A vicious triangle
Turkish successes in the struggle against the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) mean that the question of Kurdish political identity in Turkey is entering a new phase – and, paradoxically, one that could be more dangerous for the state. The expulsion of PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan from his base in Syria in mid-October 1998 and his detention on 12 November at Rome's Fiumicino airport were severe blows to the organisation's prestige and operational capabilities.
The PKK was already militarily weaker than at any time since the late 1980s, and was therefore increasingly seeking to shift the conflict to the political and international spheres. Öcalan declared in November 1998 that he would renounce violence, although, given his past record, this statement was greeted with deep scepticism in Turkey.
Italy's refusal to extradite Öcalan to Turkey, and Germany's reluctance to follow up its own warrant for his arrest, have demonstrated the extent to which Turkey's treatment of its Kurdish minority has become an international issue, particularly within the European Union (EU). This is one reason why victory against the PKK will not end Turkey's problems; on the contrary, the shifting of Kurdish pressure to the political sphere may be even more embarrassing and troublesome for Ankara. A non-violent struggle may attract more West European support for the Kurds' political and cultural demands – which the Turkish political and military establishments will refuse to satisfy.
Consequently, internationalisation of the dispute is likely further to estrange Turkey from its Western, and, especially its EU, allies.
Over 32,000 lives have been lost since the PKK launched its armed campaign in 1984. Turkey has repeatedly claimed that it has a 'terrorist problem, not a Kurdish problem', but there can be no doubt that the conflict has its roots in the question of Kurdish identity. Furthermore, the social, cultural and political dimensions of the Kurdish issue are far more complex than either the government or the PKK care to admit.
Kurds and Turkish society
People of Kurdish origin account for around 20% of Turkey's 65–70 million-strong population. Originally they were mainly concentrated in the country's under-developed east and south-east, but approximately half have moved to western Turkey's major cities in search of employment or, more recently, to escape the fighting.
Any use of the Kurdish language and even of the word 'Kurd' was illegal in Turkey until 1991. Although Kurds are now permitted to talk and publish in Kurdish they are still forbidden from broadcasting or being educated in their own language. In addition, oral or written statements deemed by the courts to encourage or even envisage a separate Kurdish political identity are punishable by long terms of imprisonment. In response to international criticism that such restrictions are incompatible with a modern democracy, particularly a NATO member with aspirations to join the EU, Turkish President Suleyman Demirel and the country's military have both argued that incitement to separatism is itself undemocratic.
Many Turkish officials admit in private that underlying Ankara's intransigence is the fear that a measure of political autonomy, or even cultural freedom, would eventually lead to a separate Kurdish state and fatally fragment the rest of the population. This is because the official state doctrine of an ethnically homogeneous society is far from reality. It ignores not only the Kurds, but also 35–40 other ethnic minorities, although most of these are fairly small and scattered. But Turkey is not as fissiparous as these figures suggest. The majority of ethnic groups are loyal to the Turkish state. Moreover, very high levels of internal migration and inter-marriage have meant that most of the population now has mixed ethnic ancestry, particularly the 60% residing in urban areas. The Turkish élite is of mixed ethnic origin and contains many people of Kurdish blood – as long as they identify themselves as Turks.
Turkey's Kurds are also by no means a homogenous group. In the past, and, in a great many cases even today, Kurds have identified themselves through religion, tribe, family or birthplace, rather than by a sense of national or ethnic Kurdishness. The Kurds in Turkey speak three mutually unintelligible Kurdish dialects. Although most are Sunni Muslims, there is also a sizeable Alawite Kurdish minority, which identifies more with Alawite Turks than with Sunni Kurds.
Significantly, the only Kurdish party allowed to participate in the December 1995 general election, the Populist Democratic Party (HADEP), received only 4.17% of the vote. This was despite the fact that although heavily infiltrated by PKK supporters, it served as an umbrella for all Kurdish nationalists, and might therefore have been expected to do significantly better. Instead, the Kurdish provinces voted overwhelmingly for the Islamist Welfare Party (now renamed the Virtue Party), which stressed religious rather than racial or ethnic identity.
The PKK–Turkish conflict
The PKK's objective when it launched its armed campaign in 1984 was to create an independent, united Marxist state in the predominantly Kurdish areas of Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran. In recent years, however, it has reduced its demands to cultural and political autonomy within Turkey. Although the PKK maintained forward bases in south-east Turkey and northern Iraq, its headquarters and main training camps were, until October 1998, in Syria and the Syrian-controlled Bekaa Valley in Lebanon.
During the early 1990s, the PKK effectively controlled large swathes of territory in south-east Turkey. Although it enjoyed considerable local support, it also followed other similar movements in consolidating its position through ruthless intimidation of the civilian population. This strategy included massacring the families of local Kurds who joined the pro-government militia, executing dissenters in its own ranks and assassinating government employees, including over 170 primary-school teachers.
Turkish security forces began to regain the initiative in the mid-1990s, making greater use of aggressive patrols and striking at PKK camps and supply depots in northern Iraq. They also sought to deny the PKK potential logistical support inside Turkey by evacuating and burning down over 2,500 villages and forcibly displacing an estimated 1.5m people. This campaign also involved widespread use of torture and extra-judicial executions of suspected PKK sympathisers.
By August 1998, the PKK, while still not fully defeated, had been badly weakened. It announced a temporary, unilateral cease-fire on 28 August and called for political dialogue. The government then turned its attention to the organisation's foreign sponsors. On 1 October, it massed some 10,000 extra troops on the Syrian border and threatened to attack unless Damascus expelled Öcalan and closed the PKK bases on its territory. The Syrian government capitulated on 20 October and banished Öcalan to Russia. However, Moscow also refused to harbour him, fearing worsened relations with Ankara and increased support for Muslim separatists in the Russian Caucasus. Öcalan was then arrested by Italian police while transiting through Rome's Fiumicino airport.
Öcalan was wanted in Germany for allegedly ordering the murder of Kurdish PKK dissenters there. However, the new ruling Social Democrat–Green coalition in Germany refused to request his extradition. It feared, above all, causing increased protests and terrorist activity among the country's 500,000 or so Turkish Kurds, and greater violence between the Kurds and Germany's approximately 1.5m ethnic Turks. The German left has also been strongly critical of Turkey's human-rights record and repeated military interventions in politics. The US argument that Turkey is a mainstay of Western security interests and must be treated leniently has limited impact in Bonn.
Italy has refused to agree to Turkey's demand for Öcalan's extradition. The ruling coalition led by the ex-communists also dislikes Turkey's human-rights record, and, in any case, Italian law forbids extradition to countries retaining the death penalty. Like Germany, Italy has called for a political solution to the Kurdish issue. Rome is especially concerned about the increasing flow of Kurdish migrants seeking to enter the country illegally via the Mediterranean. On 16 January, Italy announced that Öcalan had left the country. His present whereabouts are unknown, but Libya or Sudan are the most likely places of refuge.
Turkey and Europe
The German and Italian decisions have caused fury in Turkey, especially following the EU's refusal in December 1997 to include Turkey among the countries being considered for membership. Although the PKK is outlawed in Germany, both Turkish military and civilian sources insist in private that Bonn is tolerating the organisation's fund-raising activities while its intelligence services cooperate with the PKK as part of a broader plot to destabilise and divide Turkey. The Öcalan affair has reawakened old Turkish anxieties that the Europeans have some kind of secret plan to use the PKK to achieve this objective. No such ambition exists, and West European diplomats react to these claims with bewilderment. But in the increasingly heated and anti-European atmosphere of Turkish public debate, their arguments are often brushed aside.
There is little domestic public pressure for an improvement in Turkey's human-rights situation. In a November 1998 confidential survey by a political party, less than 15% of those questioned listed human rights or greater democratisation as priority issues. The majority of interviewees were more concerned about the economy. For most Turks, the country's human-rights record is virtually a foreign-policy matter, since the greatest pressure for improvement comes from outside the country, and in particular from the EU.
The status of the Kurds is not a significant issue in the US; Washington is more concerned with the geopolitical importance of Turkey's membership of NATO and alliance with Israel. As a result, the US has been much less critical of Ankara's human-rights history, allowing the Turks to drive a wedge between Western states on the Kurdish issue.
If the PKK really does abandon its armed struggle, Turkey is likely to come under increased foreign pressure, especially from the EU, to ease restrictions on the political and cultural expression of Kurdish identity. However, the Turkish military, which retains ultimate power, is determined to resist this.
Turkey is therefore unlikely to grant the Kurds full cultural freedom, let alone political autonomy. The government and the military have repeatedly stressed that they place national integrity above the West's concept of democracy. Nor does the PKK's ruthless and authoritarian record suggest that it will be able to transform itself into a pluralist, democratic political movement. It has eliminated or infiltrated not only the other Kurdish political parties, but also non-governmental and civil organisations active in Kurdish areas.
The EU is likely to face a dilemma. Without either a ground-swell of Turkish public support for greater democratisation or a democratic Kurdish political movement completely independent of the PKK, it will have to choose between either supporting movements with links to the PKK or applying pressure directly on the Turkish government and military. Yet foreign pressure is likely both to fuel the already rapid growth in Turkish nationalism and to increase government intransigence. Such a confrontation could also convince Turkey finally to abandon its 35-year-old dream of EU membership and remove any lingering influence the EU still enjoys in Ankara. Meanwhile, a combination of growing Kurdish and Islamist political pressure and military obduracy may increasingly strip away even the democratic façade of the Turkish system.
