How Turks Became Kurds, Not Germans

...At the same time, the conflict in southeast Anatolia functioned as a catalyst, strengthening the Islamicist opposition and the Refah party, which today constitutes the most powerful political force in Turkey and calls into question the entire republican, secularized structure of the Kemalist state...

...Attempts to preserve a dialogue between Kurds and Turks still predominate...

...Unless the reformist forces among the Kurds, who are working for an independence based not on military might but on the establishment of a federally structured political and cultural autonomy of the Kurds in Turkey, can gain the upper hand over the PKK, any solution to the Kurdish question seems more remote than ever...

...on the other hand, they are criticized when proponents of PKK violence exploit the protections afforded by Germany's liberal asylum laws...

...The different branches of the language have diverged so far that communication has become difficult among the Kurds themselves...

...This "community of fate" is further limited by the Kurds' focus on improving their situation or achieving independence in the individual national states...

...But other incidents, too, are causing increasing uneasiness in German public life: in 1995, 230 arson attempts were made on Turkish travel agencies, banks, and stores...

...It is threatening to attack German tourists in Turkey and to intensify terrorist operations in Germany, for instance in the form of car bombings and assassinations...

...There is no reason to anticipate that the demands for Kurdish autonomy will be fulfilled in the foreseeable future...

...In the meantime, Turkish liberals and others have raised protests...

...Yet it has succeeded in making itself the loudest voice of the Kurdish people, seizing the lead from the intellectuals in exile and the ethnic self-help groups...

...The Turkish government saw this criticism as interference in its internal affairs, part of a campaign directed against Turkey...

...That explains the readiness of Kurdish groups to enter into alliances with opponents of other Kurdish groups...

...Translated from the German by KRISHNA WINSTON q SUMMER • 1996 • 83...

...The case of the Kurds in Germany provides a perfect example of how refusal to acknowledge cultural differences and to achieve a federalist resolution of ethnic tensions can lead to civil war and international conflict...

...The PKK, which has infiltrated a number of Kurdish exile associations, exploits this perception...

...This campaign achieved catastrophic proportions during the Iran-Iraq War and the Gulf War...

...Yet it is difficult to achieve unity among the different elements of the Kurdish people...

...For one thing, the Kurds share their membership in the Islamic world community with the majorities that oppress them...

...The origins of the Kurds are shrouded in darkness...

...The precise number is unclear, because, except in Sweden, Kurdish workers and refugees are registered as Turkish citizens...

...When the mass emigration of workers from the Mediterranean countries to northern Europe began in 1961, only seven thousand Turkish citizens were living in Germany...

...The regime in Baghdad reacted with an annihilating campaign of repres80 • DISSENT How Turks Became Kurds sion...

...Here the lines run not only between the native majority and immigrant minorities, but further between different minorities whose relations are marked by acute conflicts...

...The internal Turkish conflict has also become international: a steady stream of refugees, military assistance to Turkey from the NATO countries, and the presence of the PKK in European countries—this has embroiled European governments in Turkish affairs...

...Islamization, Arabization, Turkization have made it almost impossible to construct a Kurdish myth of origins...

...This heterogeneity is being enriched by a significant ethnic difference: there have always been Kurds among the Turkish "guest workers" and refugees, but most of them did not discover their "Kurdishness" until they came to Europe...

...The almost total failure of the Kurdish nationalist movement can be attributed on the one hand to its splintering into a multitude of hostile tribes and on the other hand to the exposed situation of "Kurdistan" in an area where geopolitical conflict has been rife for a thousand years...

...Between 1961 and 1969 the Iraqi Kurds under the leadership of Mustafa Barzani attempted to secure autonomy by military means...

...In other words, Turks have become Kurds because the Turkish state denies them cultural recognition and the German state denies them political recognition...

...Ottoman became identical with Turkish, while Greeks, Bulgarians, and even the Bosnians achieved political and cultural independence...

...To be sure, the Workers' Party of Kurdistan (PKK), a Stalinist sect and guerrilla movement founded in 1978, has identified Germany as a "second front" now that the Turkish government is pursuing a "military solution" to the problem...

...But this liberalization was short-lived...

...Their interest in the entire Kurdistan region is largely rhetorical...

...In brief, the Kurdish question reveals five fissures in Turkish society: the transition from a traditional to a modern society, the gap between the center and the periphery, the conflict between Islam and secularism, the contradiction between ethnic particularism and republicanism, and the wavering between the authoritarian state and a civilian society...

...With its sectarian, Maoist guerrilla ideology, the PKK represents only a small percentage of Kurdish immigrants...

...In addition, the Kurdish language has not developed consistently...

...The Iraqi Kurds can survive today only in the UN protection zone in northern Iraq...

...The measures taken by the German police and courts against the PKK have thus far proved ineffective...

...It demands radicalization of the Kurdish emigrants, whose attention in the last few years has been directed more toward conditions in Turkey and an independent Kurdistan than toward the improvement of living conditions in Germany...

...For the rest of the Turks, developing a special identity distinct from the German majority depends more on accentuating religious practices...

...Those expelled from the war zone sought asylum in Europe, among them dedicated proponents of Kurdish separatism...

...The number of Kurds in the Middle East is currently estimated SUMMER • 1996 • 79 How Turks Became Kurds at twenty to twenty-five million...

...But the conflict also mirrors the ethnic division of the roughly two million people from Turkey living in Germany into Turks and Kurds...

...Between 1975 and 1978 prospects there seemed more favorable to Kurdish cultural autonomy...

...Very few of them called themselves Kurds...

...The German courts and administrative bodies face a dilemma: on the one hand they are criticized if they extradite Kurds to Turkey, where they will without question be in danger...

...Kurdish intellectuals have been persecuted and driven into exile, and the bourgeois middle class has distanced itself from the rural leadership...

...Until recently, Germans have tended to lump together all immigrants as Turks...

...Kurds continue to be seen as part of the "Turkish problem" and treated accordingly...

...Most of the Kurds did not come directly to Germany from Kurdish regions but by way of Turkish cities and emigration centers...

...The German majority takes no cognizance of such differences, viewing these foreigners across the board as "Turks," the least respected group in Germany and the subject of frequent discrimination in everyday life, as well as violent racist attacks by members of the radical right...

...Primarily because the countries of the European Union have given Turkey the cold shoulder, "Greater Turkey" as well as fundamentalist movements are leaning toward becoming part of the Islamic world community and focusing Turkish regional ambitions on Central Asia...

...The PICK...

...This drawing of battle lines has intensified since the PKK began to resort to violence in Turkey and Germany...

...Turkey is wavering between East and West...

...Against the background of brutal repression of Kurds in Turkey and in view of the fact that Turkey is anything but a model democracy, Kurdish ethno-nationalism has evoked more sympathy than Turkey's attempts to defend itself against radical separatists and protect the integrity of the Turkish nation-state...

...The center of Kurdish nationalism has meanwhile shifted from Iraq to Turkey...

...The German state has refused with equal stubbornness to grant the immigrants citizenship...

...In the Ottoman Empire, the Kurdish feudal overlords enjoyed a relatively large degree of freedom, as long as they paid tribute and provided soldiers...

...nor has it engaged in a project transcending national boundaries...

...The more recent civilian governments of Turgut Ozal and Tansu Ciller remained committed to stamping out "Kurdish terrorism...

...for another, the familiar schism between Sunni, Shi'ite, and Alevite Muslims can also be found among the Kurds...

...They thus constitute the largest people in the world without a state of its own...

...The Kurds share a great deal with the Turks—social and professional status, family structure, religious practice, and subordinate legal status as "foreigners" (including in the second and third generation...

...By far the majority of the Kurds living in the Federal Republic of Germany came from Iraq and Iran and were intellectuals or students and business people...

...The territory they inhabit is spread over three different countries: Turkey, Iran, and Iraq...

...They now live primarily in the areas where Turks are heavily concentrated...

...The Kurds were encouraged and then dropped by both the Iranians and the Americans, and Saddam Hussein took revenge on the "traitors" with poison gas attacks in 1987-1988 (the worst event was the Halabja massacre in March 1987) and with the expulsion of two to three million Kurds in 1991...

...The PKK leadership recently announced its intention to escalate the conflict...

...Later their families joined them, and now it includes all ages from the daycare center to the retirement home, a large number of unemployed, and also a prosperous middle class...

...It is not organized as a 82 • DISSENT How Turks Became Kurds party but as a secret society, exerting iron control over hundreds of local cells and ruthlessly extorting protection money...

...The Turkish immigrants, of whom some are distinctly critical of the repression of Kurdistan, made so much of this solidarity that the West German public tended to pay more attention to the Kurds' striving for independence than to the discrimination Kurds were experiencing at German hands...

...Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit, a Social Democrat, took vigorous steps against the Kurds, and the military regime that seized power in 1980 put a permanent end to the thaw, making even private use of the Kurdish language a crime...

...T. those immigrants who explicitly consider themselves Kurds, the experience of emigration— which includes homesickness but also prosperity and the enjoyment of cultural freedom and certain civil rights—means something quite different from what it means to other Turkish citizens...

...The Kurdish rebellions were put down with the support of the British and French colonial powers...

...The growth after 1989 of ethnically based states has not altered this situation...

...The Kurdish Question To understand this remarkable metamorphosis, we must look briefly at the history of the Kurdish people...

...Germany's President Herzog recently expressed his determination to prevent the civil war in Turkey from spilling over into Germany, and he was speaking for the German people...

...Some estimates suggest that as many as six hundred thousand Kurds are living in Germany today...

...The German government has begun to consider laws that will allow immediate extradition to Turkey of Kurds who perpetrate violence...

...Thus Kurdish diasporas came into being on the soil of the collapsed empire...

...rather, the circumstances of the Kurds in these countries have actually worsened since then...

...Data from the German police indicate that the PICK today has nine thousand activists and fifty thousand sympathizers in Germany...

...the so-called foreigner problem is seen as a "Turkish problem...

...But expression of pro-Kurd sentiment still falls under the "criminal opinions paragraph" of the Turkish anti-terrorism law...

...Since the Gulf War, the Kurdish conflict has become a component of the Middle East conflict...

...They are limited for the most part to persecution of persons who display PKK symbols and pictures of Ocalan, while the crimes ascribed to the PKK (such as execution-style killings of "defectors" and "traitors") usually go unpunished...

...As a result, the German government came under pressure to reconsider its support for Turkey's war against the Kurds...

...Yet since the 1970s the group of immigrants from Turkey has become more diverse...

...The Kurdish nationalist movement has not united in these countries...

...The situation of the Kurds in the neighboring countries of Iraq and Iran has been only apparently more favorable...

...In summary, one may say that the Kurds' sense of commonality derives principally from their common persecution and banishment...

...With the collapse of the empire, with its multitude of nationalities, it became crucial to bring ethnic identity and political unity into harmony...

...There the Kurds were granted a certain degree of political and cultural autonomy, yet they have been tossed back and forth between the two countries, and likewise suffered bloody repression...

...Because Kurds cannot derive their identity from residence in a national state, they must define themselves in ethnic and cultural terms...

...Under this extreme pressure, Kurdish nationalism in Turkey became increasingly radical...

...In the face of these barriers, Kurdish nationalism has sprung up in Germany...

...Consequences Thus the Turkish-Kurdish difference has taken on a dramatic dimension...

...The German example offers the best explanation of how a separate Kurdish community in exile has come into being...

...But the fall of the Ottoman Empire did not bring autonomy, for the Kurds' protonationalist movements were too weak, and especially because the Kurds could not count on the protection of the colonial powers with dominant positions in the Middle East...

...The religion common to almost all Kurds, Islam, is not a homogenizing factor, either...

...Repressive forced assimilation in Turkey, Iran, and Iraq makes it almost impossible to develop a Kurdish national language...

...Opposition between Kurds and Turks becomes acute as a result of the politicization of ethnic conflict in Turkey, which forces even emigrants to take sides...

...This regionalization of the conflict transformed NATO-member Turkey and this neighboring region into the core of Kurdish nationalism...

...The Turkish state has stubbornly refused to recognize the special ethnic, linguistic, and cultural characteristics of the minority from the southeastern part of the country, the so-called Mountain Turks...

...By the end of the mass importation of "guest workers," a good nine hundred thousand Turkish citizens had settled in Germany...

...But the conflict is more than the "export" of a civil war...

...That does nothing to change the fact that most Kurds feel victimized by German domestic and foreign policy...

...Exiled in Germany A large segment of the Kurdish people lives in exile, mostly in Europe, and the lion's share in Germany...

...At the same time, solidarity with the Kurds dictated that more leeway be given to the Kurdish language and traditions in German schools and other public institutions...

...But even to achieve that, he is literally willing to walk over dead bodies...

...In the early years, this group consisted mostly of unskilled young men...

...The opportunity to discuss the Kurdish question openly in Germany paved the way for many Turkish citizens to discover their SUMMER • 1996 • 81 How Turks Became Kurds Kurdish identity and declare it without fear...

...But a certain percentage of German Turks have adopted the anti-Kurdish stance that the Turkish-language media in Germany are promoting...

...In 1978 the PKK was founded, led by Abdullah (Apo) Ocalan, and in 1984 it launched operations that led to Turkish military repression and to the depopulation of entire regions in Kurdistan...

...Publications in the Kurdish language were allowed, and the "Kurdish question" was discussed more openly...

...does what it can to radicalize the ethnic contrast...

...The pro-Kurd orientation of a segment of the German population, particularly West German leftists, plays a key role here...

...It may be that Ocalan wants to blackmail the new Turkish government into adopting a more conciliatory attitude...

...Origins, language, religion, social position, and customs, the usual attributes of ethnic groups and communities, are unclear and heterogeneous...

...In a multi-ethnic empire it is quite easy to practice tolerance toward cultural and religious differences...

...Germany and NATO face the conflicting demands of practical political interests, which call for tying Turkey closely to the West, and humanitarian considerations, which call for maintaining a liberal asylum policy and bringing pressure to bear on Turkey...

...Kurdish minorities also live in Syria and in the former Soviet republic of Armenia...

...This persecution continued into the 1970s, and after a brief phase of liberalization from 1975 to 1978, Ankara once more played the military card...

...Even though most of the Kurds living in Germany celebrate peacefully or not at all, in the last few years it has become the occasion of violent clashes with the police...

...Yet as a rule Kurds do not stand out sharply from the rest of the Turkish citizens in Germany...

...Germany has unwillingly become a multicultural society...

...It took on political overtones in 1980 when a state of emergency was declared in Turkey...

...They likewise have shared in the process of differentiation between the first generation of guest workers, untrained manual workers with rural backgrounds, and the next generation, which created a middle class by acquiring professional training...

...There is also a (well-founded) suspicion that the German government, despite the 1993 ban on the PKK, has entered into a sort of silent agreement with its leader, Ocalan, probably taking him for a sort of second Yasir Arafat and intending not to be caught unprepared if the Kurds should gain their independence in the future...

...Kurd militants occupied consulates and set up blockades, and Kurd "martyrs" went on hunger strikes and set themselves on fire...

...The motivation for their emigration (conceived of as temporary) was purely economic...

...The surprising electoral success of the anti-foreigner Republikaner party in the state elections in March 1996 can be attributed to these occurrences, among other factors...

...This stubborn suppression of moderate Kurdish positions merely serves to confirm the PKK's claim to be the sole representative of the Kurdish cause at home and abroad...

...Today Turkey is waging what amounts to a war, with brutal purges and pacification operations, in Kurdistan...

...From then on, Turkish nationalism, but also the regimes in Syria, Iran, and Iraq, trampled on the Kurds' strivings for independence and autonomy...