The other Kurdish revolt

...The Turkish military claims it was shooting at separatist Kurdish guerrillas...

...A move is under way to strip the deputies of their parliamentary immunity so they can be charged with sedition for statements Commonweal 20 November 1992: 9 in support of Kurdish rights...

...Meanwhile even the Iraqi Kurds, desperate to maintain good relations with Turkey, have turned against the PKK, trying to drive them out with the aid of the Turkish military, which recently sent planes and ground forces to back up their attack...

...In the mountains the fighting is one-on-one...

...The new coalition prepared a democratic program, both [leaders] visited [the southeast] and said they would solve the problem without terror...

...These range from forced evacuation of villages to torture of detainees and shootings which, as in Sirnak, seem targeted at civilians as much as at guerrillas...

...They claim that the military, frustrated with its inability to stem rising support for the guerrillas, attacked the city without provocation...

...We don't care about bread, about food...

...Certainly, the government has fulfilled few of its campaign promises concerning human rights...

...Kurdish uprisings following national independence in 1923 only encouraged Turkey's desire to assimilate the Kurds and repress their ethnic identity...

...Regardless, continuing government action—or inaction—will only further radicalize a population exhausted from having its identity repressed and its human rights abused...

...Eighteen of the deputies have resigned from Inonu's party to protest his inaction...

...residents dispute this...

...Many Kurds mistrusted him after he ousted seven Kurdish deputies from the SHP a few years earlier for attending a Kurdish conference in Paris...

...At least seventy well-known Kurdish activists, including eight journalists, have been murdered over the past two years by a shadowy group commonly referred to as the "contra-guerrillas...

...It's an illusion of the state that by oppressing people they will be able to suppress [Kurdish nationalism]," says a twenty-nine-year-old Kurdish journalist, who claims he was picked up and tortured for almost two weeks last July after police accused him of working for the PKK...

...Maybe in the short run people will be scared, but then they will join the guerrillas, because that's the only way they will feel safe and strong," explains the man, who writes for a pro-Kurdish newspaper, which has seen four of its correspondents mysteriously murdered this year while another was shot and left paralyzed...

...we care about independence, freedom, and security...

...But after a few months, it became clear that changes would come slowly or not at all...

...Since 1984, the Turkish military and the Kurdistan Workers party (PKK) have been fighting for control of southeast Turkey, a desolate mountainous region that is home to about half the country's estimated 10 to 12 million Kurds...

...aliza MARCUS Aliza Marcus is a New York-based journalist who frequently writes about Turkey...

...As the fighting grows, so do reports of human rights abuses against the local civilian population...

...When their party was disqualified by a technicality, they were invited to run as part of the Social Democratic Populist party (SHP), whose leader, Erdal Inonu, was eager to regain Kurdish support...

...The elections produced a coalition government headed by conservative True Path party leader Suleyman Demirel, whose party came in first but fell short of a parliamentary majority...

...Over 5,000 people have died in the fighting—about one-third of them in 1992 alone—and every day brings reports of a new skirmish...

...I never could find a job," he says, a bit abashed...

...They may soon be forced to resign from parliament...

...They also feel cheated by an international community that applauds Turkey for supporting the Iraqi Kurdish "safe-haven" in northern Iraq, but does not comment on Turkey's repression of its own Kurdish population...

...The current battle in southeast Turkey takes place against decades of official repression of Kurdish national and cultural identity in which use of the Kurdish language, music, and even names were widely restricted...

...A few weeks earlier they had fled their home in nearby Sirnak after a fifty-hour battle that left their city in ruins...

...But suppression has never worked...

...In the republic's early years, hundreds of thousands of Kurds were relocated to western parts of the country...

...Meanwhile, the Kurdish deputies find they are booed and even physically threatened in the legislature when they try to speak about cultural recognition and autonomy...

...Zarakolu, who also writes a column for one of the pro-Kurdish newspapers, says the new government quickly discovered it was much easier to govern with the authoritarian restrictions dating back to the 1980-83 military regime and lost interest in the promised reforms...

...A few minutes later, perhaps worried this could be misinterpreted, he adds, "But it's not work that we want, we want freedom...

...In this atmosphere of new tolerance two dozen nationalist Kurds campaigned for parliament in the elections scheduled for the fall of 1991...

...And the refugee family, like dozens of others interviewed during my visit to the region last September, is fearful and angry...

...Constitutional reform plans neatly ignore the military-enacted restrictions on the press and universities, among other things...

...The deputies' party, the People's Labor party, may be disbanded under a vague law banning actions aimed at "changing the characteristic of the republic...

...The activists say the group is backed by the security forces, but Turkish officials deny this...

...Political leaders and others stopped calling the Kurds "mountain Turks," the government's euphemism...

...Demirel joined forces with Inonu, making it seem as if the Kurdish situation in the southeast would be addressed at last...

...As his brothers nod their heads in approval he adds, "There, everything is good...

...and vague promises were made about increasing investment in the economically depressed southeast...

...Prime Minister Demirel no longer seems to want to lift emergency rule or disband the government-financed village guards system, two things Kurdish activists say are necessary to defuse tension in the region...

...Sirnak now stands a virtual ghost town: buildings are pockmarked with bullet holes, shattered glass litters the streets, most of the 29,000 residents are gone...

...In the narrow back-alleys of Cizre, where refugees from Sirnak are gathered, I ask a twenty-nine-year-old man what sort of work he did before fleeing Sirnak...

...You see what happens to us when we have no weapons...

...Maybe we will go to the guerrillas," says one young man crouched on the bare concrete floor...

...A judicial reform bill aimed at ending torture by shortening the detention period and ensuring detainees access to a lawyer fell apart after conservative members of Demirel's party opposed applying the changes to the war-torn southeast...

...The Turkish Kurds, stateless and seemingly friendless, have little choice but to turn toward the PKK, a move which may be more out of necessity than any true love for Marxism-Leninism, which has also killed Kurdish civilians...

...The situation in the parliament has further isolated many Kurds from the state...

...In the late 1980s, the government took steps to stem growing support for the PKK, a Marxist-Leninist group...

...It was a most strange union," says Ragip Zarakolu, an Istanbul publisher...

...In April 1991, an eight-year-old ban against the Kurdish language was lifted, and the security forces became noticeably more relaxed about permitting the sale of Kurdish music cassettes and pro-Kurdish publications...

...REPORT FROM TURKEY THE OTHER KURDISH REVOLT ETHNIC FRACTIONALISM In the back alleys of Cizre, a downtrodden city in Turkey's Kurdish southeast, a family of about a dozen crowds into a small concrete room...