Kurds and Turkey

[Guest]

The Kurdish question in Turkish politics

by Svante E. Cornell

Departments of Peace and Conflict Research and East European Studies,

Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

 

Orbis: A Journal of World Affairs

Volume 45, Issue 1,

 

Pages 31-46 (Winter 2001)

 

In November 1998, Turkey's Kurdish question returned to the top of the

international agenda with the seizure in Italy of Abdullah Öcalan, leader of

the rebellious Kurdistan Workers' Party (Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan-PKK).

Demonstrations in support of Öcalan's release wreaked havoc throughout

Europe and served as a reminder of the war between the PKK and the Turkish

state that has claimed over 30,000 lives since 1984. A month before his

seizure, Öcalan had been expelled from Damascus, his base for the last

nineteen years, after Turkey had threatened Syria with war unless it ceased

to provide a safe haven for the PKK. Having failed to find asylum in Russia,

Belgium, or the Netherlands, Öcalan - apparently acting on an invitation

>From Italian leftists - believed he could find refuge in Italy. After heavy

Turkish and American pressure, Öcalan was nevertheless forced to leave Italy

and seek asylum elsewhere, but was eventually apprehended by Turkish

security forces on February 16, 1999, in Nairobi, Kenya.

 

The Kurdish question is arguably the most serious internal problem in the

Turkish republic's seventy-seven-year history and certainly the main

obstacle to its aspirations to full integration with European institutions.

Most Westerners define the problem simply as a matter of oppression and

denial of rights by a majority group (the Turks) of an ethnic minority (the

Kurds). The civil war in southeastern Turkey that raged between 1984 and

1999 is accordingly viewed as a national liberation movement and enjoys

widespread sympathy both in the West and in the Third World. The Turkish

political elite, for its part, promotes an entirely different view of the

problem, which is often misunderstood and ridiculed in the West. In official

Turkish discourse, there is no Kurdish problem, but rather a socioeconomic

problem in the southeastern region and a problem of terrorism that is

dependent on external support from foreign states aiming at weakening

Turkey. In reality, neither the official Turkish view nor the dominant

Western perception holds up to close scrutiny. A deeper study of the problem

reveals its extreme complexity, with a number of facets and dimensions that

tend to obscure the essentials of the conflict.

 

One observation that should be made at the outset is that the Kurdish issue

in Turkey differs in many respects from such recent ethnic conflicts as

those in Bosnia, Chechnya, Kosovo, Liberia, Nagorno-Artsax, and Rwanda.

Despite almost two decades of armed conflict and thousands of casualties,

open tensions in society between Turks and Kurds remain, under the

circumstances, minimal. Foreigners are startled by the discovery that a

significant portion of Turkey's political and business elite is of Kurdish

origin, including three of the country's nine presidents - something

unthinkable for Kosovars or Chechens - and that Kurds' representation in the

country's parliament is larger than their proportion of the population.1 At

the same time, it is difficult to refute the assertion that there is an

ethnic dimension of the conflict, in the sense that a portion of the

country's population holds on to an identity distinct from that of the

majority and feels discriminated against on the basis of that identity,

resulting in at least a limited ethnic mobilization. In addition to the

irrefutable ethnic aspect, the Kurdish problem contains oft-neglected

social, economic, political, ideological, and international dimensions that

have carried different weight at different times.

 

Several points need to be understood with regard to the origins and future

prospects of the Kurdish problem in Turkey. A thorough grasp of the problem

requires, first, an understanding of the national conception underlying the

Turkish state and society. Secondly, it must take into account the social

(and not only ethnic) distinctiveness of the Kurds and their relationship

with the republic's leadership. Thirdly, the Kurdish problem in Turkey must

be understood as distinct from the problem of PKK terrorism. Finally, the

Kurdish question must be understood within the analysis of the general

process of democratization in Turkey.

 

The national conception of the Turkish republic

The Turkish republic is the successor state of the Ottoman Empire, which

dissolved during the First World War after more than a century of decay.

However, the republic is a dramatically different construct from its

predecessor. The Ottoman Empire was an authoritarian monarchy with a

religious foundation derived from the sultan's claim that he was also the

caliph, the spiritual head of all Muslims of the world. The empire

recognized minorities and accorded them extensive self-rule, but it defined

minorities in religious terms. Hence, no Muslim people was ever accorded

minority rights, while Jews and Christian Armenians, Serbs, Greeks, and

others were. Before the twentieth century, this approach posed few problems,

especially given that the Muslim peoples in the empire developed national

identities considerably later than the empire's Christian subjects in the

Balkans, and did so at least partly as a result of the latter's emerging

national awareness. Collective identities were based primarily on religion -

Islam at the broadest level and various religious orders and sects at the

local level - and regional or clan-based units.

 

The Turkish republic, by contrast, was modeled upon the nation-states of

Western Europe, particularly France. It was guided by six "arrows" or

principles enunciated by its founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk: republicanism,

nationalism, secularism, populism, étatism, and reformism. Among these, the

first three principles form the foundations of the republic. Although Turkey

was no democracy in Atatürk's lifetime, the principles of republicanism and

populism suggest the goal of popular rule, that is, a democratic political

system.2 In the speeches and writings of Atatürk, republicanism unmistakably

meant a break with the monarchy of the past.3 The second pillar, secularism,

entailed a break with the Islamic character of the state. Although religion

was to be kept out of political life, however, this is not to imply that

Kemalist Turkey was in any way atheistic. Indeed, as Dogu Ergil has noted,

Atatürk's highest goal in the religious field was the translation of the

Quran into Turkish. In fact, the aim of the new regime was twofold: to

dissociate the state from religious principles, and to "teach religion in

Turkish to a people who had been practicing Islam without understanding it

for centuries."4 The regime's policies, most blatantly the abolition of the

caliphate, nevertheless enraged the more religious parts of the population.

This included the Kurds, who have been described as being at that time "a

feudal people ... of extreme religious beliefs." 5 Indeed, the Kurdish

population was ruled by local hereditary chieftains whose power often

stemmed from the backing of the Naqshbandi or Qadiri religious orders.

 

The founding principle most relevant to the Kurdish question, however, is

nationalism. The new state was based on Turkish nationalism, but the

territory comprising the republic was a highly multiethnic area even before

the large migrations that took place in the late nineteenth and early

twentieth centuries.6 As the Ottoman Empire was retreating from the Balkans,

large numbers of Muslims, predominantly Slavic by ethnicity, fled to the

heartland of the empire, the present-day Turkish republic. In addition, the

Russian suppression of Muslim highlanders' resistance in the North Caucasus

in the 1850s forced additional hundreds of thousands of people to migrate to

Anatolia. As a result, when the Turkish republic was created in 1923, a

large proportion of its population consisted of recent immigrants of Slavic,

Albanian, Greek, Circassian, Abkhaz, and Chechen origin, whereas people that

could claim descent from the Turkic tribes that had come from Central Asia

were certainly a minority of Anatolia's population. It was in this complex

setting that Atatürk and his associates aimed to create a modern

nation-state, an integrated, unitary polity of the French type. For that

reason, the model of the nation that Atatürk and his associates adopted was

civic, as expressed by the maxim that lies at the basis of Turkish identity:

"Ne mutlu Türküm diyene," best translated as "Happy is whoever says `I am a

Turk'" - not whoever is a Turk. To be a Turk meant to live within the

boundaries of the republic and thereby be its citizen. The very use of the

word Turk, moreover, was a breakthrough, since it had been a derogatory term

during Ottoman times, referring to the peasants of the Anatolian

countryside. Thus, the word Turk defined a new national community into which

individuals, irrespective of ethnicity, would be able to integrate. Language

reform and the introduction of the Latin alphabet added to the novel

character of the nation. It is against this background that every person

living within the borders of the republic and accepting its basic principles

was welcome to be its citizen. Immigrants to Anatolia of Caucasian or Slavic

origin and indigenous populations of Kurdish, Laz, or Arabic origin all

became Turks in their own right, whereas ethnically Turkish minorities

outside the boundaries of the republic, in the Middle East or the Balkans,

were disqualified from membership in the national community. But whereas the

Turkish national conception was benign compared with the fascist ones

triumphing in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s, becoming a Turk entailed the

suppression of an individual's own ethnic identity. In other words,

Atatürk's maxim was generous in allowing everyone who desired to do so to

become a Turkish citizen, but it did not provide a solution for those who

were not prepared to abandon their previous identities in favor of the new

national idea. This, in a nutshell, was the problem of a significant portion

of the Kurdish population, which differed from the rest of the population

not only because of language, but also because of its clan-based feudal

social structure.

 

In retrospect, Atatürk's nation-building project appears to have been

largely successful. Out of the melting pot of the 1920s has emerged a

society in which an overwhelming majority of individuals feel a strong and

primary allegiance to a Turkish identity. The only group that has escaped

this process seems to have been the Kurds, though by no means all of them.

In fact, a great number of Kurds, especially those that willingly or

forcibly migrated to western Turkey, integrated successfully into Turkish

society and adopted the language, values, and social organization of the

republic. Kurds today are active in all spheres of social and political

life, and are even present in the ranks of the Nationalist Movement Party

(Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi-MHP), which is often characterized in the West

as fascist and anti-Kurdish. This remarkable level of assimilation can be

attributed in part to the policies of the state, but clearly the

ethno-linguistic heterogeneity of the Kurdish population was an additional

factor.

 

It remains a fact, however, that the Kurds are the one ethnic group that to

a large degree has retained a distinct identity. There are several reasons

for this, of which a major one is demography. The Kurds are by far the

largest non-Turkish-speaking group in the country. A second reason is

geography: the Kurds were settled in a single area of the country that is

distant from the administrative center and inaccessible because of its

topography. Thirdly, the Kurds differed from other large groups such as

Slavs or Caucasians in that they were an indigenous group and not

comparatively recent migrants. Uprooted immigrant populations that have

suffered severe upheavals and hardships are significantly more likely to

embrace a new national identity than are indigenous groups. Fourthly, the

Kurds, unlike other populations, were organized according to a tribal and

feudal social structure, a factor that remains crucial to this day.

Paradoxically, the Turkish nation-building project (with its one major

exception) has been so successful that it is doubtful that state policies

can still be described as seeking integration rather than assimilation. As

the Turkish identity has strengthened and previous identities vanished or

receded, Turkish identity itself has become more homogeneous; as such it

carries the risk of growing less civic and more ethnic in nature.

 

The distinctiveness of Kurdish society

The Kurds are not a homogeneous ethnic group and evince differences in

religion, language, and ways of life. In Turkey, the clear majority of the

perhaps 12 million people that are referred to as Kurds are Sunni Muslims

and speak Kurmandji. Nevertheless, some Kurdish groups speak Zaza, which is

not mutually intelligible with Kurmandji, or adhere to the Alevi faith, a

heterodox branch of Islam with strong non-Islamic features. Moreover, these

groups overlap, especially in the Tunceli and Bingöl areas of Turkey, where

most Kurds are both Zaza-speaking and Alevi. Hence there are important

divisions among Kurds, a fact emphasized by most analysts as an important

reason for their lack of political unity.7 Even among Sunni Kurds, adherence

to different religious orders (tariqat) has been a divisive factor. A more

important element of the problem is Kurdish social organization, which has

traditionally been, and essentially remains, tribal and feudal. The tribes,

usually referred to as ashiret in Turkey, are "fluid, mutable, territorially

oriented and at least quasi-kinship groups" that range in size between

tribal confederacies of thousands of members to small units of several dozen

individuals.8 At the head of a tribe is an agha, the leader of a ruling

family, who seeks to - and often does - command absolute loyalty from the

members of the tribe. Tribes are often, but not always, held together by

kinship ideology: an underlying myth of common ancestry, at times going back

to a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, has been a strong source of

legitimacy keeping the tribe together. Numerous shaykhs, or leaders of the

religious orders, have also been tribal aghas, thereby exercising dual

authority over their followers. Practically speaking, some tribes have

nevertheless been no more than what McDowall calls "a ruling family that has

attracted a very large number of clients." 9 During Ottoman times, the state

used tribal leaders as a means to exert territorial control over Kurdish

areas. Those that sided with the Ottomans in their wars with Persia were

rewarded with the recognition of their autonomous rule over essentially

semi-independent principalities, in return for which they paid an annual

levy and pledged military support for the empire in times of war. A number

of tribal leaders received the title of emir through such agreements. 10 But

whereas tribal leaders were co-opted by the state, shaykhs and aghas also

led rebellions against the state. However, the very fact of these

rebellions' tribal rather than national nature led to a lack of cohesion

vis-à-vis the state. When one tribal leader revolted, for example, others

saw it fit to collaborate with the state to quell the rebellion. As Gérard

Chaliand notes, perpetual competition was the hallmark of relations between

tribes: "Allegiances can ... fluctuate, but division itself ... remains a

constant."11

 

Moreover, the relationship between a tribal society and the state is by no

means easy. As displayed not only in Kurdish-populated areas but also in

places such as Afghanistan and Chechnya, there is a fundamental

incompatibility between the tribal hierarchy and the modern nation-state.

Tribal leaders "act as arbitrators of disputes and allocators of resources,

benefits and duties ... [and] jealously guard [their] monopoly of all

relations with the outside world."12 A centralized state is a direct threat

to tribal leaders' authority because by definition it seeks to exercise

direct control over all citizens. There are two basic ways for a state to

exercise control over predominantly tribal areas: either to break down the

tribal structures and integrate the population into the social structures of

the state, or to co-opt tribal leaders and use them as instruments of power

in the tribal areas. Most states facing this dilemma have employed a mixture

of these two strategies, often playing tribal leaders against one another.

Needless to say, the strategy of breaking down tribal structures risks

provoking armed resistance on the part of the tribal leaders, and so the

Turkish republic, much like the Ottoman Empire before it, adopted a strategy

of co-optation. Among the numerous members of parliament from the

predominantly Kurdish southeast, many if not most belong to families of

feudal lords or are endorsed by them. This is especially the case for the

rightist parties with an origin in the now-defunct Democratic Party

(Demokrat Partisi-DP). 13 In the southeast, where it is not uncommon to find

up to 80 percent electoral support for a given political party in one

province and equally strong backing for a different party in a neighboring

province, such curious parliamentary election results should be interpreted

with that history in mind. 14 A tribal leader's endorsement of one party is

likely to ensure the votes of an overwhelming majority of tribal members. It

is small wonder, then, that the political leaders in Ankara have resorted to

the policy of co-optation, which not only is much safer than trying forcibly

to break down tribal structures, but also carries the distinct advantage of

winning large numbers of votes without significant campaigning. Turkish

governments until the 1990s therefore had little incentive to integrate

southeastern Anatolia socially with the rest of the country. 15

 

Whereas this strategy has been beneficial both for Ankara and the tribal

leaders, it has been less so for the Kurdish population as a whole. The

Kurdish areas have consistently lagged behind the rest of Turkey in terms of

economic development, due largely to the preservation of the tribal

structures and the neglect of the central government. Tribal leaders, of

course, have an interest in preventing rapid modernization, which would

inevitably weaken the traditional social structures that perpetuate their

power. As a result, they have in all likelihood encouraged a certain lack of

attention to their region on the part of central authorities. This is not to

say that the rapid development of Turkish society has wholly bypassed the

Kurds. Although the government may have neglected the area, considerable

development has taken place, especially through the introduction of

nationally standardized educational norms and compulsory military service,

and through the spread of mass media, which have all brought dramatic

changes to the perceptual environment of a generation of Kurds. In addition,

as noted above, numerous Kurds have migrated to urban areas in western

Turkey. Some of them left the southeast in search of better economic

conditions and others were relocated by the state in an effort to integrate

Kurds into society, but in both cases the result was to expose thousands of

young Kurds to previously alien ways of living and thinking. In this

context, leftist ideologies have had a specific attraction to many of the

Kurds who have studied in Turkish universities since the 1960s.

 

The militant PKK

Kurdish rebellions before World War II had a strong tribal and religious

character that often overshadowed the national component, but in the postwar

period this pattern underwent significant change. Turkey held its first

multiparty election in 1950, resulting in the electoral defeat of Atatürk's

Republican People's Party and a transfer of power to the center-right DP.

The new government allowed exiled shaykhs and aghas to return, co-opting

them into the system as outlined above.16 The strengthened position of

tribal leaders gave further impetus to the migration of Kurds to the urban

areas of western Turkey, where a number of them benefited from the

increasingly market-oriented economic policies of the government. Within a

short time, a movement called "Eastism" (Doguculuk) emerged, advocating

economic development efforts in eastern and southeastern Anatolia. After the

military coup of 1960, a new and more liberal constitution was adopted that

included substantial protections for democracy, freedom of expression, and

human rights. Indeed, the 1961 constitution (which was superseded in 1982)

was the most liberal that Turkey has ever had. These freedoms led to a

mushrooming of leftist activity among Kurds and others in Turkey. Although

more-radical groups with various Marxist-Leninist affiliations emerged, the

most prominent was the Workers' Party, whose public statements calling

attention to an oppressed Kurdish minority eventually led to its closure.17

Meanwhile, the increasing stature of Mullah Mustafa Barzani and his Kurdish

Democratic Party (KDP) in northern Iraq and the rise of Kurdish nationalism

there had a profound effect on more right-wing Kurdish activities in Turkey.

>From the 1960s onward, therefore, one can speak of a clear ideological

division among politically active Kurds. A Marxist wing cooperated with

ideological brethren of Turkish origin and often formed parts of

Turkish-dominated groups, while a more traditionally nationalistic wing

identified closely with Barzani's KDP. A main item on the agenda of the

leftist Kurds was the socioeconomic restructuring of the southeast into a

more equitable society through the dismantling of tribal institutions and,

in its more extreme versions, the creation of a socialist system. This

agenda was naturally anathema to the right-wing groups, which were closely

linked to the tribal hierarchy. The right-wing Kurdish nationalists

nevertheless failed to prevail for two main reasons: internal tribal

divisions among them weakened their strength and appeal, and both their main

leaders were forced into exile after the 1971 military intervention and

eventually assassinated in northern Iraq. During the 1970s, leftist

radicalization intensified as migration to urban areas of western Turkey

continued and enrollment in higher education increased. These parallel

processes heightened awareness of economic and political disparities between

the southeast and the rest of the country, and Kurds were socioeconomically

predisposed to be absorbed into the leftist climate predominant among the

student body in Turkish universities. Gradually, however, Kurdish leftists

became alienated from their Turkish colleagues and formed separate political

movements.

 

Having its origins in an informal grouping around Abdullah Öcalan dating

back to 1973, the PKK was formally established as a Marxist-Leninist Kurdish

political party in 1978 and advocated the creation of a Marxist Kurdish

state. From the outset, the PKK defined Kurdish tribal society as a main

target of the revolutionary struggle. It described Kurdistan as an area

under colonial rule, where tribal leaders and a comprador bourgeoisie

colluded to help the state exploit the lower classes. In particular, it

advocated a revolution to "clear away the contradictions in society left

over from the Middle Ages," including feudalism, tribalism, and religious

sectarianism.18 It should be noted that in the 1990s the PKK toned down its

Marxist rhetoric and instead emphasized Kurdish nationalism in the hopes of

attracting a larger following among Turkish Kurds. Marxism-Leninism found

little resonance among the population in agricultural, rural southeastern

Turkey.

 

The PKK suffered heavily from the 1980 military coup, and Öcalan and some

associates fled Turkey for Syria and the Beka'a Valley of northern Lebanon.

But the repression of other leftist and Kurdish movements allowed the PKK to

emerge as the sole credible Kurdish challenger to the state, and with the

start of military operations in 1984, the PKK left Turkish Kurds with few

choices. Unless they decided to stay out of politics completely, Kurds were

forced either to side with the state, thereby expanding their opportunities

as Turkish citizens at the price of suppressing their ethnic identity, or

else join the PKK and fight the state. Any option ranging between these two

extremes became highly dangerous, since any form of peaceful advocacy of

Kurdish rights would attract the wrath of both the state and the PKK. The

Turkish state painted itself into a corner by equating virtually all

expressions of Kurdish identity with PKK terrorism. The PKK, in turn,

suffered from several drawbacks that would ultimately precipitate its

demise. Most significantly, its violence against the very population it

claimed to represent disillusioned many Kurds, who saw little difference

between the repressive Turkish state organs and a repressive PKK. To this

should be added the megalomania that has been attributed to Öcalan. Beyond

disallowing intraparty opposition, Öcalan developed a true personality cult

around himself, leading other Kurdish leaders to abandon him as a madman.

Jalal Talabani, the leader of the northern Iraqi Patriotic Union of

Kurdistan (PUK), stated that "Öcalan is possessed by a folie de grandeur . .

. he is a madman, like a dog looking for a piece of meat." The other Iraqi

Kurdish leader, Masoud Barzani of the KDP, compared him to the Ugandan

dictator Idi Amin.19 Thirdly, the PKK's Marxist-Leninist ideology, which

never really commanded much enthusiasm in Kurdish society at the outset,

became a liability after the collapse of communism worldwide. Fourthly,

despite its ideological zeal, the PKK failed to stay out of the tribal

politics it aimed to destroy. In light of the authority commanded by tribal

leaders, the PKK was forced to negotiate with the aghas, since winning over

a tribal leader meant winning the support of the whole tribe, an advantage

the PKK could not afford to forgo. As a result, the PKK had a stake in

preserving tribal structures. 20 A fifth source of weakness derived from the

westward migrations that were partly a result of the war. By the mid-1990s

only a minority of Turkey's Kurds actually lived in the southeast. The sixth

and final flaw was that the prospect of a separate Kurdish state did not

enjoy the support of a majority of Kurds. The failure of the Kurdish

"Federated State" in northern Iraq in the early 1990s, which culminated in

economic misery and factional infighting, heightened the appeal of remaining

within Turkey, especially as Turkish attempts to gain membership in the

European Union were likely to bring increased democratization and economic

development.

 

Most Kurds do not desire a separate Kurdish state.

 

The longevity and intensity of the PKK rebellion are partly explained by the

party's organizational skills and the support it managed to muster as a

result of dissatisfaction among Kurds in Turkey. Of equal or greater

importance, however, has been the PKK's mobilization of international

resources, which can be divided into three basic categories: support from

Kurds in exile, primarily in Western Europe; financial resources stemming

>From the narcotics trade; and indirect and direct support from states with

an interest in weakening Turkey. Reliable PKK support has come from the

Kurdish communities in Western Europe, especially Germany and, to a lesser

degree, Sweden, where it has commanded the loyalty of a majority of exiled

Kurds. This is not surprising, given that Kurds in exile include large

numbers of politically motivated migrants, and given that the political

mobilization of Kurds in Europe, including the (sometimes forced) levy of

"taxes," is considerably easier than in Turkey, where state restrictions are

far more stringent.21 As concerns the drug trade, significant circumstantial

evidence suggests that the PKK derives a large part of its financing from

the production, refining, and smuggling of illicit narcotics to Europe,

although the importance of the drug factor in the PKK rebellion should not

be overestimated. 22

 

Unquestionably, the most important factor in the PKK's survival has been the

support of several foreign countries. During the 1980s the PKK was funded

mainly by its ideological brethren in the Soviet Union. Evidence that other

states supported or tolerated its operations on their soil has also

surfaced, notably Greece, Iran, and Greek Cyprus. The PKK's most crucial and

stable ally, however, has been Syria, which hosted Öcalan for twenty years

and provided training facilities in the Beka'a Valley of Syrian-controlled

northern Lebanon. Syria's reasons for opposing Turkey are manifold.23 Most

fundamental is a border dispute over the Hatay province, which is claimed by

Syria but was ceded to Turkey by France (Syria's League of Nations

mandatory) in 1939. Furthermore, Turkey's economic development program for

southeastern Anatolia, which was inaugurated in the 1980s, planned to use

water from the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers to irrigate large tracts of the

arid region. Syria, fearing this would jeopardize its own access to water

>From the Euphrates, increased its support not only for the PKK, but also for

Armenian terrorist organizations targeting Turkey. 24 Syria's role as the

PKK's main patron became increasingly evident as the Soviet Union dissolved.

Although Russia has utilized the PKK as a lever against Turkey, especially

to deter possible Turkish support for Chechen insurgents, Russian support in

no way approaches that which the Soviet Union provided in the 1980s. 25 It

is doubtful whether the PKK could have attained anything close to the

position it did without foreign support.

 

Whereas the end of the Cold War entailed a series of problems for the PKK,

the Persian Gulf War was highly beneficial. The coalition against Iraq and

Operation Provide Comfort for all practical purposes removed northern Iraq

>From Baghdad's jurisdiction, and a U.S.-backed Kurdish "Federated State" was

created there. At the heart of this new entity was a power-sharing agreement

between Barzani's KDP and Talabani's PUK, an arrangement achieved partly

through the efforts of the Turkish government, which stepped in as a patron

of the deal in order to keep the PKK out of the area. However, conflicts

between the KDP and PUK prevented the scheme from being implemented, and

northern Iraq became a power vacuum, which coincided nicely with the aims of

the PKK. Öcalan's organization soon based its operations there, and by 1994

it had managed to deny the Turkish state effective control of large tracts

of its southeastern territory.26 At the same time, the Turkish army's

demonstrable lack of preparation for mountain and guerrilla warfare

undermined discipline in the ranks. As soldiers continually failed to

differentiate between civilians and rebels, the PKK enjoyed increasing

popular support.

 

But the situation began to change in the mid-1990s. The Turkish army, having

apparently realized the importance of not alienating the civilian

population, emphasized discipline within the ranks and initiated a

public-relations campaign that included the introduction of health and

educational facilities for the population of the southeast. Meanwhile, the

Turkish military eventually adapted successfully to guerrilla warfare (in

stark contrast to the disastrous performance of the Russian army in Chechnya

at roughly the same time) and gathered enough strength to strike the problem

at its roots in northern Iraq. Since 1995, regular and massive troop

incursions (some involving up to 35,000 troops) and the establishment of a

security zone reminiscent of the Israeli zone in southern Lebanon have

caused the PKK's position in northern Iraq to wither away. By 1998 the PKK's

only lifeline was Syria. Spurred by its alliance with Israel, the Turkish

government felt strong enough to threaten Syria with war unless it expelled

Öcalan and the PKK bases in the Beka'a Valley. Unable to rule out the

prospect of Israel's joining a Turkish punitive expedition, Damascus

complied and expelled Öcalan in October 1998. After the PKK's forces

relocated to northern Iraq, a subsequent Turkish incursion dealt a severe

blow to their military capabilities. Since Öcalan's capture, his unreserved

submission to Turkish authorities seems to have damaged the PKK so seriously

that it is doubtful that it will ever again become a credible actor.

 

In sum, the PKK's intrinsic weaknesses that shrank its base of popular

support, the Turkish military's change of policy toward the civilian

population, and especially Turkey's growing ability to crush the insurgents

and stamp out its sources of foreign support combined to defeat the

insurgency. In late 1999 the PKK declared its withdrawal from Turkish

territory and in early 2000 publicly laid down its arms, apparently

emulating the PLO by trying to gain recognition as a political movement

instead.

 

The Kurdish question and Turkey's democratization

Having defeated the PKK, Turkey has still not resolved its Kurdish question,

since the PKK never represented the opinions of a majority of Turkey's

Kurds. Although few reliable sources are available on Kurdish attitudes,

there is conclusive evidence that only a minority of Kurds see the PKK as

their main representative organ and that the majority desires to remain

within the Turkish state. In the PKK's heyday in 1992, a poll conducted in

the southeast showed that only 29 percent of the population viewed the PKK

as the best representative of the Kurdish people.27 Moreover, a great part

of the Kurdish population has taken on Turkish identity in whole or in part.

Indeed, Kurds in Turkey have three options: to reject Turkish identity

altogether, to accept it in its civic version while retaining their Kurdish

ethnic identity (which amounts to integration), or to accept Turkish

identity in both its civic and ethnic forms (which amounts to assimilation).

A 1993 poll showed that over 13 percent of Istanbul's population claimed

Kurdish roots, while 3.9 percent considered themselves Kurds, and 3.7

percent identified themselves as "Turks with Kurdish parents." Apparently,

the remainder considered themselves simply "Turks." Even accounting for the

less-than-ideal polling conditions at the height of the conflict (including

state restrictions on expressions of Kurdish identity), this outcome clearly

shows that a significant number of Kurdish people have integrated into

Turkish society.

 

That said, these figures should not be taken as evidence corroborating the

view that Turkey does not have a Kurdish problem. Clearly, a large portion

of the Kurdish population feels a significant frustration at the

state-imposed restrictions on cultural and other rights. However, these

figures do show that any solutions based on autonomy or federalism, which

have often been advocated by outsiders, are obsolete. Since a majority of

Kurds live in western parts of Turkey or are otherwise integrated into

Turkish society, autonomy and federalism are impractical alternatives.

Moreover, despite the bitterness of the armed conflict, tensions on the

grassroots level between Turks and Kurds remain low. Any solution that would

institutionalize ethnic distinctiveness would therefore risk fueling ethnic

antagonism.28

 

The solution to the Kurdish question, pragmatically speaking, depends on

several factors. First, the Turkish state needs to act in accord with its

own rhetoric stipulating that the Kurdish issue is distinct from PKK

terrorism. With the PKK militarily vanquished and Öcalan behind bars, the

time has come for Turkey to accelerate its democratization, including the

removal of restrictions on cultural rights.

 

With Öcalan behind bars, Turkey needs to accelerate its democratization.

 

Turkey has long opposed any easing of its strict legislation governing

terrorism, freedom of expression, and cultural rights, and justifies its

position with the argument that reform would imply concessions to

terrorists.29 Now that the specter of PKK terrorism has significantly

diminished, a window of opportunity has emerged for the country to press

forward with reforms on human rights and democratization. In so doing,

Turkey could take significant steps to prevent separatist organizations from

receiving popular support, and it could do so with little risk of harming

its own interests. Some activists claim that Turkey should permit school

instruction in Kurdish and other minority languages, but such provisions may

be counterproductive. Lack of command of the state language has proven to be

a major socioeconomic impediment in countries where similar policies have

been in effect, such as the Soviet Union. While retaining its unitary state

structure and preserving Turkish as the sole official language of the state

and the medium of education in schools, the liberalization of language laws

to allow private and supplementary school instruction in minority languages

would enable Kurds (and others) to retain their identity while integrating

with society. Television broadcasts in Kurdish would serve a similar purpose

and deal a significant blow to the PKK-aligned channel MED-TV, which (via

satellite from Europe) has had a virtual monopoly on Kurdish-language

programming. If the Turkish government allowed private or state-controlled

Kurdish media to exist, its ability to influence the local population would

increase significantly, as some high Turkish officials have acknowledged.

Such measures would also improve Turkey's image in the West. In its

relations with the European Union and international human rights bodies,

Turkey's very defeat of the PKK rebellion makes it increasingly difficult to

justify restrictions on cultural rights. An even more important step,

however, would be to lift the state of emergency in the southeast. Until

that happens, the country is effectively split into two juridically, with a

significantly stricter legal system applied in one part of the country.

 

In this context, the role of Kurdish political parties deserves mention.

Most Kurdish-oriented parties in the 1990s have been closed by the

Constitutional Court due to alleged links to the PKK. Presently the People's

Democracy Party (Halkin Demokrasi Partisi-HADEP) is under the same threat.

However, the results of the 1999 general elections indicate the wide

popularity of HADEP in the southeast. Although the party received only 4.7

percent of the total votes in the parliamentary election, this poor showing

is largely related to the 10 percent threshold for representation in the

parliament. With little chance of attaining that level nationwide, many

voters concluded that a vote for HADEP was wasted. Results in the

simultaneous municipal elections suggested a different picture. In many

towns in the southeast, including the large cities of Van and Diyarbakir,

HADEP candidates won landslide victories with up to 70 percent of the vote.

This is a clear sign that large parts of the population of the southeast

strongly favor a democratic representative of Kurdish rights. State attempts

to destroy HADEP, either by closing down the party through legal measures or

through the harassment or arrest of its leaders, are thus likely to be

counterproductive. Removing the possibility of a democratic outlet for

Kurdish sentiment will only fuel new illegal movements or enable the PKK to

regain some strength. Despite its sometimes warranted suspicions, the state

needs to tolerate and, if possible, engage HADEP and other democratic

Kurdish movements instead of suppressing them.

 

Secondly, the economic measures consistently touted by the Turkish state

must be realized. After the capture of Öcalan, the government did launch yet

another large-scale investment program for the southeast, and as a result

there is now a distinct possibility to attract foreign investments to the

region. However, the government must take measures to ensure that

development benefits the entire population and not just the tribal leaders

who own most of the land and industry. Development efforts that enrich only

aghas and their client networks but not the Kurdish population as a whole

could provide a spark for a social explosion. The educational system, which

suffered greatly from the war, also needs to be reestablished so that the

Kurdish region's population can compete on equal terms in the increasingly

competitive Turkish society.

 

Finally, the crucial issue for both democratization and economic development

is the proper implementation of existing legislation. Previously, Turkey's

main problem stemmed not from the legislation itself, but from a state

bureaucracy that was often unable or unwilling to implement reforms. There

is, however, reason to hope that this problem may be somewhat alleviated in

the future. Civil associations in Turkey are growing in strength and

exerting increasingly effective pressure on the government. At the same

time, the end of large-scale hostilities should increase the transparency of

state organs. The election of Ahmet Necdet Sezer, a prominent democrat from

the judicial establishment, to the country's presidency could also have a

positive effect in this context.

 

The multifaceted Kurdish question is central to Turkey's future, including

its relations with the European Union. Its international ramifications,

moreover, make it an issue of utmost importance in the regional politics of

the Middle East. However, the issue is often understood or depicted in

simplistic ways. A deeper understanding of the matter must take into account

the tribal character of Kurdish society, the dynamics of the PKK rebellion's

rise and fall, and the larger context of Turkey's ongoing democratization.

It is noteworthy that the current Turkish government is dominated by parties

generally branded as "nationalist." Besides the MHP, the Democratic Left

Party of Bülent Ecevit is a center-left party with strong nationalist

tendencies. However, the electoral victory of these two parties in the 1999

general elections should not be dismissed as "a nationalist wind" sweeping

through the country after the capture of Abdullah Öcalan.30 The

anticorruption profile of these two parties and the infighting of the

center-right played at least as important a role as the seizure of Öcalan.

Nevertheless, the dominant political forces in Turkey today subscribe to a

definition of the Kurdish problem that denies its ethnic dimension. Although

the current government promotes economic development programs in the

southeast, it seems unwilling, close to two years after Öcalan's capture, to

release the pressure on Kurdish-oriented political parties or to consider

the easing of cultural restrictions. Without broadening its understanding of

the Kurdish question and the measures needed to address it, the government

is unlikely to resolve this problem. The Turkish state must therefore take

advantage of the opportunity created by its victory over the PKK, because

conditions have never been better to address the Kurdish question

constructively and bring an end to the political instability and economic

backwardness of southeastern Turkey. Having won the war, Turkey now needs to

win the peace.

 

 

Svante E. Cornell is a lecturer at the departments of Peace and Conflict

Research and East European Studies at Uppsala University, Sweden

 

 

1 Based on estimates, given that the ethnicity of members of parliament is

not published, and that census data do not include ethnicity.

 

2 Populism (halkçilik) carries the meaning of a "government for the people"

rather than the present-day meaning of the term, used to define political

opportunism.

 

3 For Atatürk's ideas, see e.g. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Nutuk (Ankara: Kültür

Bakanligi Yayinlari, 1980). Nutuk is the Great Six-Day Speech held by

Atatürk on October 15-20, 1927.

 

4 Dogu Ergil, Secularism in Turkey: Past and Present (Ankara: Foreign Policy

Institute, 1988), p. 61.

 

5 Patrick Kinross, Atatürk: The Rebirth of a Nation (London: Weidenfeld,

1964), p. 397.

 

6 Justin McCarthy, Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims,

1821-1922 (Princeton, N.J.: Darwin Press, 1995).

 

7 For a useful introduction, see David McDowall, A Modern History of the

Kurds (London: I. B. Tauris, 1996), pp. 1-18.

 

8 See, for example, Jack David Eller, From Culture to Ethnicity to Conflict

(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), p. 149-51.

 

9 McDowall, A Modern History of the Kurds, pp. 15-16.

 

10 See Martin van Bruinessen, Agha, Shaikh and State (Utrecht: Rijswijk,

1978).

 

11 Gérard Chaliand, The Kurdish Tragedy, trans. Philip Black (London: Zed

Books, 1994).

 

12 McDowall, A Modern History of the Kurds, p. 15.

 

13 The present-day center-right True Path Party (Dogru Yol Partisi-DYP),

Motherland Party (Anavatan Partisi-ANAP), Welfare Party (Refah Partisi-RP),

Virtue Party (Fazilet Partisi-FP), and Nationalist Movement Party all

originate from the DP, which existed from 1950 to 1960.

 

14 For the 1995 elections, see Harald Schüler, "Parlamentswahlen in der

Türkei" (Parliamentary elections in Turkey), Orient, vol. 37, no. 2 (1996).

 

15 See Erik Cornell, Turkey in the Twenty-First Century: Challenges,

Opportunities, Threats (Richmond, U.K.: Curzon Press, 2000), p. 101.

 

16 McDowall, A Modern History of the Kurds, pp. 396-400.

 

17 See Nader Entessar, Kurdish Ethnonationalism (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne

Rienner, 1992), p. 90. The Workers' Party is unrelated to the PKK.

 

18 See Michael M. Gunter, The Kurds in Turkey: A Political Dilemma (Boulder,

Colo.: Westview Press, 1990), p. 60. For details on the PKK's ideology and

tactics, see Michael Radu's article, "The Rise and Fall of the PKK," in this

issue of Orbis.

 

19 See Nicole and Hugh Pope, Turkey Unveiled (New York: Overlook Press,

1998), p. 261.

 

20 Ismet G. Imset, PKK: Ayrilikçi Siddetin 20 Yili (The PKK: Twenty years of

separatist terror) (Ankara: TDN, 1992).

 

21 Henri J. Barkey and Graham E. Fuller, Turkey's Kurdish Question (Lanham,

Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998), p. 30.

 

22 Nimet Beriker-Atiyas, "The Kurdish Conflict in Turkey: Issues, Parties,

Prospects," Security Dialogue, vol. 28, no. 4 (1997), p. 440; Nur Bilge

Criss, "The Nature of PKK Terrorism in Turkey," Studies in Conflict and

Terrorism, vol. 18, no. 1 (1995), pp. 17-38.

 

23 See Süha Bölükbasi, "Ankara, Damascus, Baghdad, and the Regionalization

of Turkey's Kurdish Secessionism," Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern

Studies, Summer 1991, pp. 15-36.

 

24 See Philip Robins, Turkey and the Middle East (London: Pinter/RIIA,

1991), p. 50.

 

25 Robert Olson, "The Kurdish Question and Chechnya: Turkish and Russian

Foreign Policies since the Gulf War," Middle East Policy, vol. 3, no. 4

(1996), pp. 106-18.

 

26 See Kemal Kirisçi and Gareth Winrow, The Kurdish Question and Turkey

(London: Frank Cass, 1997), pp. 161-67.

 

27 See Milliyet, Sept. 6, 1992, for the results of the poll; and Hugh

Poulton, Top Hat, Grey Wolf and Crescent: Turkish Nationalism and the

Turkish Republic (London: C. Hurst, 1997), pp. 245-48.

 

28 On the perils of autonomy, see Svante E. Cornell, "Autonomy: A Catalyst

of Conflict in the Caucasus?" paper presented at the Fifth Annual Convention

of the Association for the Study of Nationalities, New York, Apr. 2000

(http://www.geocities.com/svantec/ASNCornell.pdf). Also see Henry J.

Steiner, "Ideals and Counter-Ideals in the Struggle over Autonomy Regimes

for Minorities," Notre Dame Law Review, vol. 66 (1991), pp. 1539¯60.

 

29 On human rights problems and legislation in Turkey, see Dilnewaz Begum,

International Protection of Human Rights: The Case of Turkey, report no. 43

(Uppsala, Sweden: Department of East European Studies, 1998).

 

30 For a development of this argument, see Svante E. Cornell, "Turkey:

Return to Stability?" Middle Eastern Studies, vol. 35, no. 4 (1999), pp.

209-34.

 

Copyright © 2001 Foreign Policy Research Institute

[MJ]

Independent (UK)

Feb 19 2001

 

The world's largest nation without a state seeks a new home in the West

 

By Justin Huggler

 

They are the forgotten people. In their homelands in the Middle East,

the Kurds are persecuted and murdered: their houses burnt to the

ground, their children gassed to death. They have been the victims of

ethnic cleansing by Western allies and rogue states alike.

 

A vast, slow Kurdish exodus is constantly moving into Europe, risking

their lives in dangerous sea crossings such as that of the East Sea

to escape the terror and the hardship.

 

The 908 Kurds found in the hold of the East Sea are believed to have

originated in Iraq. The journey they made is a well-trodden one. The

Kurdish-governed enclave of North Iraq – created by Western

governments after the Gulf War – is one of the most isolated

communities in the world, a landlocked virtual state, its borders

controlled by hostile countries.

 

But Kurds from Iraq enter Turkey legally with visas. Although the

Turkish authorities refuse Western journalists access to the Kurdish

areas in North Iraq, where the Turkish army is hunting down Kurdish

rebels, they freely issue visas to Iraqi Kurds. They do so to

encourage emigration, say Kurdish sources, because Ankara fears North

Iraq's independence encourages Turkey's Kurds to rebel. Once in

Turkey, one of the main world centres of the trade in smuggling

people, it is easy for the Kurds to find someone to take them to

Europe, for a price.

 

They are refugees. The poverty the Kurds flee is part of their

political repression. In Iran, Kurdish areas are kept destitute to

prevent Kurdish power bases from forming. In Turkey, Kurds have

watched while their entire possessions were burnt before their eyes

by security forces.

 

North Iraq is desperately poor because it is deliberately cut off

from the world by its neighbours. Ironically, the Iraqi Kurds' only

major source of trade comes from smuggling Iraqi fuel into Turkey –

breaking the very sanctions against Iraq that are supposed to be

helping them.

 

There are at least 15 million Kurds; they are the largest nation in

the world with no proper state of their own. They inhabited the

mountains that span the borders of Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Georgia

and Armenia long before those borders were drawn – by the British and

French, dividing the Middle East between them after the First World

War.

 

All the countries inhabited by Kurds fear losing territory to a

Kurdish state. As a result, they are persecuted everywhere. Their

plight resembles that of Kosovo's Albanians but there was no Western

military intervention to protect the Kurds.