|
Clashes steer Kurds and Turkey back on a
rocky path
6.4.2006
Published: April 6, 2006
|
|
|
|
DIYARBAKIR,
Turkey, — Violent clashes between Kurds and security
forces in Turkey over the past week have jolted
memories here back to an old conflict that remains a
dangerous barrier on the nation's path toward
greater prosperity and democracy.
After a decade of calm, at least 15 people have been
killed in protests in recent days, most in the
guerrilla battleground of the Kurdish southeast, but
some in cosmopolitan Istanbul. Among the dead were a
6-year-old boy and a 78-year-old man, Halit Sogut,
whose relatives asked on Tuesday how such violence
was still possible in a nation that considered its
rightful place to be as a member of the European
Union.
"In France, a million and seven hundred thousand
people were in the streets," said a nephew, Devrim,
25, referring to the mass protests in France over
employment contracts. "And no one got a nosebleed."
He predicted that the protests here would continue
until Turkey finally granted full rights to its
Kurdish minority.
A guerrilla insurgency in southern Turkey over
Kurdish rights killed more than 30,000 people during
the 1980's. After years of relative peace, Kurds
seem conflicted over whether they should return to
the use of violence if continued pressure by the
European Union over the prospect of Turkey's
membership might bring change more peacefully.
The roots of the current protests are complicated,
primed slowly by low-level incidents in the past two
years after the Kurdistan Workers' Party called off
a unilateral cease-fire that began in 1999. Then,
last week, on Tuesday, funerals here for 14 members
of the party killed in combat with Turkish soldiers
the previous weekend swelled into large protests,
and last Wednesday they turned violent.
"I neither want state terror, nor terror of any
kind," said one of Mr. Sogut's relatives, who would
not give his full name because he is a public
employee, and talking politics could cause him
trouble. "More than 30,000 people died. This is
enough. There should be a solution."
His comments seemed to reflect a quiet questioning
among many Kurds of the relevance and tactics of the
Kurdistan Workers' Party, considered a terrorist
group by the United States and the European Union.
Some experts see the current protests as a way for
the group to try to create a role for itself as
political and economic changes continue in Turkey,
including some concessions to Kurds.
In recent years, and largely under European
pressure, the government lifted emergency rule in
the southeast, began compensating Kurds for losses
when Turkish troops razed villages and granted other
cultural rights to the Kurds.
Many Kurds here complain, however, that this has not
been enough, considering the low wages, high
unemployment and lack of foreign investment in the
southeast. The Kurds' frustration exploded in the
protests that began here last week.
"So many promises were made and not fulfilled," said
Cihan Sincar, the mayor of Kiziltepe, near the
Syrian border, where two protesters were killed over
the weekend.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has at least
acknowledged the problems Kurds face, something that
past prime ministers have been reluctant to do. In
confronting the current crisis, his government's
approach has been to offer hope to Kurds not eager
for a resumption of the rebel group's violence.
"While they try to capitalize on hatred and enmity,
we will build more roads, more hospitals, more
schools and more workplaces" in Kurdish areas, Mr.
Erdogan told the Parliament on Tuesday. "We will
bring more freedoms, more democracy, more welfare,
more rights and justice."
But a more immediate test seems to be whether the
government will also engage in heavy-handed tactics
against the Kurdistan Workers' Party that could
endanger the nation's desire to join the European
Union and return Turkey to the violence of a decade
ago.
On Tuesday, the foreign minister, Abdullah Gul,
talked about "a thin line" in the struggle against
terrorism and the need to preserve democracy, even
as he pledged to show no mercy for the rebel group.
At a minimum, there is a sense here that the gains
made by Kurds in recent years may have been reversed
in a few short days. "Since 1994, we haven't seen
anything like this," said Tacettin Bahadiroglu, 32,
the owner of a jewelry store in Kiziltepe, as tense,
blue-bereted Turkish soldiers in armored personnel
carriers set up in front of the regional governor's
office on Monday. "It has pushed us 12 years
behind."
As the protests turned violent, shopkeepers rolled
down the shutters of their shops at the urging of a
Kurdish satellite station, and gangs of youths began
to clash with soldiers. Three people were killed,
including Mr. Sogut, whose own family could not
agree if he had been a bystander or had joined in
the protests.
In the following days, the protests spread to the
city of Batman to the southeast, where one person
was killed, and to Kiziltepe, home to tens of
thousand of Kurds displaced by the fighting a decade
ago, where two others died. On Sunday, the protests
ignited in Istanbul, where protesters hurled
homemade firebombs at a bus, and three people were
killed, apparently crushed by the bus.
By early this week, at least 9 people, and possibly
10, were dead in Diyarbakir. More than 500 people
have been detained.
On Wednesday officials said five soldiers had been
killed, two by a land mine while they were on patrol
in the Kurdish region and three in an ambush, Agence
France-Presse reported. The report said that a
police officer was killed late Tuesday when rebels
opened fire on a police station.
The violence has left a wake of anger and bafflement
that Kurds said would not be quickly healed.
"What is going to be our future?" asked a
27-year-old man who would give only his first name,
Tolga, because he took part in the protest. He was
among the mourners in Kiziltepe for Mehmet Siddik
Onder, who was shot during the demonstration.
"He was only 22 years old," Tolga said. "He was just
back from his military service. Where are we going?"
The regional administrator, Fecri Fikret Celik, who
represents the Turkish government in Kiziltepe, said
the state had not done enough for Kurds but was
genuinely trying, with new roads, four new schools
under construction and better services at hospitals.
He blamed the rebel group, which he contended had
organized the protests for its own reasons. "What
could have been the reason to provoke people?" he
said.
Sezgin Tanrikulu, a human rights lawyer in
Diyarbakir, said he believed that only bold action
by both sides could head off more violence, though
he said such steps were unlikely soon. The rebels
should give up their arms, he said, and the
government should develop a more aggressive plan to
improve Kurds' lives. "This is not a random or
one-time event," he said. "If we fail to see the
graveness of the problem, we will see worse times in
the future."
www.nytimes.com
Top |
Kurd Net
does not take credit for and is not responsible for the content of news
information on this page
|
® 