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Turkey can't answer its Kurdish question
21.5.2006
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Continuing unrest has pushed both sides, leading
the prime minister to crack down after March
violence.
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 (E.U.).
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," Cemal Ceylan, 24, an unemployed
Kurd with a third-grade education, said at a in
southeast Turkey.
Few of the men around him had jobs. Most live in
cramped, tiny apartments in the slums that ring
Diyarbakir. The city population has more than
doubled in the past 15 years with the influx of
rural Kurds, driven from their homes by the
government's war with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
'No money, no land, no luck'
"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, and a renewed campaign by the
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 E.U. standards. But
a rising tide of Turkish nationalism and the growing
influence in government of Islamic conservatives
have jeopardized the reforms and the E.U. bid.
The Kurdish question is widely seen as an important
barometer for Turkey's performance. Eight months
ago, 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.
An ominous warning
But after the March clashes, which left an elderly
man and four children dead, Erdogan vowed to crush
Kurdish protests. He 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 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
E.U. reform process, the government democratization,
the return to civilian life."
Latimes com
South-east Turkey: North Kurdistan
(Kurdistan-Turkey)
Estimated 20 million Kurdish people living in Turkey
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