Turkey's Kurd initiative goes up in smoke


By Stephen Starr
Asia Times
Dec 16, 2009


ADANA, Turkey - Clashes continued for a fifth day in Turkey on Tuesday following a court decision to outlaw the main Kurdish political party, the Democratic Society Party (DTP). The violence, prompted by a string of events including the killing of Turkish soldiers last week, threatens to undo Ankara's recent efforts to rein in militant Kurdish elements and bring an end to over 25 years of troubles that have seen between 30,000 and 45,000 people killed.

Violence has engulfed cities across the country from Istanbul, where on Sunday pro-Kurdish and pro-Turkish demonstrators clashed, to the predominantly Kurdish cities of the southeast, where police and civilians have fought street battles.

Snowballing of events
On December 7, fighters of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) ambushed a gendarmerie patrol in Resadiye, close to Samsun in the north of the country, killing seven soldiers. Before this, protests over the allegedly deteriorating prison conditions of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, jailed since 1999, erupted in Van and Diyarbakir, with a 23-year-old Kurdish student killed on December 6 in Diyarbakir.

Turkish television aired chaotic scenes on Sunday night as hundreds of protesters threw rocks and Molotov cocktails at police vehicles in Hakkari and Van.

Following the killings of the soldiers, a Turkish constitutional court cited the DTP's links to militant Kurdish elements, accusing it of being a "focal point for terrorism". The co-chair of the party, Ahmet Turk, was then banned from political proceedings and stripped of his parliamentary seat by a decision delivered on Friday. Nineteen other lawmakers from the party now find themselves without jobs while a total of 37 members of the party have been banned from joining any political party for five years. The DTP is the 27th party to be shut down since 1968.

On Monday, leaders of the DTP, the only Kurdish party in parliament, met in Diyarbakir to discuss what steps to take following the ban. Leaders, however, announced that no members would officially resign amid fears of a split in the party.

"If the pro-Kurdish party leaves parliament, the Kurds will be further disenfranchised, for sure," Taylan Bilgic, the managing editor of Hurriyet Daily News and Economic Review, told Asia Times Online. "But also, the situation might trigger a 'regional election' in the southeast of the country, which would psychologically further magnify the division between the region and the rest of the country,"

A DTP deputy told a Turkish newspaper that party members would oppose the closure verdict at the European Court for Human Rights in Strasbourg.

A columnist from the Zaman newspaper, Bulent Kenes, said on Monday that "most of this blame goes to the political parties and parliament, which have paved the road leading to party closures." He said Turkey is "repeating attitudes and patterns that not only offer no assistance in solving acute problems but also worsen wounds that are getting ready to heal".

The European Union also criticized the Turkish government for banning the DTP, calling for the "utmost restraint" while adding that banning political parties was "an exceptional measure".

The commission also "regretted that the DTP has continuously refused to clearly distance itself from the PKK and to condemn terrorism," Amadeu Altafaj Tardio, a spokesman for the EU's executive commission, told a news conference at the weekend.

Under the AKP (Justice and Development Party), one of the country's most popular governing parties, Turkey has moved away from previous administrations' attempts to increase ties with Europe towards a more independent stance based on its Islamic roots and its own brand of democracy.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan appeared to take a step back from his initial support for the court's move, saying on Monday, "We are against the closure of parties. We think individuals should be punished, not a [party] identity." That said, his comments are likely to have little impact, considering Turkey's history of banning political movements, and that the DTP's predecessor organization dissolved itself in 2005.

Relations were warming
There are an estimated 12 million Kurds in Turkey's population of 71 million, and a further 18 million or so are spread across Iraq, Iran, Syria and other bordering states.

An understanding that might defuse tension had been thought to have been reached earlier this year between the PKK and the Ankara government. In October, eight rebels crossed into Turkey from Iraq to surrender to a Turkish judge. Recently, the Turkish government has made moves to relax tight restrictions on the use of the Kurdish language in schools and media and by launching a state Kurdish-language TV channel, TRT 6. But recently, both sides appeared to have fallen into old ways.

Bilgic believes the recent disturbances stem from two issues - "The situation of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan in Imrali, plus the recent closure of the DTP. The government's Kurdish initiative pretty much makes a distinction between the PKK and the Kurdish issue, thus the PKK and the DTP are irked that the real aim is to liquidate the Kurdish political movement. They maintain that the problem and the PKK are inseparable, and to solve the issue the PKK or the DTP should be seen as interlocutors, which the government rules out, saying this would be bargaining with terrorists."

Security across southeast Turkey for years has been some of the tightest in the region, with well-manned gendarmerie checkpoints every few kilometers on the roads between Silopi, Mardin and Diyarbakir, the regional capital.

Once the DTP is formally banned, as is expected when the court ruling is published, many expect a replacement party to be formed, a move that has taken place several times in the past for Kurdish political groups, under similar circumstances.

"What I see from today is that the DTP will not leave and lawmakers, except Ahmet Turk and Aysel Tugluk, who are banned from politics and their parliament membership annulled, will go under the umbrella of a new party they are founding," said Bilgic.

But Bilgic fears a fraught future. "The violence may get worse, as the Kurdish movement is insistent on changing the conditions of Ocalan, while the government side cannot do it even if it wants to, due to a rising reaction from Turks. The path out may only be an enlightenment of the society about the Kurdish issue, something similar to what happened in the aftermath of apartheid rule in South Africa.

"The Turkish people should know about the state's scorched-earth policy in the region, and they don't know about it yet. But I doubt this government has either the will or the capacity to do this," said Bilgic.

Stephen Starr is a Damascus-based Irish freelance journalist.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/KL16Ag01.html