|
Turkey: Kurds see tide turning back toward
repression
15.5.2006
By Tracy Wilkinson
|
|
|
|
DIYARBAKIR,
Kurdistan-Turkey -- When the Turkish government
lifted its ban on the letter "W," it seemed like a
breakthrough.
After decades of repression of Kurdish ethnic
identity and a deadly war with separatist rebels,
the Islamist-led government made moves toward
democratic reform in recent years, part of Turkey's
bid to improve its chances of joining the European
Union.
Letters that appear in the Kurdish alphabet but not
the Turkish one were no longer banned from print.
Emergency military rule was lifted. The death
penalty was abolished. Arrests and reports of
torture declined.
But the tide began to turn, many Kurds argue, even
before violent clashes between police and Kurdish
protesters in late March left 13 civilians dead in
the region's worst violence in more than a decade.
"Being Kurdish means you
are a terrorist. That is how Turks see us,"
said Cemal Ceylan, 24, an unemployed Kurd
with a third-grade education. He spoke between small
glasses of tea at a coffeehouse in this rough city
in southeast Turkey, his bitterness echoed by the
young men around him.
Few of the men had jobs, they said as they slammed
domino-like tiles against a metal table, absorbed in
a game that whiles away their empty afternoons. Most
live in cramped, tiny apartments in the slums that
ring Diyarbakir.
The city has seen its population more than double in
15 years with the influx of rural Kurds, driven from
their homes by the government's war with the
Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), or military
reprisals. Youths have been reared on stories of the
flight, memories of burning villages, and decades of
abuse and repression.
"There is a high percentage who have always felt
themselves to be harassed and isolated. No money, no
land, no luck," said Reyhan Yalcindag, an official
with the local Human Rights Association. "People are
reliving the trauma of the '90s and wondering now if
it will be the same."
Their anger exploded in the March protests. The
resulting violence, along with a renewed campaign by
separatist guerrillas, is testing the Turkish
government's commitment to reform.
A moderate Islamic nation, U.S. ally and member of
NATO, Turkey has pledged greater democracy and
respect for human rights to meet EU standards. But a
rising tide of Turkish nationalism and the growing
influence in government of Islamic conservatives
have jeopardized the reforms and the EU bid.
The Kurdish question is widely seen as an important
barometer for Turkey's performance. Eight months
ago, Islamist Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan
traveled to this city and gave a landmark speech,
acknowledging past "mistakes" committed by Turkish
authorities against Turkey's Kurdish minority.
But after the March clashes, which left an elderly
man and four children dead, Erdogan vowed to crush
Kurdish protests, warning darkly that Turkish
security forces "will intervene against the pawns of
terrorism, no matter if they are children or women."
By most accounts, there was provocation on all
sides, with plenty of blame to go around. What is
clear is the sense that the region has lost ground
and hurtled backward.
Erdogan now refuses to talk to politicians from
legally recognized Kurdish parties, and his
government plans to toughen a terrorism law in ways
some fear will impinge on civil liberties.
In early April, a veteran researcher for the New
York-based Human Rights Watch, in southeast Turkey
to investigate claims of police abuse against Kurds,
was detained by police and deported. Authorities
contended that the researcher, a British national,
did not have the proper visa, even though it was the
same type of document he had used in 20 years of
human rights work in Turkey.
Days later, a Turkish prosecutor probing the role of
the military in fomenting unrest in Kurdish areas
was fired after he issued an indictment implicating
one of the army's top commanders.
"In the end, those who do not want calm in the
region, who want conflict, they have been
successful," said Diyarbakir's Kurdish mayor, Osman
Baydemir. "The target was the Kurds, but also the EU
reform process, the government democratization, the
return to civilian life."
Baydemir said he was deeply disillusioned by the
reversals and saw a powder keg of discontent in the
city he governed, primed to explode again - or to
swell the ranks of the guerrillas.
Angry, dejected young men vary on whether they want
an independent Kurdish state - a subversive goal, as
far as Ankara is concerned - or simply more
recognition of their heritage. To Ankara's horror,
some see the Kurds in neighboring Iraq, who enjoy
relative autonomy, as a model and future partner.
An estimated 14 million Kurds live in Turkey,
roughly 20 percent of its population. Successive
Turkish governments have stamped down any expression
of ethnic pride for generations as a way to curb
separatist aspirations.
A critical turning point came in 1999, with the
capture of Abdullah Ocalan, the top commander of PKK
separatists. From his jail cell, Ocalan ordered his
followers to stop fighting. The PKK declared a
cease-fire in a war that had claimed 30,000 lives
since 1984, and most guerrillas retreated across the
border into northern Iraq.
Peace prevailed, Kurdish-dominated cities were
allowed to elect their own mayors, and in 2002 the
government lifted a state of emergency that had been
in place for 15 years. With an eye on joining the EU,
Turkey finally allowed limited public use of the
Kurdish language, including brief television
broadcasts.
"I can finally use the 'W,'" Kurdish newspaper
publisher Arif Aslan said. He continues to publish
his newspaper, in the nearby city of Batman, in the
Turkish language, because he would lose advertisers
if he published in Kurdish, he says, and few Kurds
read Kurdish. But he now freely prints the odd
Kurdish-language headline.
But benefits have been slow to trickle down to
ordinary Kurds. And some reforms have been so
restricted as to raise questions about the sincerity
of Turkish authorities in granting them.
After amending the Turkish constitution,
Kurdish-language teaching finally was admitted but
only in private schools that were financially out of
reach to most Kurds.
Latimes com
Southeastern Turkey: Northern Kurdistan, known as (
Kurdistan-Turkey)
Top |
Kurd Net
does not take credit for and is not responsible for the content of news
information on this page
|
® 