role of acting as the primary Kurdish interlocutor and negotiating an end to the conflict if it had had the political courage to distance itself from PKK. Unfortunately, it has not been able to grasp this opportunity.

The BDP’s refusal to define “democratic autonomy” is mirrored by large segments of the Turkish elite, including many in the ruling AKP, who refuse to countenance any derogation from the model of the unitary state and the myth of a monolithic Turkish identity imposed by the Kemalist elite since the early years of the Republic, in defiance of the multi-ethnic nature of Turkish society. It is time that the AKP, as well as the main opposition party, the CHP, which is the standard bearer of Kemalism, seriously reconsider their stance on the issue of a unitary mono-ethnic state. Federalism or quasi-federalism is usually the best antidote to separatism. Imposing a contrived mono-ethnic identity and a unitary state remote from the concerns of peripheral areas and populations normally aggravates, rather than resolves, separatist problems.

A federal system is not necessarily antithetical to a strong center and need not come at the latter’s expense. In fact, as the experience of successful federations from the United States to India demonstrate, a federal system bolsters the legitimacy of the central government in the long run and aids in the process of nation-building, rather than hindering that process. As these examples demonstrate, trappings of autonomy are often more important than its content. Furthermore, they also reveal that federalism need not have an economic rationale for it to be successful. A federal system is basically a political tool utilized to respond to ethnic and geographic diversity even if it means that more prosperous regions must continue to subsidize the poorer parts of the country. In the final analysis, this is a small sacrifice to maintain national unity.  

The solution to Turkey’s Kurdish conundrum may, therefore, lie in some form of devolution of powers to regional entities. It will help both in the consolidation of democracy in the country as well as give greater legitimacy to a central government whose political and economic record under the AKP is in other ways extremely impressive. However, in order to achieve this goal the Turkish elite and the AKP government must break decisively from the outmoded thinking of the Kemalist past and show a degree of political flexibility that has unfortunately been in short supply thus far. Furthermore, they will have to do so even as PKK terrorism increases in the short-term, more as an act of desperation rather than of carefully thought political strategy. Prime Minister Erdogan has the stature, legitimacy, and charisma to make this decisive break from the Kemalist past. If he does so, it will demonstrate that he is a real statesman and not merely an extraordinarily skillful politician.

Mohammed Ayoob is the university distinguished professor of international relations at Michigan State University and adjunct scholar at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding.

The Erdogan government must not let the escalating insurgency distract it from addressing Kurdish civilians’ underlying problems.

By HUGH POPE

Turkey’s activism throughout the Arab Spring and its showy challenges to Israel have gotten Ankara plenty of international attention in the last several months. But closer to home, a disturbing trend is emerging. Since June, at least 150 people have been killed and hundreds injured in an escalation of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party’s (PKK) long-running insurgency.

It’s nothing like the worst days of the conflict in the 1990s—not yet, at least. But the downward spiral already includes familiar kidnappings, tit-for-tat clashes between the PKK and Turkish forces, terrorist bombings, Turkish attacks on PKK bases across the Iraqi border, mass detentions of Turkish Kurds and flashes of ethnic strife between Turkish and Kurdish civilians in major cities.

The escalation is even more significant given that Turks and Kurds have come closer than ever to peace over the past two years. But Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been reluctant to spend enough of his enormous domestic political capital to tackle some of the underlying problems of his 15% Kurdish community. He has allowed a hardening of Turkish anti-terror laws, which have put 3,000 Kurd activists behind bars—not for any violent acts, but because they happen to share the nationalist goals of the PKK. He has not relaxed the ban on Kurds learning their mother tongue at primary and secondary school. Just as importantly, Mr. Erdogan has only briefly attempted to reeducate the Turkish-majority public, whose views have been distorted by a near-century of nationalist education and, in the past, anti-Kurd propaganda.

Mr. Erdogan has taken a more nationalist line since campaigning for the June elections, but he needs to find a way back to the pragmatic negotiating position he adopted after his Justice and Development Party (AKP) took power in 2001. In 2005-09, he developed a strategy that became known as the Democratic Opening. This ended torture in jails, gradually liberalized Kurdish-language broadcasting and higher education, and spread a new sense of normalcy and development to the impoverished, refugee-flooded cities in Turkey’s Kurdish-majority southeast.

Not surprisingly, the whole country has benefited. Although these reforms were only steps on the road to fully recognizing Kurds’ civil rights, Mr. Erdogan and the AKP have arguably done more for Turkey’s Kurds than any previous government. Thanks to this, AKP consistently wins half of ethnic Kurds’ votes.

AFP/Getty ImagesAnkara must not let renewed violence distract from addressing Kurdish civilians’ underlying problems.

In parallel, Mr. Erdogan allowed state representatives to negotiate secretly with the PKK. Meeting in Turkey, Europe and northern Iraq, they appeared to have reached agreement on essential parts of an eventual peace deal—including an end to the fighting, a gradual amnesty for insurgents, and perhaps better conditions for jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan. A major step occurred in October 2009, when the government allowed eight PKK fighters and 26 PKK sympathizers, who had been living in a refugee camp in Iraq, back into Turkey.

But sadly, Mr. Erdogan and the AKP did not ready the Turkish public for the gesture. Instead of the quiet rapprochement the government had envisioned, tens of thousands of Turkish Kurds poured down to the Iraqi border two years ago, overjoyed at the prospect of an end to the conflict that had blighted their lives for generations. Turkish Kurd politicians overplayed their hand, feting the returning insurgents, who were wearing their distinctive guerrilla outfits. The scenes were broadcast nationwide and outraged an unprepared western Turkish opinion, which did not see Kurdish joy at the possibility of peace, but instead saw only celebrations at their own expense. Mr. Erdogan, meanwhile, saw his polls slipping among Turks and instead of standing fast and seizing control of the story, he dropped the initiative.

Tensions again shot up this year after June’s national elections, when one of the 36 parliamentary deputies from Turkey’s main legal Kurdish nationalist party (Peace and Democracy, or BDP) was stripped of his seat for a last-minute conviction under Turkey’s catch-all antiterror laws. Five other newly elected BDP deputies, detained on similar charges, have been kept in jail since June. Amid Kurds’ protests, BDP deputies boycotted parliamentary sessions over the summer and only returned to chambers this week. Less visibly, the secretive peace negotiations between the Turkish authorities and the PKK have broken down.

The PKK has clearly been the prime mover in the recently escalating violence, perhaps seeking to impress the Turkish authorities with its disruptive abilities and probably also trying to polarize sentiment to win back influence over Turkish Kurds. But the bloodshed is not helping. New pleas for an end to the fighting from Turkish Kurd civil society show that the vast majority of Kurds do not want to split off from Turkey but want to continue to live and prosper there. And the toll of 79 dead Turkish security forces since June underlines that any government attempt at a military solution will be costly and likely as fruitless as that of the 1990s.

BDP’s decision to return to parliament is thus a critical opportunity for the AKP government and Turkish Kurds to find new ways to end the chronic conflict. It goes without saying that the PKK, the armed and dominant wing of the Turkish Kurd nationalist movement, must end its latest wave of terror attacks and commit to legal means of pursuing full rights for Turkish Kurds. Prime Minister Erdogan and the AKP will also have to consider why their recent attempts failed to lessen the mistrust between Turks and Turkish Kurds.

The Turkish authorities must not fall into the PKK’s trap and let the ongoing fighting distract them from pursuing a new constitution, legal system and education curriculum cleansed of ethnic discrimination. They should also change laws that have detained thousands of Turkish Kurds for what they think and not what they do, and engage the BDP far more.

To make this all work, Mr. Erdogan will have to use his domestic support to both convince Turkish Kurds of his sincerity and to persuade Turks that equal rights for all ethnicities will strengthen Turkey, not destroy it. Such an effort will take time and consistency, and may prove initially expensive in the polls. But there could be no bigger achievement than ending a conflict that has killed 30,000 people and, by Mr. Erdogan’s own estimate, cost $300 billion since 1984. Forging a lasting peace with Kurds would truly yield a “Turkish model” of democracy worth emulating elsewhere in the region.

Mr. Pope is the International Crisis Group’s Turkey-Cyprus project director and author of “Turkey Unveiled: a History of Modern Turkey” (Overlook, 3rd ed., 2011).