The Balkans Project

Ekrem Eddy Güzeldere is an analyst with the European Stability Initiative in Istanbul, Turkey.

Kurdish Issue

Not much happened on the Kurdish issue from 2002 to 2005. Now, a lot is happening. Following President Erdogan’s 2005 statement that the Kurdish issue “is my problem,” it’s been however sometimes difficult to see if there is one line that the government has followed. It has often zig-zagged on the issue. The first legal changes that favored the Kurds happened before the AKP came to power. There were three so-called EU reform packages before the elections in November 2002. The third one, concerning broadcasting for an hour a week on Turkish television, came in August 2002 but wasn’t implemented until 2004. It had little effect. The broadcast took place at 7 a.m. and the Kurdish that was spoken was difficult to understand. But this year, a completely different Kurdish-language channel started in January.

The Kurdish issue has always been a major issue,. There is, however, always enormous resistance to the government’s policies – from the opposition parties, from the military, even from within the AKP itself. Remember, the AKP has many tendencies. There are people from the reformist Islamic movement, some liberals, modern women who have nothing to do with conservative tendencies. The culture minister comes from the CHP (Kemalist Party). But some ministers are also nationalists and haven’t changed their views with the transition of the AKP to a mass party.

The AKP gets a lot of support from conservative Turks in central Anatolia and conservative Turks in the west. This group has the same background, the same education as the nationalists. They have problems with fast changes. That’s why the government is going forward and sometimes going backwards. But now, after two years of going back and forth, the AKP seems to be more determined to get its policy through. The government seems more decisive about proceeding. This summer, the interior minister started a so-called Kurdish initiative. He met with political parties, NGOs, bar associations. He traveled around the country discussing different aspects of the issue.

One result of this new initiative is that one faculty at the University of Mardin will include Kurdish language. Other faculties at other institutions will follow. At Mardin Artuklu University, this Kurdish faculty was accepted because the faculty’s name is not “Kurdish” but the “living languages” of Turkey. So the faculty will include Arabic, Aramaic, Persian, and so on – as well as Kurdish. The Board of Higher Education (YOK) rejected a similar proposal in Diyarbakir because the university there insisted on calling the faculty “Kurdish.”

So, there will be more Kurdish studies. Also, the original names of villages in Kurdish and other languages are being given back. There’s a lot of debate within the higher board of broadcasting (RTUK) for private channels in Kurdish. There’s also debate over changing the law of broadcasting. Turkish state television (TRT), you see, has an awkward structure. According to a legal change in 2002, you can broadcast in any language traditionally spoken by Turkish citizens – as long as the program has subtitles or consecutive translation into Turkish – for 45 minutes a day (60 minutes for radio). But now the state channel (TRT6) has a Kurdish broadcast with no subtitles or translation. So, this doesn’t fit into the legal framework. The next step will be allowing private channels, and most Kurdish channels will be politically closer to the Kurdish party (DTP). But there will also be new channels closer to the AKP.

One of the major challenges – for both education and media – is hiring people with the right prerequisites. As a Kurd over the last 20 years, you might have said something about “Kurdistan” or perhaps you had been close to a particular party or association– and that would already disqualify you from getting the jobs like a teaching position or a broadcasting position today in the Kurdish language. One of the ideas is to bring Kurdish experts from Kurdish institutes in Paris or Brussels or northern Iraq. This will start with a small number. And then these new institutes will train a new generation of teachers and academics. They’re also bringing in textbooks, from Sweden, for instance, where they have developed Kurdish textbooks. There the language has been standardized. Here the language isn’t standardized. In Turkey, you still see slogans in Kurdish on posters and they are orthographically wrong. So, the government will need to train translators, build up an infrastructure and allow private institutions offering minority languages.

So far, this has not extended to primary schools. There you maybe will be able in the near future to take Kurdish as an elective class. At the moment, Kurdish is entirely learned at home or through TV channels, either the TRT channel or the ones that come from abroad.

One of the arguments of the opposition, for instance CHP leader Deniz Baykal, has been: “How can you spend so many millions of dollars for only a part of the population?” But this part of the population pays taxes, and the state should spend money on services for them.

Returnees

The press is focusing on the PKK members who were among the 34 Kurds who recently returned to Turkey. But the majority of returnees, 28 of them, are refugees from Makhmour, the refugee camp in northern Iraq. To live in that refugee camp you can’t be a terrorist. There were also 4 children born in the camp. There are 12,000 Kurds living in the Makhmour camp. They’ve lived there since the 1990s. They can’t get Iraqi citizenship. They haven’t committed any crimes. They’re still Turkish citizens. In the next months, many thousands of these refugees will return. Psychologically it is very important that this return happen. These were just people fleeing a war that destroyed their villages. They took what they had and went to the other side of the border.

None of the returnees was taken into custody. The PKK chose carefully. It seems that none of the fighters was involved in any crimes. There will now be an indictment prepared by the prosecutors and the fighters will face trial, but it is not expected that anybody will be sentenced. The next step in the process will be to deal with those who were involved in crime.

I don’t see that the government will stop this return process. Yes, the government is not so happy with the party-like atmosphere, the street dances that greeted the returnees. The DTP was using the returnee issue for its own advantage. But after the first day, the DTP also got the message. DTP chairperson Ahmet Turk ordered that the PKK members not dress up in guerilla clothes — they had to wear civilian clothes. After that first day, there was less of a party atmosphere.

There are basically two types of opposition to the current return of Kurds from abroad. The MHP (Nationalist Movement Party) is completely against the return of these people. They say that the government works together with terrorists. They believe that the government should fight Kurdish terrorists until the end, until they are all killed.

The second type of opposition criticizes how the Kurds are returning. They complain about the party-like atmosphere that greeted the returnees. The AKP and the military also criticized this reception. It’s interesting that the military, in its weekly press conference, did not say that it was against the return. That’s a sign of how much the military has changed. It didn’t say it was wrong that they returned but simply how the show went on.

One result of the regional elections of March 29, 2009 is a message from the people in the region that the parties have to cooperate. In the Kurdish areas, the CHP and MHP practically don’t exist. In Diyarbakir, they get less than 5 percent. Previously; Prime Minister Erdogan refused to shake hands with the head of the DTP, Ahmet Turk. But after the elections, both sides got the message. As a result, cooperation between these two parties has increased. There have been more meetings and negotiations.

The pressure to work on the Kurdish issue comes more from the inside than the outside. There are about 15 million Kurds. They are an important constituency. The AKP has 71 ethnic Kurdish members of parliament and also Kurdish ministers. The issue has been on the agenda for some years. The regional elections accelerated the changes. But also, during the period of 2007-8, the government was essentially paralyzed, with the mass demonstrations against President Gul and the closure case against the AKP. But now, we’ve overcome those difficult years, and it seems that the military got the message not to interfere directly into politics so that the government can go forward with certain reforms.

European Union

There has been no move on decentralization,. For the DTP, this is their program: democratic autonomy.. Of course, if you believe in the state ideology from the 1920s and 1930s, ending Turkey’s extreme centralization and giving more power to the regions and cities is the wrong thing to do. But if you believe in orienting Turkey with the European powers – which was what state policy really was in the 1920s, what Ataturk really wanted – then it’s the right thing to do. As it was done in Spain and other countries, this decentralization profits all regions. It’s not about crafting a special solution for the southeast, giving them special rights. You have to decentralize the whole system. There will, of course, be resistance from the old elites in the bureaucracy. But with so little money going to the municipalities and regions, even the regions where the opposition is strong will support this decentralization.

Migration

The migration of Kurds to big cities in the western part of Turkey for economic reasons has been happening since the 1960s. This trend accelerated in the 1980s because of the war. So now you have opposition to Kurds that has nothing to do with the southeast region but is focused on Kurds here, in Istanbul or Izmir. It’s a question of labor competition. Kurds are cheap labor. In Istanbul, some quarters are largely Kurdish. There are more Kurds here than in Diyarbakir.

This migration has largely stopped. Now the growth is internal rather than through migration. There has been a government program to encourage recent migrants to return to their villages. But there is no functioning compensation program for their destroyed houses and villages. There are no provisions to rebuild infrastructure. So, there won’t be a return in big numbers. Also, the government has a program to reduce agriculture in order to meet EU standards. What will these people do if they return? So, there won’t be a big return to the villages from Istanbul or from abroad. After so many years in these locations, with children growing up and going to school, people will simply take the small amount of compensation and stay in the cities. The money isn’t enough to rebuild their houses. So they’re taking the 20,000 lira and, for instance, buying a small apartment in the city like Batman or Diyarbakir where this is enough money.

The government has had a development program for the Southeast called GAP to build up the energy and irrigation sectors. The energy program has been almost 90 percent completed. But the irrigation plan is only 15 percent finished. The government has difficulty explaining this discrepancy. In 2008 the government announced that it would meet its goal for the irrigation sector in 2012. But, if it only managed to accomplish 15 percent from the 1970s to 2009, how is it going to get to 100 percent in only three years. The idea of building capacity in the countryside is okay. It has the support from the business association in the southeast. But the government has to deliver infrastructure. It has to invest in irrigation. It has to create jobs. But now there is almost nothing. They don’t even have a food processing industry. All the agricultural products are sent to western Turkey.

Western Perceptions

The press coverage of Turkey in the West – at least in Germany – is generally good. There are about 25 accredited German journalists here, and some are very good.

It’s annoying, of course, that the press continues to call the AKP “Islamist.” Sometimes, the press takes the conspiracy theories from the opposition. But most political opinion supports EU accession. There are no correspondents anymore saying that the AKP has a plan to turn Turkey into Iran. There have been positive developments in human rights. This doesn’t mean that the situation is good. There are still absurd legal concepts concerning Christians and Kurds, for instance. But it’s better than 5 years ago. If that trend continues over next 5-7 years, Turkey will meet most legal EU requirements.

For instance, it is not difficult any more for Kurds involved with political opposition groups in the 1970s and 1980s to come back and visit Turkey. If they returned in the mid-1990s, they were immediately arrested, maybe because they didn’t do compulsory military service. I haven’t heard of any examples of even more famous people that can’t return. Even those who only have Turkish passports can return; of course, it’s even easier with other passports.