An old Kurdish adage says that “Kurds have no friends but the mountains”. A long history of persecution promoted by successive Turkish governments targeting Kurds adds weight to the argument. Among the Turkish populace, there is animosity toward Kurds: 2 in 3 Turks believe that Kurds, who make up an estimated 15-20% of the population, have a ‘‘very’’ or ‘‘somewhat’’ bad influence on Turkish society[1].

Most would certainly agree that the ongoing war between Turkish soldiers and the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK) has had a very bad influence on Turkish society. Since 1984, more than 40,000 people have died due to the conflict in the southeast of the country, where the majority of the population is Kurdish. The war triggered the displacement of 1-3 million Kurds between 1990 and 1998 under the so-called “Kurdish forced migration”[2]. Government-led military and security groups forced Kurds to abandon their villages and many were victims of “enforced disappearances”.

Thousands of civilians were killed. One clandestine organization became particularly famous for its cruel methods such as mystery killings, torture, assassinations, and excessive use of force: the Gendarmerie Intelligence and Counterterrorism Unit (JITEM). As the Der Spiegel puts it, “when members of the special Turkish police unit JITEM arrived at night, Kurdish inhabitants of southeast Turkey knew there would be another disappearance”[3].

Even 20 years later, the Immigration Monitoring Association estimates that 3,638 people lost their lives between 2015 and 2018 during long curfews imposed by the Turkish army in the southeastern region[4]. In 2016, Amnesty International called for an end to  the “draconian restrictions “ which “resemble[d] collective punishment”[5].

Furthermore, a 2017 report by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights[6] documented “serious human rights violations”, including “numerous cases of excessive use of force; killings; enforced disappearances; torture; destruction of housing and cultural heritage; incitement to hatred; prevention of access to emergency medical care, food, water and livelihoods; violence against women; and severe curtailment of the right to freedom of opinion and expression as well as political participation”. The UN calculates that some 2,000 people died between July 2015 and December 2016 and that approximately 1,200 of them were civilians. The same report shows that during this period, in which the fight against the PKK extended from the mountains to urban areas, between 355,000 to half a million (most of them Kurds) became “internally displaced people”.

Despite all this, calls for peace are oftentimes not well received. In 2016, more than 2,000 people, known collectively as the Academics for Peace, signed a petition asking for a negotiated and peaceful solution to the conflict. The signatories have since been accused of “making propaganda for a terrorist organization [PKK]”. The same year saw Ayşe Çelik, a Turkish teacher, being sentenced to 15 months in jail for “propagandizing for a terrorist organization”. Her crime? Asking for peace during a phone call on a popular Turkish TV show. Calling in to the talk show she exclaimed, “what is happening here is misrepresented on television. I cannot really say more, please don’t stay silent. Please show more sensitivity as human beings. Don’t let people die. Don’t let children die. Don’t let mothers cry”[7][8].

Ironically, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who now accuses the Academics for Peace of “treason”, is the very same person who was on the verge of reaching a historic peace agreement with the PKK. In December 2012 Erdoğan, then prime minister, announced that there were negotiations going on between state officials and Abdullah Öcalan, the jailed leader of the Kurdish militia, in order to end the PKK insurgency. A ceasefire was called by Öcalan and the PKK in March 2013; however, that ceasefire would break down in July 2015. The peace process came to an end after Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) lost its majority power in the June 2015 elections, when several attacks on Turkish policemen and soldiers were blamed on the Kurdish militant group.

The conflict’s beginnings

Following a military coup in 1980, the Turkish government launched an incredibly harsh crackdown on Kurdish people. The prison in Diyarbakır (Kurds‘ symbolic capital)  became known for the innumerous acts of torture and human rights violations taking place there after the coup. Once named one the world’s worst prisons by “Time Magazine”, inmates were, for instance, forced to eat faeces. Veteran Kurdish politician, Ahmet Türk, who was imprisoned there, claimed that the prison “was worse than Hitler’s camps” and that prisoners “suffered under torture enough that [they] wished for our death”. Gültan Kişanak, who later became mayor of Diyarbakır, says she “was kept in a dog kennel for six months because [she] refused to say ‘I am not a Kurd but a Turk’”[9].

As speaking Kurdish was forbidden all over the country, and since many of their relatives were not able to speak Turkish, many inmates were not even able to talk to their family. As one former inmate at Diyarbakır Prison recalls: “For six months I could not speak to my mother because she could not speak Turkish and I was not allowed to speak Kurdish. My mother used to visit me regularly. But all we could do was to look into each other’s’ eyes without uttering a single word… For six months I could not ask my mother how she was.”[10]

Many believe that the abysmal conditions of the prison led to the rise of the PKK. Established in 1978, the PKK launched its first armed attack in 1984 as a response to the Turkish government’s crackdown on the Kurdish people. The PKK mostly targets its attacks on Turkish security forces however, it has also been known to target civilians who refuse to cooperate or assist. Since its creation, it has been named a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union.

The socio-economic picture

The war is far from being the only problem confronting Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish southeast. A 2016 report by the Turkish Statistics Institute[11] shows that 9 out of the 10 poorest cities in Turkey are predominantly Kurdish: Batman, Bitlis, Diyarbakır, Hakkâri, Mardin, Muş, Siirt, Şanlıurfa, and Van. It does not come as a surprise that unemployment rates in the region are the highest in Turkey: on average, they are two times higher than the national rate[12]. The problem is twofold for young people in the region: in 2017, the youth unemployment rate among Kurds was 40%, compared to a national average of 21%[13].

Those most vulnerable are the hardest hit. More than half (56%) of children in the southeast of Turkey live in extreme poverty[14],the highest rate in the country. Some prevailing habits  in the region do not contribute to the improvement of the situation. For example, the ten provinces with the highest total fertility rates are all Kurdish-dominated ones[15].  Ibrahim Sirkeci, an expert on Turkey and demographics claims that the situation “has something to do with less education and also a lack of economic opportunities” especially among Kurdish women[16]. In 2017, the national average was 2.07% however, within the top ten provinces, that rate was no lower than 3% – in Şanlıurfa, the total fertility rate was 4,29%.

What awaits many of these children at school is not good: they will be taught in Turkish, and not in Kurdish, their native language. What follows are “communication problems, trauma, feelings of exclusion and shame” as Kurdish children “are less likely to succeed in school, and more likely to drop out early”[17]. A possible solution could be dual and/or multilingual schools, whereby Turkish-Kurdish bilingual education could be offered. A regional study shows that this solution is favored by more than half of southeastern residents and is even preferred to a Kurdish-only curriculum [18]. This would also require a huge effort to enroll Kurdish children in preschools where they would have the chance to learn Turkish and avoid the current situation in which many Kurds go to primary school at age 5 not knowing how to speak their country’s main language.

The southeastern province of Anatolia performs much worse than the other Turkish regions when it comes to academic performance[19]. According to Mehmet Güçlü, a researcher of regional unemployment disparities in Turkey, the low level of education attainment is “the most important factor” of the region’s high unemployment rate[20].  Functional literacy rates are extremely low (approximately 40%) compared to the rest of Turkey (90%)[21]. A 2009 study showed that almost half (46%) of Kurds had not completed primary education compared to a national average of non-primary-educated citizens of 9%[22]. Furthermore, 37% of Kurdish-speaking citizens are illiterate, a problem which is more acute among Kurdish women as 8 in 10 are either illiterate or did not finish primary school.

There are two other social issues enormously affecting women in the region. Firstly, child marriage: a third of marriages in the eastern and southeastern provinces of Turkey involve brides under the legal minimum age of marriage[23]. “Traditional considerations regarding the protection of family honor” are decisive to understanding what leads to this situation: in the southeast region of Turkey, there is still a very prevalent mentality of patriarchal family dominance, in which adult males take decisions over women and children[24].

Secondly, honor killings, in which relatives, especially girls or women, who are perceived to have brought dishonor on the family, are murdered by family members, continue to be a problem. A Turkish scholar quotes data showing that “the number of persons who committed honor killings who were born in the Eastern and Southeastern part of Turkey is much higher than the number of murderers in other regions”. This she relates to some “Arab tribal practices” prevailing in the region which “claim the right to kill women for their ‘dishonorable’ deeds”[25].

In order to deal with these two problems, as one study[26] suggests, governments, non-governmental and human rights organizations should work together to increase the educational level of both women and men and give women the means to achieve economic independence (and, consequently, less dependency) from their families. At the same time, public health and family planning organizations ought to raise awareness of the effects related to early marriage on the physical, mental and emotional well-being of young women. Furthermore, the Diyanet, Turkey’s directorate of religious affairs, could also take a more active role in denouncing this kind of behavior as religiously unacceptable. Last but not least, the high fertility rate among Kurdish women, one of the main causes of underdevelopment and poverty[27], could be tackled by promoting girls’ education and gender equality and improving the availability of contraception and family planning services.

Political developments

Millions of Kurds are continually being accused by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of voting for terrorists, as, in his view, the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) “equals the PKK”. Since the 2016 coup attempt, over 90 elected mayors of the HDP and its local sister parties in the southeast have been arrested on charges of terrorism. They were replaced by government appointees, arguably a way for the AKP to seize power in places where it cannot win elections. Before the last local polls, Erdoğan threatened to do the same: “If you happen to send the opportunities provided by the state to Qandil, we will once again, immediately and without waiting any further, appoint our trustees”[28]. Selahattin Demirtaş, the HDP’s former co-chair and former presidential candidate, along with 16 HDP lawmakers and other thousands of other members of the party were also jailed.

After the massive crackdown on media in the aftermath of the 2016 failed coup attempt, it has become harder and harder for Kurds to follow such developments and other news in Kurdish media, as a huge number of Kurdish outlets were closed and dozens of Kurdish journalists were arrested and charged with ties to the PKK[29]. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, David Kaye, said that “Kurdish media has been decimated”[30].

While the treatment of Kurds by successive Turkish governments has been horrific, one must not minimize the appalling influence of the PKK in Turkey. The organization is undoubtedly one of the main causes of several problems in the southeast region of Turkey. However, it is also wrong to view the PKK as representative of Kurdish people. For this reason, it must concern everyone that the constant attacks by the Turkish government on Kurdish movements along with the terrible socio-economic conditions described above have been attracting more and more young Kurds to the PKK[31]. A teacher told “The Guardian” that “first graders in Sur [the ancient center of Diyarbakır which was largely destroyed in 2015 during urban conflicts between the Turkish Army and the PKK] don’t dream of becoming doctors or engineers; they want to become guerrilla fighters”. Something is terribly wrong when children regard their own government as an enemy against whom they should fight.

It is hard to imagine a new peace process starting while Erdoğan’s AKP is in coalition with the ultranationalist Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi (MHP). The MHP vehemently opposed negotiation talks with the PKK some years ago and has always taken several stances against the recognition of political and cultural rights of Turkish Kurds. There has been some speculation about restarting peace talks between the government and the PKK after Abdullah Öcalan had been allowed to meet his lawyers for first time since 2011, even though it is quite likely that this was a mere electoral move by the AKP-MHP alliance to try to attract Kurdish voters ahead of June 23 elections in Istanbul.

Hence, it seems there are no political conditions for the AKP to engage in conversations with the PKK without creating a serious crisis with its coalition partner. And there is no pressure from Turkish society for it to happen, as in a public opinion survey taken shortly after the 2018 election, less than 1% of Turks cited the Kurdish problem as Turkey’s most important issue[32]. At the same time, the main opposition parties are all united against Erdoğan in the name of democracy. This includes the HDP, which makes a possible partnership between the AKP and the HDP, in which the HDP would support the AKP in exchange of the relaunch of the peace process and broaden rights for Kurds, more and more implausible. This is not to mention the smear attacks coming from AKP-MHP that equate the HDP to the PKK.

Instead, if Erdoğan decides to start conversations with the PKK and the MHP finds it reason enough to withdraw its support to the government, the Turkish president could think about calling early elections and rely on the Kurdish vote, especially in the southeast, in order to prevent the HDP from crossing the electoral threshold of 10%. Having the HDP out of the parliament would mean that the AKP, predominantly the second most voted party among Kurds (and in predominantly Kurdish regions), would get the HDP votes in the region and, almost for sure, a parliamentary majority which would allow Erdoğan’s party to govern alone.

Zehra Doğan, a Kurdish journalist and artist who was in jail for “exceeding the limits of artistic criticism”, recently asked in The Independent for “international powers (…) not [to] forget the many journalists, artists, students, academics and politicians under arrest as a result of their thoughts (…) and do what you can to help them”[33]. Many Kurds – and “pro-Kurds” – experience hell in prison every day. Those experiencing an economic, social, political and cultural hell outside of prison should not be forgotten either. In order to help them, the Turkish government, the country’s political institutions, the HDP, non-governmental and human rights organizations all need to work together and tackle these issues which are continually harming Turkey’s social cohesion. A stronger incentive from the European Union would certainly be a great contribution.

About The Author

José Miguel Rocha

José Miguel Rocha is graduated in Journalism from the University of Porto (Portugal) and did his MA in History, International Relations and Cooperation. In 2016, José did voluntary work with Syrian refugees in Turkey and then he worked at an Ankara based think-tank, SASAM. There he made extensive researches on Turkish foreign policy, Turkish communities living in Europe, religious minority communities in Turkey, the relations between Turkey and the EU and its countries, etc. He truly believes that liberal democracy is a cause worth fighting for.

[1] J. Dixon & M. Ergin, “Explaining Anti‐Kurdish Beliefs in Turkey: Group Competition, Identity, and Globalization”, Social Science Quartlerly
[2] B. Ayata, “The Politics of Displacement: A Transnational Analysis of Kurdish Forced Migration in Turkey and Europe”
[3] D. Steinvorth, “Turkey’s Dirty War against the Kurds”, Spiegel
[4] I. Erdem, Y. Tan & Z. Kibar, “Report on Human Rights Violations Against Women and Their Experiences During the Curfews and Forced Migration”, Migration Monitoring Association
[5] “Turkey: End abusive operations under indefinite curfews”, Amnesty International
[6] “Report on the human rights situation in South-East Turkey”, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
[7] “Turkish teacher jailed after call for peace set to win appeal – report”, Ahval
[8] Some days ago, Ayşe was acquitted by a Turkish court.
[9] L. Tas, N. Al-Ali & G. Kisanak, “Kurdish women’s battle continues against state and patriarchy, says first female co-mayor of Diyarbakir”, Open Democracy
[10] W. Zeydanlioglu, “Torture and Turkification in the Diyarbakır Military Prison”, Interdisciplinary Press
[11] “Kurdish cities are among the poorest in Turkey”, ANF
[12] S. Gursel & S. Koksal, “The Worst and Bests in Regional Unemployment”, Betam
[13] “Regions and Cities at a Glance 2018 – TURKEY”, OECD
[14] “38 percent of children live in extreme poverty across Turkey”, Hurriyet Daily News
[15] “Birth Statistics, 2017”, Turkish Statistical Institute
[16] P. Ghosh, “Turkey: High Kurdish Birth Rate Raises Questions About Future”, International Business Times
[17] C. Letsch, “Mandatory Turkish puts Kurdish pupils at disadvantage”, The Guardian
[18] B.A. Olmaz, “Toplumsal Sorunlar ve Yeni Anayasa”
[19] H. Gül, “Türkiye’nin Eğitim Sorunları, AKP’nin Eğitime Bakışı ve Çözüm Önerileri”, Toplum ve Demokrasi
[20] M. Güçlü, “Regional Unemployment Disparities in Turkey”, Romanian Journal of Economic Forecasting
[21] Sophia Pandya in “The Hizmet Movement and Peacebuilding”, pp. 138
[22] N. Baysal, “Turkish schools leave Kurdish students behind”, Ahval
[23] “Third of marriages in eastern Turkey involve child brides”, Hurriyet Daily News
[24] M. Ertem & T. Kocturk, “Opinions on early-age marriage and marriage customs among Kurdish-speaking women in southeast Turkey”, Journal of Family Planning and Reproductive Health Care
[25] S. Cesur Kılıçaslan, “Honor Killings in Turkey”, International Journal of Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies
[26] M. Ertem & T. Kocturk.
[27] J.D. Sachs, “Lower Fertility: a Wise Investment”, Scientific American
[28] D. Jones, “Erdogan Threatens to Reverse Local Election Results”, VOA News
[29] D. Phillips, “Collapse of rule of law in Erdoğan’s Turkey”, Ahval
[30] D. Kaye, “Commentary: The high price of Turkey’s ‘witch-burning’ crackdown”, Reuters
[31] C. Letsch, “In a devastated Turkish town, teenagers dream of joining the Kurdish guerrillas”, The Guardian
[32] A. Makovsky, “Turkey’s Refugee Dilemma”, Center for American Progress
[33] Z. Dogan, “I was just released from prison in Turkey because of my art, but I refuse to be silenced”, Independent

There are many children’s rights violations in current-day Turkey. Pregnant and new mothers are being illegally detained, with 700 children under the age of six now in jail. Others under the age of eighteen face long periods of pre-trial detention and torture. Syrian child refugees, an at-risk population, are being subjected to sexual abuse, child labour, and other rights abuses. Child marriage remains a large concern, leading to further issues such as domestic violence, health issues, and impediments to education and employment. Nevertheless, it is encouraged by authorities. The Turkish government has also shown an unwillingness to address children in prison, and has not done enough to protect Syrian child refugees. This is by no means an exhaustive account of violations against children’s rights in Turkey, but are considered the most pressing issues which must be addressed immediately.

Download “Violations Against Children’s Rights”

About The Author

Philip Bernard Kowalski

Philip Kowalski is an US based researcher, did his postgraduate degree at the London School of Oriental and African Studies, where he studied Kurdish history. He previously lived in Turkey from 2012-2016, during which he traveled extensively across Turkey, the Kurdish southeast, and the Syrian-Turkish border, where he witnessed the rise and fall of the peace process between the Turkish government and the PKK.

March 21st is the one day of the year when normally taboo activities such as the wearing of Kurdish colors, waving flags with Abdullah Öcalan’s grimacing face, or chanting Kurdish language slogans happens en-mass.  This privilege is not granted by the state, but rather earned due to the critical mass that Kurds achieve with each Newroz.

In Diyarbakır, the largest Kurdish majority city in Turkey, roughly one million Kurds participate in the yearly celebrations.  In Istanbul, the largest Kurdish city by population in the world, an assertive spectacle of Kurdish identity is performed to the Turkish majority as public transportation is filled to the brim with Kurds making their way to Kazlıçeşme Square.

March 21, 2018, marked a difficult Newroz for the Kurdish community.  The recent loss of Afrin, Syria, to Turkish forces and their FSA (Free Syrian Army) allies has been an extremely bitter development, and in conjuncture with the humiliating loss of Kirkuk, Iraq, in the previous year, Kurds cannot help but feel that both the international community and their own fortune has abandoned them.

In the Iraqi city of Süleymaniye, local authorities canceled Newroz activities in order to lament the loss of Afrin. Meanwhile in Turkey, festivities went ahead.  While the Kurds of Turkey are particularly mournful and humiliated by the fall of Afrin, the angry atmosphere has been united with the need to celebrate Newroz after a two-year ban on celebrations imposed by the Turkish state, giving way to an exceptionally fervent and tense festival.

The right to celebrate Newroz is a right that Turkish Kurds have fiercely defended.  While both Turks and Kurds celebrated Newroz during Ottoman times, the festival was banned in the aftermath of the founding of the Turkish Republic, whose intellectuals deemed the holiday as un-Turkish.  The prohibition of Newroz was part of a larger wave of cultural engineering that saw the imposition of Turkish customs and language upon Kurdish citizens.

              As the 20^th century progressed, Kurdish nationalism within Turkey began to crystalize.  Kurdish intellectuals emphasized the mythological Iranian heritage of their people, which stood in stark contrast to Turkish identity.  Newroz was branded as a distinctly ancient Iranian celebration, and one that the Kurds could track their own participation in all the way back to their alleged Meden ancestors of antiquity. 

Kurdish nationalism also facilitated the creation of the PKK in the 1970s, setting the stage for the ongoing conflict between it and the Turkish state, which resulted in even further restrictions on Kurdish cultural expression.  Bolstered by the Kurdish desire to assert their culture, Newroz celebrations took on a subversive and extremely politicized nature.

This open display of dissent came at a high cost.  The Turkish state was all too eager to display its intolerance towards spectacles of Kurdish identity, and each March 21^st of the year came with news reports of Kurdish deaths and arrests, as well as untold property damage.  The infamous Newroz of 1992 was particularly violent, with an estimated 100+ casualties and a still unknown number of forced disappearances.  For Kurds, Newroz was a reminder that the state hated them, and for Turks, Newroz was viewed as proof of the insubordinate and violent nature of the Kurds.

In the 1990s, the Turkish state, growing increasingly frustrated by the situation, sought to appropriate Newroz.  Taking notice that Azeris and Iraqi Turkmen (fellow Turkic people closely related to Turks) celebrated Newroz, Turkey legalized Newroz celebrations but named the holiday Nevruz and claimed it to be a Turkic holiday all along.  Kurds were both unimpressed and insulted.

Furthermore, celebrations spelled as Newroz were still banned.  Since 2000, there have been two March 21st festivals in Turkey; there’s Nevruz, with its Turkish nationalist family oriented overtones in addition to state sanctioning and funding, and Kurdish Newroz, with its leftist and subversive atmosphere and significantly larger turnout.  The Turkish state has since then clung to the hope that Kurds will eventually abandon their version of the holiday in favor of the state-sanctioned one.

A more effective effort by the Turkish state to improve the situation was the legalization of the Kurdish version of Newroz itself in 2005.  While the legalization has not totally ended the annual violence and arrests, it has done much to pacify the celebrations.  Since 2005, each Newroz has taken on an increasingly carnivalesque atmosphere, especially in the aftermath of the March 21^st 2013 ceasefire announcement between the PKK and the state (which was addressed from Abdullah Öcalan to the Newroz crowd of Diyarbakır via a letter read out loud).

               The legalization of Newroz has also given space for non-Kurdish topics to be discussed, as issues such LGBTQ and women’s rights have taken a central stage in the holiday’s identity.  Turkish Leftists, Alevis, Shia, Armenians, and Assyrians have also found space in recent Newroz celebrations, in part due to the HDP’s (People’s Democratic Party) efforts to build a coalition between the minorities of Turkey.

Unfortunately, this new phase of Newroz celebrations is now in a threatened position.  On several occasions the government has arbitrarily banned Newroz celebrations, forcing Kurds to participate in the manner they did before 2005 and receiving the same violent clampdown from the state in return.

In both 2016 and 2017, Newroz was banned in the aftermath of the reignition of the Turkish-PKK conflict.  Diyarbakır’s 2017 celebration was particularly violent, resulting in mass arrests and the extrajudicial killing of Kurdish violinist Kemal Korkut.  While Newroz celebrations were permitted this year, there is no telling if this will be the exception or the norm for future March 21sts.

                This Newroz was marked with a tense atmosphere, as much of the energy was channeled as anger towards the Turkish state and its fresh conquest of Afrin.  More than 100 arrests were made of suspected PKK members, and more were detained for chanting pro-PKK slogans. 

Having long suppressed Newroz celebrations, the Turkish state missed out on the opportunity to craft the holiday’s character, allowing the Kurdish community to give it its current shape and subversive nature.  The lack of enthusiasm for the state-sanctioned Nevruz shows that their efforts to appropriate the holiday have come too little, too late.  Should Kurdish identity ever become fully normalized and legalized within Turkey, then perhaps Newroz will take on a more conventional and non-Kurdish character.

However, with President Erdoğan’s recent embrace of Turkish nationalist sentiment and his abandonment of any pretense of tolerance towards Kurds, this change is not likely to come during his rule.  As long as the conflict between the PKK and the Turkish state persists, Newroz will be mired in violence, regardless of its now-legalized status.

Opinions represented at PPJ are belong solely to the contributor of the piece and do not represent any other people, institutions or organizations that the contributor may or may not be associated with in professional or personal capacity, unless explicitly stated. ]]> 3177 https://platformpj.org/diyarbakirs-tragedy-displays-akps-distaste-for-multiculturalism/ Mon, 12 Mar 2018 14:47:24 +0000 https://platformpj.org/?p=2952  

Diyarbakır is a city unlike any other in Turkey.  With the second longest set of historic walls in the world that enclose its densely packed antique core, it rivals better known Middle Eastern cities with the sheer magnificence of its architectural heritage.  Unlike many other cities in Turkey, which have had their historic structures destroyed to make way for concrete high-rise modernity, Diyarbakır’s historic center, known as Sur, has managed to retain its traditional character, being recently awarded UNESCO World Heritage recognition.

With its structural heritage giving way to an evocative, quintessentially Mesopotamian atmosphere, Diyarbakır should by all means be one of the most popular destinations in the world; instead, within Turkey, it is branded as a backwards and dangerous place.  Diyarbakır is also unique amongst Turkish cities in its misfortune.

The symptom of Diyarbakır’s tragedy is easy to identify – the majority of its inhabitants are Kurdish.  To further complicate the matter is the inconvenient detail that many of its inhabitants are also Armenians.  Prior to 1915, Armenians were one of the most significant portions of the population, and many Armenian intellectuals considered Diyarbakır to be the most important Armenian center in the Ottoman Empire.  The Armenian Genocide saw Diyarbakır hit particularly hard, but it did not entirely end the Armenian presence in the city; many Armenians converted to Islam as a means to escape persecution, in addition to those who were forced to convert by local Muslims who kidnapped them.

After the genocide, the Turkish Republic, founded in 1923, inherited a new problem – Diyarbakır was now overwhelmingly Kurdish.  The Turkish state, with its monoethnic and monolinguistic nation-state project, sought to “Turkify” its Kurdish population.  The Kurdish population resisted, resulting in a fierce rebellion in 1925 that was brutally quelled.  Subsequently, Turkey made Diyarbakır the focal point in its effort to modernize and Turkify the Kurdish southeast, the most economically backwards and uneducated region of the Republic.

With Kurdish ethnic expression strictly forbidden and economic development virtually non-existent, the Kurdish problem erupted once again in the 1970’s with the rise of the PKK (Kurdistan Worker’s Party), plunging Diyarbakır into a now-familiar cycle of violence.

With an estimated 40,000 deaths since the 1970s and untold economic damages, the conflict between the PKK and the Turkish state has been modern Turkey’s largest challenge.  It has also resulted in generations of distrust between Turks and Kurds, a tension which has played out as Kurds have emigrated to Western Turkish cities such as Istanbul, Izmir, and Ankara as a way to escape the violence and earn better wages.

After decades of conflict, the status quo began to cool in the 2000’s, cumulating in the declaration of a ceasefire on March 21, 2013 by imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan that was subsequently accepted by Prime Minister Erdoğan.  For Diyarbakır, this slowing down and eventual cessation of hostilities allowed for unprecedented improvement of its social and economic woes.

Making Amends

In 2004, Abdullah Demirbaş, a Kurd, was elected mayor of the Sur municipality.  Amongst politicians within Turkey, Demirbaş was unusual in his cosmopolitan aspirations.  Seeking to restore Diyarbakır’s historic grandeur after decades of destruction amidst the PKK conflict, Demirbaş advocated for his municipality to focus on the restoration of historic structures.  Mansions, mosques, gardens, and most controversially, churches, were given badly needed professional attention and resources.

Demirbaş didn’t limit his cosmopolitan ideology to structures; Kurdish, Armenian, and Assyrian identity were all encouraged, perhaps being epitomized in the Sur city hall being marked by a large sign in the Turkish, Kurdish, Armenian, and Assyrian languages, an extraordinarily taboo move in a country that pushes for a monocultural identity.  Demirbaş’s innovations were viewed as separatist provocations by many in Ankara, and he was jailed on several occasions for what was deemed as terrorist propaganda.

Still, every time Demirbaş was released, he continued his work.  The crown jewel of Demirbaş’s efforts was the reconstruction of Diyarbakır’s Surp Giragos Church, the largest Armenian church in the region.  Derelict since the 1970s, Demirbaş and his allies oversaw a faithful restoration of the church, which was reopened in 2011, quickly becoming one of the main draws to the city, pulling in tourists from Turkey and abroad.  Furthermore, the reconstruction once again turned Diyarbakır into the center of Armenian life in Turkey.  For the descendants of Armenian converts to Islam, the church served as a means to reconnect with their Armenian heritage, and many of the city’s crypto-Armenian inhabitants felt safe to once again identify as Armenian.

In April of 2012 and 2015, significant memorial events were held in Diyarbakır commemorating the Armenian Genocide, generously sponsored by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, a Portuguese organization which dedicates a large portion of its funding to Armenian cultural events.  The openness with which the Genocide was discussed and remembered would have been impossible in any other city in Turkey.  Of the reforms, British-Armenian intellectual Ara Sarafian said “…the city authorities did everything they could to retain the memory – if not recreate the reality of Diyarbakır’s Armenians…Armenians were not strangers in those lands, but lost custodians.”

In combination with the peace process, Diyarbakır was finally beginning to gain the recognition it so well deserved.  New businesses were opening, the city expanding, and the infrastructure was modernizing.  One Diyarbakır-born transplant to Istanbul expressed his amazement at how nightlife had become so exceptional for a city within the traditionally conservative Turkish southeast; with bars being opened up in the numerous restored mansions, serving up local Assyrian and Armenian-made wines and meze. Tourists arrived from Izmir and Istanbul, returning to the west with rapturous remarks on what they discovered. The perception that Diyarbakır was a backwater to be avoided began to change.

For Demirbaş, it was part of a wider vision.  As he told Open Democracy, “…we were trying to make Sur reflect its own historical roots, because it is estimated that Sur is historically over eight or nine thousand years old and that over thirty-three different cultures have thrived there. Sur is the largest part of Diyarbakır, making Diyarbakır a multi-cultural, multi-identity, and multi-vocal city. But this remarkable diversity was denied at the foundation of the Turkish Republic, which consists only of a single nation, with a single language, and a single religion.

So we wanted to rehabilitate all of these diverse fragments which have been under the shadow of destruction and keep them alive for the future…We also wanted to give a model of peace to the Middle East, because the Middle East is constructed of different linguistic, religious, and racial groups. We plan to make Diyarbakır, and especially Sur, the center of Middle Eastern peacemaking.”

*Philip Bernard Kowalski is a US based researcher who completed his MA at the London School of Oriental and African Studies, where he studied Kurdish history. He previously lived in Turkey from 2012-2016, during which he traveled extensively across Turkey, the Kurdish southeast, and the Syrian-Turkish border, where he witnessed the rise and fall of the peace process between the Turkish government and the PKK.

In theory, Turkey is quite progressive when it comes to women’s rights. Both domestic laws and international agreements provide for safety and equality. In 2012, Turkey was the first country to ratify the CoE Istanbul Convention on preventing violence against women. However, in practice, Turkish women’s rights are a dismal state of affairs. In fact, the 2017 World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report ranked Turkey as 131 out of 144 countries, using measures of economic participation, educational attainment, health, and political empowerment. Violence against women also remains a major concern. Patriarchal attitudes and cultural norms, reinforced even by officials, continue to precipitate violence and inequality. So how do women’s rights fair in the country where the President himself has, on several occasions, claimed that men and women could not be equal because it is “against nature”?

Reporting on Women’s Rights

Just yesterday, on the eve on International Women’s Day 2018, President Erdogan blamed the media for the rise in cases of violence against women, calling on them to stop reporting on the topic. Ironically, a report released by Reporters Without Borders today details how in many countries, including Turkey, women’s rights are a forbidden subject. For example, Turkish feminist news website Şûjin was shut down in August 2017 under the state of emergency. Before its closure, Şûjin and its writers often received threatening calls due to their reports on violence against women. It has continued operations under the name Jin News (Kurdish for women) but is only accessible in Turkey with a VPN.

Another example came last Sunday, when a women’s rights march was met with police firing tear gas and the detention of 15 women. Despite the hardship facing those who attempt to shed light on women’s rights, and indeed facing journalists and rights defenders in Turkey as a whole, there are many brave citizens who continue to fight for safety and equality for all.

Violence Against Women

The We Will Stop Femicides Platform has tirelessly worked to track violence against women since 2010. They reported 409 victims of femicide in 2017. So far in 2018, 28 were murdered in January and 47 in February. Femicide appears to be increasing, with ‘justifications’ including the woman requesting separation or divorce, suspicion of infidelity, and other honour killings. The Platform also found that 332 women were subjected to sexual abuse in 2017.

The Hacettepe University Institute of Population Studies conducts sexennial nationwide surveys on Domestic Violence Against Women in Turkey. Their most recent, from 2014, found that four out of ten women are exposed to sexual or physical violence. Only one out of ten sought help. When help was sought, it was generally from police, in which only 23% of cases resulted in any interference. When men are taken to court, it is a regular occurrence to receive reduced penalties for reasons like ‘good appearance or behaviour’ (wearing a suit or showing remorse) or because the woman ‘dressed provocatively’.

The survey further found that three out of ten women in Turkey are married before the age of 18 (the majority to a man five or more years older), with half of this cohort exposed to violence. On this note, legislation has recently been passed allowing muftis – religious officials from Diyanet, which has commented that girls as young as nine can marry – to conduct civil marriage ceremonies. These 2014 Hacettepe figures had not changed significantly since the same survey was conducted in 2008, and are unlikely to change before 2020. Related to this violence is the inequality women face in education and employment.

Education and Employment

As mentioned, the World Economic Forum has revealed the massive gender gap that still exists in Turkey. Further statistics, obtained from the Turkish Statistical Institute, show that although 83% of women had completed at least one education level (compared to 95% of men) only 14% went on to graduate from higher education. The Hacettepe survey found that one third of girls in Turkey were prevented from going to school by their families. Of the 5% of Turkey’s population over 25 years old that is illiterate, it is almost exclusively women. Erhan Ekmekci, an AKP politician, has commented that “When girls get educated, boys are not able to find someone to marry”.

The Turkish Statistical Institute emphasises that education status directly impacts employment rate. Indeed, only 28% of women over 15 years of age are employed, compared to 65% of men. The proportion of females in management positions is 17%. The Hacettepe survey found that 11% of women were prevented from working by their families. The prevalence of traditional cultural values assuming the women’s role as a housewife contributes to a lack of participation in education and the workforce.

Abortion and Birth Control

Although theoretically legal in Turkey, women have an extremely hard time obtaining abortions. Public (government) clinics tend to only proceed if the mother is in medical danger, and private clinics are expensive. Rape does not seem to be an exception, with Minister of Health Recep Akdağ stating that “raped women should give birth to the child, the state takes care of the baby”. This gap between law and reality is further reflected in comments made by Erdogan, who considers abortion as murder. In his 2008 International Women’s Day speech, Erdogan advised women to have at least three, preferably five, children, calling childless women “deficient” and “incomplete”. He has also criticised birth control, calling it “treason” and an attempt to lead Turkish people to extinction.

Women Since the 2016 Coup Attempt

No overview of human rights in current day Turkey can ignore the effects of the July 2016 coup attempt. The subsequent crackdown has impacted all levels of society, including women. Shockingly, over 17,000 women are currently in prison for charges related to the coup. Indictments include ‘crimes’ as simple as receiving pay checks from Bank Asya, using ByLock, or subscribing to the newspaper Zaman. Numerous studies have shown how detention poses unique problems for women, the most visible in Turkey being the effects on their children. Indeed, over 700 babies are currently in prison alongside their mothers.

Likewise, female relatives of men deemed ‘traitors’ have been targeted. Veysel Taskin, executive of the Trabzonspor soccer club, tweeted on the day after the coup attempt that “The properties and the wives of the infidel coup-plotting bastards are spoils of war”. A video has shown a police officer ask an imprisoned soldier whether he has a daughter, threatening “I’ll f*** her”. Other reports of torture allege similar threats to wives and daughters. Women human rights defenders and journalists have also been persecuted in the post-coup crackdown.

Overall, on this International Women’s Day 2018, women’s rights in Turkey still have a long way to go. Under Erdogan and the AKP, it is unlikely that the seemingly progressive domestic laws and international agreements will put into practice.

*Leighann Spencer is editor at PPJ.

Author

Anthony Derisiotis

Dr Anthony Derisiotis is a lecturer of Turkey and the Middle East, at the Department of Turkish and Modern Asian studies, of the National and Capodistrian University of Athens. He has graduated from the Department of Turkish Studies of the University of Cyprus and got his MA and PhD from the University of Birmingham, UK. He teaches Turkish political history and foreign policy. His publications and research interests include Turkish domestic and foreign politics, with a special focus in the Middle East and the United States, as well as the Kurdish issue. He has previously held a research associate position at the Hellenic House of Parliament.

The AKP’s rise to power in 2002, brought along its commitment to address the longstanding Kurdish issue, by underlining the need for a different approach as compared to that of the kemalist administrations. However, the government’s promises were overshadowed by its hesitation on implementing ethnic-linguistic rights to the Kurds, legislation voted by the outgoing coalition government in 2002; it was only by 2009 that these became possible, whereas political propaganda during election campaigns in languages other than Turkish, was legalised in April 2010.

The government policy to address the issue through negotiations can be summarised in three separate attempts. First, was the 2009 initiative, which included a reform and
reconciliation process and wide-ranging amnesty for PKK rebels and was linked to the 2010 referendum for a more democratic constitution. The initiative received strong criticism, both from the nationalist opposition parties and the pro-Kurdish DTP. The Kurdish rejection was based on the exclusion of their principal demands from the constitutional reform package and the prosecution of a number of Kurds involved in politics, such as mayors, activists and trade union members.

The second attempt, was the “Oslo meetings”, a series of secret meetings between Turkish officials and the PKK that run from 2005-2011 and aimed at PKK disarmament. The Turkish government denied Öcalan’s involvement and PM Erdoğan made clear that he would never accept the PKK as the representative of the Turkish Kurds. However, he could not avoid the embarrassment, when an audio recording of a meeting between MİT director, Hakan Fidan, and PKK officials wanted by the Turkish state, leaked to the public after the June 2011 elections. The government wanted to avoid infuriating the nationalist and ultranationalist feelings, which were now considered potential electoral supporters.

The third attempt was a round of informal peace negotiations with the PKK leadership and the pro-Kurdish BDP, called Solution Process, towards the end of 2013. PKK leader A. Öcalan called for an end to the armed conflict and PKK’s acting leader, M. Karayılan, enforced an indefinite ceasefire on PKK operations, while the Turkish armed forces suspended their operations on the Qandil Mountains in north Iraq. Bringing the PKK and the BDP at the same table of negotiations was Ankara’s recognition of the BDP as the official political wing of the PKK, something that the Turkish governments have been strongly denying to do and also the main reason for the ban on a series of pro-Kurdish political parties in 24 years. Consequently, this radical change from Turkey’s traditional practice produced strong negative reaction from the nationalist political parties. The Solution Process was abruptly terminated after the June 2015 elections with an official declaration that “there no longer existed a Kurdish issue” and that “all possible rights had already been granted”.

The first glimpses of Erdoğan’s change of policy are traced in his November 2008 Diyarbakır comment about “One nation, one flag, one motherland and one state” that unsettled the Kurdish population and partially led to the resignation of the AKP’s deputy leader of Kurdish origin, Dengir Mir Mehmet Firat. By 2011, the AKP’s strategy has shifted to securing nationalist votes rather than Kurdish ones, in contrary to 2007. The secrecy in the Oslo meetings meant that the government wanted to avoid publicity, since any kind of official negotiations with the PKK would severely undermine the AKP’s influence on nationalist voters. Therefore, there was little room for political concessions to the Kurds from the government’s side and its strategy was leading to a dead-end. In the June 2015 elections, the AKP’s failure to secure the majority of the seats was blamed to the rise of the Kurdish HDP and to the loss of nationalist votes to the MHP; this marked the end of Erdoğan’s alternative approach to the Kurdish issue or to what Kerem Öktem calls “pragmatic problem management, misunderstood by many as a major softening in Turkey’s security-minded Kurdish policy”. Since then, state policy towards the Kurds has returned to the security-oriented kemalist approach, with the Kobani crisis also playing its role.

PM Ahmed Davutoğlu’s 2016 action plan focused on public order and socio-economic conditions in the southeast provinces, while it did not respond to the political and democratic demands of the Kurds, it blocked HDP from all consultation mechanisms where the problems of the region would be discussed and made clear that the PKK would not play any part in this process. However, his disagreement with President Erdoğan regarding the resumption of the negotiations with the PKK, was partly to blame for his ousting from the government. His resignation was soon followed by a crackdown on HDP politicians, including MPs and party leaders. Since then, Turkey was plunged into the whirlwind of Erdoğan’s autocracy under the shadow of the coup attempt that includes widespread demonization and purge of dissidents, human rights violations, restrictions and curfews in the southeast.

After the AKP-MHP cooperation for the 2017 constitutional referendum, the two parties are closing in on an election alliance, in view of the 2019 general elections. President Erdoğan is simply not interested to target the root causes of the Kurdish issue. He wants the nationalists’ support and he has been pursuing it by aligning himself with the MHP’s view of the Kurdish issue; that includes politically eradicating the HDP and returning to strictly security-oriented policies for the PKK, which are currently extended into Syria, although the Afrin invasion should not be limited to Ankara’s PKK-PYD affiliation claims. Under these conditions, one should not expect any softening in the government policy towards the Kurds and the Kurdish issue, at least until the forthcoming general elections, simply because the nationalist vote is fundamental in Erdoğan’s strategy to secure the win in the new presidential Turkish republic he has curved.

Dr Anthony Derisiotis is a lecturer of Turkey and the Middle East, at the Department of Turkish and Modern Asian studies, of the National and Capodistrian University of Athens. He has graduated from the Department of Turkish Studies of the University of Cyprus and got his MA and PhD from the University of Birmingham, UK. He teaches Turkish political history and foreign policy. His publications and research interests include Turkish domestic and foreign politics, with a special focus in the Middle East and the United States, as well as the Kurdish issue. He has previously held a research associate position at the Hellenic House of Parliament. ]]> 2913 https://platformpj.org/freedom-press-chinese-turkish-convergence/ Tue, 20 Feb 2018 11:08:12 +0000 https://platformpj.org/?p=2873  

On August 3, 2017, the Turkish and the Chinese foreign ministers, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu and Wang Yi, met in Beijing to discuss ways to strengthen the relationship between the two countries. At the press conference at the end of the meeting, the Turkish minister stated that the Turkish government would eliminate any report in the Turkish media criticizing China, adding that the Turkish government took China’s security as Turkey’s security. The particular subject under discussion was the newspaper articles about China’s Uyghurs minority.

The Uyghurs are an ethnically Turkish Islamic-Sunni minority living in the Xinjiang region in northwest China. This minority is in constant conflict with the central government in Beijing over its demand for a separate and independent state. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of them have fled Xinjiang to Turkey, a country many of them view, or better say – saw, as friendly due to their common religious and cultural foundations as well as its traditional support to the Uyghurs.

Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has said in the past that “the Uyghurs represent Turkey’s original, ancient culture”. Erdogan has seen himself as protector of the Uyghurs and has attacked the Chinese regime many times in its manner of dealing with the Uyghurs. In 2009, for example, Erdoğan said in regards of the violent riots in the Xinjiang region that the Uyghurs were facing a genocide and called on the Chinese government not to be a mere bystander.

However, last year, Erdoğan has changed his tune regards to the Uyghurs issue. He initiated the tightening of the relations between Turkey and China, the peak of which was the meeting of the foreign ministers and the Turkish declaration considering China’s security as akin to the security of Turkey.

The Turkish president’s desire to strengthen the relationship with China is comprehensible and legitimate. Erdoğan knows quite well that Turkey’s geographic location, a continental connection between Europe and Asia, is extremely important to the Chinese “Belt and Road Initiative”, and could, therefore, result in closer Turkish cooperation with China and thus provide with greater power for him and his country. It is this calculation that brought him to look towards the future rather than the past with regard to the Uyghurs minority.

Furthermore, America’s failure (or failure of the US) to solve the conflicts in the Middle East and its surrender to Iran on the nuclear deal substantially dampened Turkey’s interest in being part of the bloc of countries traditionally led by the US. Ankara’s repeated failure to be accepted by the EU has pushed the Turkish leadership to the understanding that Turkey simply does not belong to the group of countries usually referred to as “western;” i.e., countries with western values.

As mentioned, in order to get close to China the Turkish president sacrificed those who, according to him, is the “Turkey’s original, ancient culture”, the Uyghur minority.  He has done this through additional restrictions on freedom of the press in Turkey. These restrictions were added to closing down of nearly 150 media outlets, and to the arrest of around 160 journalists after the failed coup attempt on July 15th, 2016.  The last restriction is only a symptom of the way Erdoğan uses his power to achieve his party’s and personal goals, and of his habit to change his commitments from one to another, -in this case from the Uyghurs to the Chinese leadership-. The strengthening of the relationship between his regime and China may help him to keep the power in his hands in the coming years with the economic and political benefits this relationship holds.

The narrowing of the press freedom in Turkey, becomes more and more worrisome for the Turkish citizens and the whole democratic countries have been watching very dangerous processes in Turkey without doing enough to urge the Turkish leadership to keep balance and receptivity. The Western world should awake and see what is going on in Turkey and find ways to support the moderate Turkish to have more influence on the regime. To this end, the first step should be to support and protect the freedom of the press.

*Roie Yellinek is a doctoral student in the department of Middle East Studies at Bar-Ilan University, a fellow at the Kohelet Policy Forum and China-Med Project, and a freelance journalist. ]]> 2873 https://platformpj.org/kurds-demand-self-determination-resonates-positively-european-public-self-determination-key-liberal-value/ Sun, 28 Jan 2018 15:56:36 +0000 https://platformpj.org/?p=2804 PART2

First part of our interview with prof. Mehmet Ugur, a member of Academics for Peace Initiative, has received much attention.

Today we publish the second part of the interview.

In this part, Prof. Ugur shares with us his opinion on Turkey’s EU membership process and the renewal of the Customs Union Agreement, arrest of Kurdish MPs and the EU’s current Kurdish policy.

You argue that Turkey’s EU Membership process should be frozen until its democracy is fully restored.

However, European leaders nowadays tend to act otherwise by renewing the Customs Union Agreement.  Although the renewal pushes the membership issue further down the EU agenda and limits the relations to the economic domain, it will surely be a gift to Erdogan while Turkey’s economy is faltering due to bad governance and political turmoil.

What do you think the impacts of this renewal will be on democracy and human rights in Turkey?

I have analysed the relationship between the European Union (EU) and Turkey as an anchor-credibility dilemma.  The framework has enabled me to see beyond the smokescreen created by political rhetoric on both sides.

On the one hand, the Turkish ruling elite has declared intentions to join the EU but it always refrained from democratisation reforms and did not want to tie its hands through various versions of the EU conditionality. On the other hand, the EU has proved to be incapable of anchoring Turkey’s democratisation reforms through a transparent framework of rewards and sanctions – even though it has declared ‘commitment’ to Turkey’s integration in the EU.

I have also criticised the EU’s open-ended membership framework of 2005 for reducing the probability of meaningful reforms in Turkey (and other candidate countries) and for weakening the prospect of the latter’s EU membership.

The ‘special partnership’ option in that framework has been designed to cater for the preferences of the conservative European elite. In contrast to European progressives who have been in favour of integrating Turkey in return for democratisation reforms, the conservative European elite has always been in favour of keeping Turkey in the European orbit mainly for trade, investment and security transactions.

In this vision, the quality of democracy in Turkey or the fate of civil society actors fighting for democracy and rule of law in the country has been of secondary importance at best and an unwanted source of complication at worst.

What we observe now is yet another manifestation of this hypocrisy, marketed as ‘real politic’ or ‘statecraft’. That is why in a couple of interventions in December 2016 and April 2017, I have argued against deepening of the customs union and called for suspension of the EU-Turkey membership negotiations.

From a European perspective, suspension was (and still is) necessary because we have damning reports on the scale of violations documented by European institutions and the European Parliament’s has made a call to that effect. A suspension conditional on returns to democracy would have checked the AKP elite’s authoritarian drift and strengthened the hands of the pro-EU forces who also tend to be suffering from oppression. Such a decision would have also sent the right signals to international investors.

Instead, the EU, led by Merkel of Germany and supported by a plethora of think tanks and ‘policy advisers’, opted otherwise. It signalled to the AKP regime that it can have as much as it wants when it comes to trade and arms deals – irrespective of what treatment the Turkish regime accords to its citizens.

The conservative European elite wanted to kill two birds with one stone:

(i) protect or increase their countries’ share in the lucrative business/arms market in Turkey; and

(ii) push the prospect of Turkey’s EU membership into a distant future, or killing it altogether.

It is sad but true: currently, Europe is ruled by a political elite that do not show a credible concern about the human, institutional and moral costs of such a short-sighted policy. This policy has done nothing but bolstering a dictatorial regime at the gates of Europe – and under the gaze of European institutions established to uphold democracy and rule of law.

This is why European civil society is the last line of defence in the struggle for democracy and rule of law. European progressives have been making the right voices and calling for the right course of actions against the AKP regime: urope should use its leverage to strengthen democracy and rule of law in Turkey – and this should not be conditional on short-term electoral or trade/investment costs-benefits.

I hope these calls will inspire the wider and increasingly vocal sections of the European civil society – including academics, professional associations, trades unions, teachers, students, etc. – to pressure their governments and their political representatives to act in accordance with democratic values. This will be a win-win option, in the sense that the threat of authoritarianism will be defeated both within Turkey and within the wider Europe.

Kurds have long been bashed and suppressed in Turkey. In European platforms, the Kurdish issue attracts significant attention in rhetoric but even the arrest of Selahattin Demirtas and HDP MPs seems to have been somehow accepted even if not approved.

What would you like to say about Europe’s current Kurdish policy?

I am not a student of Kurdish politics or history. So instead of providing my own summary of the Kurdish issue in Turkey, I would like to draw the attention of your readers to two works by two Academics for Peace colleagues who are experts in the area:

Cengiz Gunes’s The Kurdish Question in Turkey: New Perspectives on Violence, Representation and Reconciliation and Veli Yadirgi’s The Political Economy of the Kurds of Turkey: From the Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic.

In these works, there is both historical and current evidence on Turkish elite’s discrimination against the Kurds and its hostility towards their ambitions for self-determination, which is spelled out as autonomy rather than secession. The discrimination and hostility have always had economic, political, cultural and military dimensions at varying proportions.

The Kurds’ demand for self-determination resonates positively with the European public because self-determination is a key liberal value. In addition, the Kurds in Syria and Iraq have been fighting against Jihadi terrorism; protecting and building alliances with vulnerable minorities such as Yezidis, Christians and Assyrians; and placing a significant emphasis on gender equality. It is in this context that one needs to read the news about European fighters among the ranks of the People’s Protection Units (YPG) and Women’s Defence Units (YPJ) in Rojava (Western Kurdistan in Syria).

In contrast, the European governments only pay a lip service to the contributions of the Kurds in the fight against (and defeat of) ISIS. Instead, they appease the Turkish government. The evidence on the ground clearly demonstrates that European governments have sided with, or tuned a blind eye to, aggression by the Turkish government against the Kurds. This was evident in the case of the hostility towards the referendum in Southern Kurdistan in Iraq and its massive military crackdown in Northern Kurdistan in Turkey.

But the most shameful example of failure on the part of the European governments concerns their silence against the arrest of Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) co-chairs and MPs; and the confiscation of locally-elected municipalities in Kurdish cities and towns by the Turkish government.

The politicide (political genocide) against these elected representatives is driven by a Turko-Islamic political project aimed at maximising the oppressive nature of the Turkish state and place it at the heart of a religio-fascistic polity, where the institutions of market relations, patriarchy, religion, neighbourhoods, etc. are all reshaped to ensure obedience to political authority and punish dissent.

Therefore, I have no doubt that we should accuse our governments for leaving the elected representatives, the HDP co-chairs and the elected mayors to their own devices in the face of an evil political project determined to crash all sources of dissent – one by one and in an order that suits the regime’s interests.

The same can be said about academics, journalists, human rights defenders, and ordinary citizens too. The only ‘crime’ that this wide range of actors has committed is to have a strong and honourable commitment to democracy, justice and rule of law – values that European governments also claim to uphold.

In a recent conference organised by Solidarity with the Peoples of Turkey (SPOT), one commentator voiced the following concern: how can we consider ourselves as free in Europe when elected representatives, dissenting academics, truth-seeking journalists or human rights activists are in prison in Turkey?

I fully share this sentiment. We may be enjoying relative freedom in Europe, but I truly believe that this freedom is tainted by continued violations in Turkey – a member in all European institutions except the EU.

(This article is originally published in Turkish by tr724.com on 5 October 2017 )

Nationalism had been one of the prominent reasons for the demise of the Ottoman Empire. It was born as a reaction among the Turkic ethnic groups. In other words, it was a reactionary rather than actioner. This thesis is valid for all the Muslim communities of the Ottoman Empire. This was a natural outcome of the Islamic identity. Because Islam has given its adopters an all-embracing religious identity well above any ethnic belonging and always opposed ethnic identities to overwhelm. This is why being a Turkish, Arabic or Kurdish has been important only in folkloric and linguistic terms, while superordinate or upper identity has always been the Islamic Ummah. This understanding was first shaken by the 1648 Westphalia system and the concept of unitary culture-unitary state was severely damaged both in Europe after ending the political influence of the Catholic House and in the Muslim territories ruled by the Ottomans where the Westphalia system opened the gate for significant changes.

No culture –or civilisation– can survive with only its own dynamics completely independent of other cultures or civilisations. Cultures and civilisations that exist together are influenced by one another and new necessities emerge on the lands where multiple cultures intersect.

Since the capital centre of the Ottoman territory has always been the Balkans, the Ottoman territory in Europe including Anatolia has always been the political, economic and cultural centre of the empire.

Nation States and the Republican System

This is the reason why the year 1648 was important. The Westphalian type of state has gradually taken the Ottoman Empire under its influence. This was the inevitable outcome of the newly emerging international system. Following the French Revolution in 1789, the territorial and secular state model created by the Westphalia movement evolved into a national state model or as it is called “the nation-state”. This brought up the necessity of fighting for the survival for all the empires in the world at the time, since the empires by nature had multinational and cosmopolitan structures. The territorial nation-state model however is based on a mostly homogenous nation living on a defined piece of land. Moreover, as a result of revolutions such as the French or American revolutions, this model foregrounded the republican regime, becoming a nightmare for the royal dynasties.

Under these circumstances, just like the Tsarist Russia and the Austria-Hungary Empire, the Ottoman Empire too began to face great difficulties. The nationalist ideology gained great attention in and was straightaway adopted especially by the non-Muslim subjects of the Ottomans, because this ideology was promising them independence. When the events started to unfold in this direction, the empires adopted strategies to protect themselves. They tried to make their universal identities more attractive and more comprehensive. In his book titled Üç Tarz-ı Siyaset (The Three Political Styles), Akçura examines this issue. Among the three orientations –Ottomanism, Islamism, and nationalism– nationalism was more corresponding to the realities for the conditions of the time were necessitating this. The Ottomanism was not keeping the non-Muslims and the Islamism was not keeping the non-Turkish Muslims connected to the empire. Arabs had been faster to adopt nationalism than Turks, while the Kurds did not fall too behind.

The Conjuncture Was Not Convenient For The Kurds

The Arabs however caught much better opportunities in the international conjuncture in the 1920s towards establishing their nation-states. Although they had not been able to unite under the roof of one state –both because of the disunities and conflicting interests within themselves, and the very well defined interest-oriented and rationally implemented foreign policies of the United Kingdom– numerous independent Arab states managed to emerge out of the Ottoman lands. The Kurds on the other hand were not so “lucky.” The lands where the Kurds were living were mostly divided between Turkey and Iraq, because Turkey came out of its Independence War victoriously. While the remaining territories where the Kurds mostly live were divided between Iran and Syria.

The Kurds of Turkey were tried to be assimilated under a nation-state which first appeared as an idea in 1900s and was founded in 1920 with the establishment of the first Turkish Parliament and officially constituted in 1923. In the regions where the Kurds were a minority, this policy yielded positive outcomes to a great extent in terms of the defined Turkish interests. The minority Kurds who were living outside the South-East Anatolia have been assimilated linguistically and become Turkish. This policy was also implemented in South-East Anatolia, but the Turkish state has been only partially successful in this region. Despite all the political means used in the region (primarily the educational policies), the Kurds have not forgotten their own language until today. Because of this, the nationalist ideology, the biggest identity impact of the 1789, has only toughened their own sense of national belonging.

Turkey’s Assimilation Policy

Despite all the realities, the Turkish governments have adamantly continued their assimilation policy. Until the beginning of the 2000s, they banned the Kurdish language and tried to prevent its use by force. The Kurdish folklore was banned (e.g. Kurdish music, Kurdish literature, national festivals such as Newroz, etc.). Again, as part of this policy, the Kurds were prevented from the political life and from taking part in politics without throwing out their own identity. These hawkish policies, however, has made an adverse effect on the Kurds and consolidated the Kurdish nationalism further and more importantly has strengthened the hands of the separatist tendencies. Eventually, in the 1980s, the separatist Kurdish movement started an armed struggle, giving birth to an illegal terrorist organisation –PKK– that uses terrorist methods.

This opened the biggest black-hole in Turkey’s budget, which brought along a huge waste of resources that cost hundreds of billions of dollars and tens of thousands of people (both Turkish and Kurdish) to lose their lives.

The Peace Process and Turnaround

Since the 2000s, the ruling party, AKP, had been following a “rational” strategy in terms of giving the Kurds their cultural rights and, by implementing restorative amendments, started to obviate the separatist Kurdish nationalism. In this respect, nationalism –the official ideological attitude of the Turkish State– was toned down and a national identity that emphasises citizenship and upper-identity was brought forward. This was received with pleasure by the Kurds. The restrictive and prohibitive attitude towards the Kurdish culture was abandoned. The Kurdish political movement started to receive a positive and constructive approach insomuch that Erdogan despite all the risks started to negotiate with the PKK. The talks were held in Oslo with the PKK leaders and with Öcalan in Imralı island. A memorandum of understanding was signed in Dolmabahçe Palace as a result of these talks. A political solution and PKK’s laying down arms were actually the most important advantages to Turkey and this was just about to happen. With this project, Erdogan would have been able to go down in history as the architect of Turkey’s integrity.

However, the deep state in Turkey which had been eradicated by Erdogan did not like this new paradigm. Unable to prevent the systematic transformation due to the EU process, this front started to wait for an opportunity. The opportunity they wanted was going to be served to them on a silver platter with the 17-25 December investigations. Indeed, the members of the political structure that are tarred with bribery and corruption sat at the table to bargain with the Turkish deep state and to compromise in order to save themselves. One of the demanded concessions was to change the domestic strategy implemented to solve the Kurdish problem. Hence, the government made a 180 degree turn in their Kurdish policy. The peace process was ended. The tactics that burn all the bridges which will force the PKK to restart their armed struggle were employed. The desired result has been achieved and the Kurdish political movement has been suppressed and the hawkish policies of the 1990s have returned.

Unbearable Oppression Over The Kurds

More vehemently, a very wrong military strategy was put into effect, which for the first time brought along the demolition of the civil areas where the Kurds are settled. This fatal fault has caused the death of thousands of people and dislocation of hundreds of thousands of people. As continuation of this policy, the deep state –which became more apparent after the July 15 coup attempt– started to prosecute the members of parliaments from HDP (Kurdish opposition party), and consequently, starting from Selahattin Demirtaş, the leader of the party, many of their members have been unlawfully detained. What is more, Erdogan’s trustees have been appointed in place of all the mayors elected from the HDP including those who had received over seventy per cent of the votes of their constituencies.

At present, all legitimate and legal channels by which the Kurds can express themselves politically are closed off. Most recently, Erdogan said that the place where the members of the HDP belong is Kandil (he meant the place where the terrorist organization PKK is mostly based). In other words, he willingly and willfully instigated all of the Kurds to give support to the PKK. “You just support PKK, I am leaving you no other option,” means Erdogan. This is the political translation of his words. This is the most tragic, most fallacious, most treacherous and most strategically divested statement that has ever been uttered in Turkey since the beginning of the 1900s in terms of policies over the Kurds. And, as it is uttered by a person who is at the top of the state, it is a binding statement.

The Disengagement Process Begins

Erdogan has ignited the process of disengagement for the Kurds. By getting the ratification from the deep state after the 17-25 December investigations, assigning the staff of the deep state to the commanding offices of the TSK (Turkish Army) after the July 15 coup attempt, and as today, pushing the Kurds toward the PKK, Erdogan has openly put Turkey’s unity and integrity into danger and opened the door to disintegrate the Turkish territory. This has been the case in terms of both the ideologies and the policies he has followed so far. Severed from the human rights, state of law, separation of powers, constitutional order, and democracy, Turkey can no longer protect its integrity. The states that lack in pluralism, suppress ethnic differences, impose an identity on their people with force and violence can only play into the hands of ethnical separatists. The man, who had started the course which had opened the way to learn more, integrate better as the country became more democratized, develop further, get richer and generate more security, has been the same person who today ended this positive course of actions.

The process that is disengaging the Kurds from Turkey initiated by Erdogan will cause a centrifugal effect on the territorial and national integrity of Turkey. In respect to the democratic rights and freedoms, one of the –and in the long term, maybe the heaviest– prices of the short-sited policies that are light years away from any kind of rationality will be the point where the Kurdish separatist nationalism will pass the Rubicon. No one then can be immune from the historical and political responsibility of such an outcome. Erdogan and his regime is the anti-thesis of not only the republic in Turkey but also the deeply-rooted state tradition and integrity of the country. It is absolutely necessary for this regime to be terminated, to return to the constitutional order and secure the human rights and freedoms back again as soon as possible! Those who prevent this and push Turkey towards disintegration and decline will be brought to account before history, the Supreme Court and the independent courts.