The Kurds and the Turks
Marcus, Aliza
In southeastern Turkey roads often lead nowhere. Along the narrow dirt paths and partly paved roads that wind through this mountainous region, stone and mud villages stand empty, casualties of...
...Here, some Kurds wage a battle over Kurdish rights—and ultimately, the shape of Turkish democracy...
...This would pave the way for charges of sedition, which carry the death penalty...
...The government now seems prepared for a general crackdown on Kurds...
...It is assumed that whoever is doing the killing is at least tacitly backed by official security forces...
...Then it is Iran, or Syria, or Cyprus, or Greece, or a U. S. pilot who accidently drops an aid package destined for the Iraqi Kurds in Turkish Kurdish territory...
...In the campaign, Suleyman Demirel, leader of the Conservative True Path party (DYP), promised police stations with "glass walls," a catchy way of saying he would monitor police handling of suspected criminals...
...A provision written into the Constitution barred the regime from prosecution for any of its actions...
...If this happens soon, Kurds and Turks might discover they can live together...
...Undoubtedly, many Kurds don't fully understand or support the PKK's political philosophy...
...A few months after taking office he told a visiting Helsinki Watch delegation that he wanted to abolish the village guard system, under which Kurds are often forced to take up arms against the PKK in exchange for a monthly salary and exemption from military harassment...
...The state can't get rid of the guerrillas so they are killing us," says one young man from Caglayan...
...The PKK ignored the ultimatum and Iraqi Kurdish forces attacked...
...Huge numbers of people, some Kurds claim up to a million, were relocated to western parts of the country...
...But those who believed the coalition government would bring real change have been disappointed...
...A former nuclear physics professor who entered politics in 1983, he is best known for his lineage (his father, Ismet Inonu, was one of the republic's early leaders...
...Throughout all this, Social Democratic leader Inonu has been uninspiring and unimaginative...
...After the war, the allies set up a "safe haven" in northern Iraq, which they police from bases in Turkey...
...Some Turkish intellectuals believe Ankara may have decided it was easier to govern with the restrictions than without...
...It has also allowed the border to remain open...
...A few months before the election his party, ANAP, repealed penal code articles outlawing communist, separatist, and religious propaganda...
...Some Turkish intellectuals believe that the Turkish government harbors politicians who would like to strike a deal with the PKK...
...In this period of relative freedom 16 • DISSENT opposition groups—not just Kurdish—proliferated...
...They call for Kurdish-language schools and other forms of cultural expression and the right to organize a Kurdish party...
...The people who have fled—under military pressure and crushing poverty born of decades of government neglect—now crowd shabby cities not far from their old homes...
...But this soon dissolved into murderous anarchy between right-wing, religious, and left-wing parties, and there was little surprise when the army took over yet again in 1980...
...A Kurd was named to head a human-rights ministry, a notorious prison was shut down, a Kurdish-language newspaper started publishing, and a private Kurdish Institute opened in Istanbul...
...In later decades, Kurdish fortunes rose and fell with Turkey's shifting human rights policies...
...Military intervention in 1971 was followed by a new round of official stands against democratic and pro-Kurdish sentiment...
...The 1991 elections were unusual in that outspoken Kurdish nationalists played a major role...
...Despite criticism and threats, some HEP deputies used Kurdish in parliament...
...City life is not much better: schools are overcrowded and job possibilities bleak since the economic embargo against Iraq closed food and repair shops that catered to thousands of truckers who once crossed the border daily...
...In October, the five-month-old Iraqi Kurdish parliament voted officially to establish a federation...
...Turkey soon sent in ground and air forces to support the drive against the PKK...
...Turkish officials, meanwhile, blame PKK support on "outside powers...
...The eight-year-old war between the Turkish military and the Marxist-Leninist Kurdistan Workers party (PKK) is often ignored by a world more preoccupied with the plight of Iraqi Kurds after the Gulf War...
...Only when Kurds are free to discuss their needs, they say, will it be possible to consider the final status of southeast Turkey...
...The current wave of Kurdish agitation has its roots in the late 1970s...
...For starters, a federal state for at least a few decades, according to Abdullah Ocalan, the Marxist-Leninist leader of the PKK...
...Turkey's Kurds face yet another complication since the Gulf War: their Kurdish brethren across the border in Iraq...
...The constitutional Court may ban HEP as a "threat" to Turkey's "territorial integrity...
...WINTER • 1993 • 19...
...Eighteen HEP deputies resigned from the Social Democrats to protest Inonu's refusal to press for Kurdish rights...
...The military, in particular, is not an easy force to cross, and it opposes loosening control over the southeast...
...Sirnak, a city of 29,000 people, was left in ruins this past August when a skirmish with the PKK sent the military into a fifty-hour shooting frenzy...
...Life revolves around the tea shops, where men while away the hours chain-smoking, their wives at home tending to children...
...The PKK, in the meantime, says it is fighting for Kurdish rights...
...The mainstream press rarely reports news about the southeast...
...In the meantime, ANAP was weakened by a failing economy beset by high unemployment and spiraling inflation...
...Along the narrow dirt paths and partly paved roads that wind through this mountainous region, stone and mud villages stand empty, casualties of the battle between the Turkish Army and separatist Kurdish guerrillas...
...Prime Minister Demirel quickly "acknowledged" what he called the "Kurdish reality...
...The military was able to schedule elections in 1983, secure that its former policies would not be questioned...
...Turgut Ozal, whose newly founded Motherland party (ANAP) won the elections, had been the military regime's economic czar...
...It was time, he indicated, to address the roots of the Kurdish guerrilla war...
...This past September, the military burned down a third of the village's houses...
...But in southeast Turkey, home to about half of the country's estimated ten to twelve million Kurds, the struggle is omnipresent...
...Beset by splits in his own party, Inonu is now more concerned with maintaining his power over his party than in promoting any of the social democratic ideals his party officially espouses...
...Laws forbade "separatist" activity and made criticism of the state and its armed forces a criminal act...
...One day it is the Armenians who are arming the PKK, the next day Iraq...
...Over 2,000 people were killed in 1992, out of some 6,000 total dead...
...Although the PKK's bloody attacks pushed Turkey to "acknowledge" its Kurdish minority, it may be time for the PKK to try to woo Turkish civilians, which would mean keeping its attacks focused on the military...
...Much-touted penal code and constitutional reform have foundered on dissension within Demirel's own party...
...Still, many Kurds feel they have no choice...
...This violence is only the most recent episode in a fitful struggle between Kurdish and Turkish nationalism that stretches back to the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and the founding of the modern Turkish republic in 1923...
...However, when the self-congratulatory fanfare died down, it became clear that the rescinded laws had been basically reinstated by a new, all-encompassing Anti-Terror law...
...But they say it will probably take a major crisis to change government policies...
...Many Turks were dismayed by Ozal's refusal to rise above politics after his ANAP-controlled parliament elected him to a seven-year term presidency in 1989...
...The state security prosecutor has asked Parliament to strip HEP deputies of their immunity...
...The government made some changes...
...Most Turks, when asked about Kurdish demands for recognition, are bewildered...
...Turkey's first president, Mustafa Kemal, the general who led Turkey's war of independence and took the name Ataturk (Father of Turks), wanted to ensure that the Kurds would not destabilize the country's new borders...
...Exhaustion with and reaction to repression—torture of detainees is endemic—led to a remarkable focus on the military's legacy during the 1991 national elections...
...In the fifteen years after Turkish independence, Kurds staged three major rebellions...
...Dirty-faced boys in plastic shoes crowd the streets, hawking cigarettes...
...It has not only terrorized Kurdish civilians and killed Kurdish foes, it has targeted Turkish civil servants, particularly teachers in remote villages, and even Turkish employees of state-run enterprises...
...About a hundred former political leaders were banned from politics until 1992...
...Although the pro-Kurdish Peoples Labor party (HEP) was barred through a legal technicality, its candidates were taken in by Inonu's Social Democrats, who were eager to regain Kurdish support...
...There was talk of lifting emergency rule in the southeast...
...Although Ozal had to resign as party chief, he continued to exert considerable influence over the Motherland party...
...The leader of the coup, General Kenan Evren, was set to serve as the country's president through the end of 1989...
...Even then, the military is likely to oppose any settlement that would grant Kurds real autonomy...
...Under the current Constitution, drawn up by the 1980-1983 military regime, the press is widely restricted, along with trade unions, publishing houses, political parties, and universities...
...Demonstrations during last year's "Newroz" (Kurdish New Year) turned into bloodbaths when security forces opened fire and killed some seventy people...
...The military coup of 1960 ushered in a fairly liberal period during which leftist groups tried to promote discussion of the Kurdish question...
...Demirel and Ozal have both said the guerrilla war must be solved by increased military means...
...What do Kurds in Turkey really want...
...The bans were lifted in 1987...
...The Kurds of southeast Turkey are trapped...
...It formed a coalition with the Social Democrats, whose eighty-eight deputies WINTER • 1993 • 17 included twenty-two Kurds...
...The various constitutions that have come and gone as a result of three coups are better known for what they limited than what they permitted...
...These were successfully repressed by the military, and measures ensued to break Kurdish self-organization...
...This, he says, is more realistic than full independence for the economically undeveloped Kurdish area...
...Over the past year, some one hundred people have been murdered by unknown assailants...
...Their language and music—even the use of Kurdish names—were restricted through official and unofficial measures...
...The public is heavily schooled in Kemalist ideology, which holds dear Turkey's territorial integrity...
...The means he employed were not only military...
...But pro-PKK Kurdish activists say their immediate demand is an end to the state of emergency and military abuses...
...So far, Turkey has approved this setup...
...Ankara forbids them from forming a political party...
...Seven Kurdish parliamentarians were expelled from the party for attending a Kurdish conference in Paris in 1989...
...They will probably be disappointed...
...HEP candidates were among the most radical Kurdish leaders, people who were calling for talks with the PKK guerrillas...
...However, Ankara also issued a statement saying it opposed any moves by Iraqi Kurds to set up a federation because "this could lead to the disintegration of Iraq...
...DIYARBAKIR, TURKEY Meanwhile, Kurdish activists are being targeted by a shadowy group they call the "contra guerrillas...
...Ankara seems afraid that a federated state in Iraq could lead to calls for something similar in Turkey...
...Ozal's party also claimed it would institute reforms...
...Many Kurds believe the winners of the Gulf War struck a deal with Turkey...
...When it does, the focus is on the numbers of "terrorists" and Turkish soldiers killed...
...The former six-time prime minister (twice deposed by military coups) also said he would promote more democratic laws—a surprising statement from a man whose earlier stretches in government were marked by a willingness to impose restrictions and to link up with ultranationalists...
...Turkey would be allowed to treat its Kurdish minority as it saw fit in exchange for support for the safe haven...
...When newspapers are bolder, their reports tend to be discounted...
...Members of parliament were banned until 1997...
...Iraqi Kurdish leaders Jalal Talabani and Massoud Barzani, who now have offices in Turkey, seem to think that if they do Ankara's bidding, they 18 • DISSENT will obtain support for autonomy within a federated Iraqi state...
...Turkey's treatment of its Kurdish population is just one part of the country's long-standing restrictions of human rights...
...It will take a courageous government to stand up to the armed forces...
...Demirel's True Path party emerged as the country's largest political force, but fell short of a parliamentary majority...
...The military seems to be fighting Kurdish civilians as much as the PKK...
...With occasional respites, "Turkification" continued well into the late 1980s...
...Others sported the colors of the banned Kurdish flag and raised the tumultuous situation in the southeast...
...By day, soldiers patrol in armored personnel carriers, and tanks rumble up steep mountain roads...
...Also, a 1983 military law that outlawed most public use of the Kurdish language was revoked...
...He sought to restrain Kurdish nationalist sentiment by forcibly assimilating the Kurds...
...Whether true or not, the battle over the southeast is out of control...
...It also approved a crackdown against PKK bases in northern Iraq if the group would not leave of its own accord...
...Raw sewage trickles down back alleys, running water is scarce, and electricity intermittent...
...It consolidated power in the early 1980s through bloody battles with rival Kurdish organizations...
...At night, guerrillas sweep into villages for food and rest before engaging in skirmishes with government patrols...
...Its Marxist-Leninist dogma has become somewhat secondary to its nationalist slogans, but the PKK is hardly composed of Western democrats...
...Private landholdings in the southeast were expropriated and given to Turks...
...The Iraqi Kurdish leadership is dependent on Turkey...
...Hopes ran high in the Kurdish southeast that real change might come after the elections...
...Turkish Kurds feel betrayed by the West, which has been quick to cry out against abuse of Iraqi Kurds but falls silent when it comes to them...
...The years of democratic rule neither altered human rights abuses nor led to changes in the Constitution or penal code...
...And the military often does not discriminate between PKK guerrillas and Kurdish civilians...
...Kurds, it was declared, were "mountain Turks," their language merely a bad dialect of Turkish...
...The Social Democratic Populist party (SHP), led by Erdal Inonu, promised a new Constitution...
...Although the PKK is now clearly the loudest voice of Kurdish opposition, its flaws are numerous...
...Kurds suspected of supporting the guerrillas are routinely detained and tortured, and whole villages have been emptied—sometimes burned—because residents refused to join the government militia...
Vol. 40 • January 1993 • No. 1
