|
Kurds in Turkey: Not another false dawn,
please
17.6.2012
By Dimitar Bechev - European Council on Foreign
Relations |
|
|
|
Kurdish protesters hold
posters of jailed Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah
Ocalan in Istanbul 2011.
Turkey which still
denies the constitutional existence of Kurds,
refuses to recognize its Kurdish population as a
distinct minority. Kurds ask for more cultural
rights for ethnic Kurds who constitute the greatest
minority in Turkey, numbering more than 20 million.
Kurds call for lifting the ban on education in
Kurdish, paving the way for an autonomous democrat
Kurdish system within Turkey. A large Turkey's
Kurdish community openly sympathise with the Kurdish
PKK rebels.
Photo: AFP
June 17, 2012
It is beyond doubt that finding a lasting
solution to the Kurdish problem is the principal
challenge to Turkey’s democratic consolidation. It
bears on relations with neighbours too – from Iraq,
the home of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG),
to embattled Syria where Adelbasset Seyda, a Kurdish
activist, recently became the head of the Syrian
National Council. Whether it accommodates demand of
its Kurdish population for cultural and political
rights matters to Ankara if it wishes to serve as a
source of inspiration for the Middle East’s quest
for more open and inclusive government. Or as Seyda
put it shortly after his election: “If Turkey wants
to engage in a constructive and lasting reform and
dialogue process with the Arab world, it must be
through the Kurds both across its border and
within.”
Unfortunately, news coming from Turkey are not
encouraging. While Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdoğan this week declared that Kurdish would be
introduced as an elective class in Turkish schools
for the first time in the republic’s history, the
prospects for a grand bargain involving the ruling
AK Party, on the one hand, and the Kurdish
nationalist movement are dwindling daily. Back in
May, Leyla Zana, a veteran Kurdish politician, was
sentenced to 10 years imprisonment for spreading
propaganda for the outlawed PKK, declared as a
terrorist organisation by Turkey but also by the EU
and the US. And this week Aysel Tuğluk, a MP from
the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), was
given a 14.5 year sentence on similar charges. It is
true that BDP is dependent on both PKK’s imprisoned
leader Abdullah Öcalan and the fighters in North
Iraq’s Qandil mountains headed by Murat Karayılan.
But as Turkish history has shown times and again
repression is counterproductive. Only engaging the
party in a political process could work, parallel to
disarmament talks with the PKK – a policy AKP forged
ahead with in 2009 but later surrendered. Sadly,
these times are over. What symbolises the depressing
state of affairs is the tragic incident at Uludere
last December when Turkish fighter jets killed by
mistake 34 young Kurdish civilians.
The sentences against Zana and Tuğluk couldn’t come
at a worse time. Earlier this month, the Republican
People’s Party (CHP), the principal opposition
force, put forward a new initiative for resolving
the Kurdish issue. One of the proponents is the
party’s Vice President Sezgin Tanrıkulu, formerly a
human rights lawyer in the mainly Kurdish city of
Diyarbakir in Turkey’s southeast. In previous years,
the party, which saw itself as the torchbearer of
one-nation Kemalism and the oppressive “deep state”,
opposed any change. More recently, its leader Kemal
Kılıçdaroğlu, himself of Kurdish origin, has been
very timid on Kurds’ issues. Now it seems that the
party has seized the initiative if only to prove
that the rhetoric about a new,www.ekurd.net
social-democrat CHP has substance (many Turks are
thoroughly unconvinced even if they have little love
for Erdoğan). Not only are CHP and AKP moving closer
together on the need for a fresh start on the
Kurdish issue, but there are reports about new talks
with Kandil - mediated by Iraq’s president Jalal
Talabani, a Kurd himself. Massoud Barzani, leader of
the Kurdish autonomous region in Iraq, is apparently
involved as well.
Involving the Iraqi Kurds is both inevitable and
desirable. Good relations with KRG and Talabani are
essential, especially at a time when Turkey’s own
policy of “zero-problems with neighbours” is
faltering. Once seen as a threat, Kurdish
communities in neighbouring countries have become
something of a bridge and allies against radical
nationalists (yet, one shouldn’t forget that over
one-third of PKK militants hail from Syria). But, as
in the past, friendly ties with Kurds in Iraq or
elsewhere could not substitute engagement with
Turkey’s own Kurdish citizens. Erdoğan still has a
chance to turn the tide by working side by side with
the BDP and CHP in parliament and even making
progress to a new civilian constitution AKP promised
in the run-up to its victory at the June 2011
elections. Or he risks to be overtaken by events.
Good news is that unlike last year PKK has thus far
shown restraint. They have reportedly accepted to be
represented by the BDP in talks with Turkish
authorities and have come up with a reasonable set
of demands. But there is also a scenario where
sentences against the likes of Zana and Tuğluk,
coupled with the controversial Kurdistan Communities
Union (KCK) trial, heightens tensions and derails
whatever green shoots of a genuine peace process
there might be.
Copyright © respective author or news agency,
European Council on Foreign Relations | ecfr.eu
Top |
Kurd Net
does not take credit for and is not responsible for the
content of news information on this page
|
®
