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Turkish Kurds push for parliament seats after
decade's absence
20.7.2007
By Ayla Jean Yackley in Diyarbakir |
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July
20, 2007
Diyarbakir, Kurdish Southeastern region of
Turkey, -- The last time Ahmet Turk won a seat
in Turkey's parliament, he ended up charged with
aiding Kurdish rebels, and imprisoned. Now he may
return as head of the first Kurdish group to win
representation in more than a decade.
Some 60 candidates running as independents in the
July 22 election are allied with Turk's Democratic
Society Party, which is pledging to promote closer
ties with the European Union and a negotiated
settlement to a two-decade Kurdish guerrilla war
that has left 40,000 dead.
Polls show the candidates -- most of them Kurds --
have enough support to win some 30 seats in the
550-seat chamber. That may create an explosive mix
in a parliament that may include nationalists
opposed to any concessions to the Kurds. The vote
takes place as the military, which has vowed to
crush the rebels, is pressing for government
approval to send forces into northern Iraq to wipe
out their bases.
``It is a good thing that those who are close to the
views of a region actually make their way into the
national assembly,'' said Bulent Aliriza of the
Center for Strategic and International Studies in
Washington. ``How the system reacts to it and, above
all, how the terrorism issue develops will show
whether this eases or exacerbates tensions.''
The last time a Kurdish party won seats was in 1991,
when Turk and 17 other Kurds entered parliament.
After the deputies spoke Kurdish in the chamber --
the government viewed using the language in official
settings as a show of support for the rebels --
parliament revoked the immunity of seven of them.
They were jailed, and Turk spent two years in
prison. The last Kurdish party to serve in
parliament was dissolved by the courts in 1994.
Appealing a Sentence
Turk, 64, who is currently appealing a new 1
1/2-year prison sentence after party workers
distributed pamphlets in Kurdish, said the Kurds
won't act provocatively in parliament this time.
``That was a different era,'' said Turk, who is
running from the town of Kiziltepe on the Syrian
border. ``Our politics today will be more
responsible and aimed at resolving the conflict.''
Kurdish candidates are backing Turkey's bid to join
the EU, a general amnesty for guerrillas of the
Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, and an easing of
restrictions on their language.
About 20 percent of Turkey's 72 million people are
Kurds, Muslims who speak a language related to
Persian. Officially, all Muslims in Turkey are
Turks, and only Jews and Christians are considered
minorities.
Rising in Revolt
Kurds rose in revolt shortly after the collapse of
the theocratic Ottoman Empire in the 1920s, when a
modern Turkish state was founded based on Turkish
nationalism. The rebellion was crushed and its
leaders hanged.
Autonomy-seeking guerrillas took up arms in 1984 and
by the early 1990s controlled swathes of the rural
countryside.
Turkey mobilized 200,000 soldiers to fight the
rebels, who have largely been defeated except for
small bands in the mountains and several thousand in
Kurdistan region (northern Iraq).
The EU has been pressing for expanded Kurdish
rights. Turkey agreed in 2004 to allow limited
broadcasting in Kurdish.
The language, which was completely banned until
1991, is still barred in election campaigning.
While mayors from the Democratic Society Party
control most cities in southeast Turkey, it has been
kept out of parliament since the early 1990s by a
requirement that parties must receive 10 percent of
the national vote to qualify for representation.
No Easy Time
By running candidates as independents this year, the
Kurds may be able to circumvent the requirement.
Even so, they aren't having an easy time. Criminal
investigations have been opened against several
candidates and party officials for campaigning in
Kurdish, and villagers are being threatened with
suspension of services like water if they vote for
DTP candidates, said Reyhan Yalcindag, deputy
chairwoman of the Human Rights Association in
Diyarbakir.
Their candidates also face challenges in the
impoverished southeast from the growing appeal of
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Justice and
Development Party, which helped double national
per-capita income to about $5,500.``It's a shame I
can't vote twice,'' said Cengiz Taspinar, 34, a
truck driver in Kiziltepe.
Kurdish pledges of moderation aren't enough for
Turkey's nationalists. Devlet Bahceli, leader of the
Nationalist Action Party, has been attacking Erdogan
for being too soft. Bahceli's party fell short of
the 10 percent threshold in 2002 elections, but
polls show it now averaging 11 percent support.
'Pay a Price'
"You will very soon pay a price for the terror you
have inflamed,'' Bahceli, 59, said at an election
rally last week.
At least 225 soldiers and PKK militants were killed
in the first six months of this year, up 18 percent
from the same period in 2006, according to the Human
Rights Association. Erdogan is resisting the army
pressure for an Iraq incursion.
The Kurdish party has been accused of having links
to the PKK, which the U.S. and the EU consider a
terrorist organization. Turk denies any direct
connection, and says the Kurds and their supporters
want democracy to work.
``No Kurd will turn to violence if we can finally
address, within the political system, the reasons
why we have come to this point,'' he said.
bloomberg com
** The use of the term "Kurdistan" is vigorously
rejected due to its alleged political implications
by the Republic of Turkey, which does not recognize
the existence of a "Turkish Kurdistan" Southeast
Turkey.
Kurds are not recognized as an official minority in
Turkey and are denied rights granted to other
minority groups. Under EU pressure, Turkey recently
granted Kurds limited rights for broadcasts and
education in the Kurdish language, but critics say
the measures do not go far enough.
Others estimate over 40 million Kurds live in
Big Kurdistan (Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Iran, Armenia),
which covers an area as big as France, about half of
all Kurds which estimate to 20 million live in
Turkey.
Turkey is home to over 25 million ethnic Kurds, some
of whom openly sympathise with the Kurdish PKK for a
Kurdish homeland in the country's mainly Kurdish
southeast of Turkey.
Before August 2002, the Turkish government placed
severe restrictions on the use of Kurdish language,
prohibiting the language in education and broadcast
media.
The Kurdish alphabet is still not recognized
in Turkey, and use of the Kurdish letters X, W, Q
which do not exist in the Turkish
alphabet has led to judicial persecution in 2000 and
2003
The Kurdish flag flown officially in Iraqi Kurdistan
but unofficially flown by Kurds in Armenia. The flag
is banned in Iran, Syria, and Turkey where flying it
is a criminal offence"
Southeastern Turkey:
North Kurdistan ( Kurdistan-Turkey)
wikipedia
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