The Kurdish Question and Turkey

An Example of a Trans-state Ethnic Conflict

Kemal Kirisci, Gareth M. Winrow

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781135217778
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History
• Index: History

This volume examines the Kurdish question in Turkey, tracing its developments from the end of the Ottoman Empire to the present day. The study considers: secession; federal schemes; various forms of autonomy; the provision of special rights; and further democratization.

1

Introduction

THE TURKISH authorities have been engaged in a fierce struggle against insurgents of the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) in south-eastern Turkey Villages have been evacuated or destroyed as innocent Kurdish civilians are caught in the cross-fire between the assaults of the PKK and the Turkish security forces. Sporadic acts of terrorism have targeted urban centres and tourist sites in other parts of the country The PKK has been able to operate out of bases located in neighbouring Iran and Iraq where large Kurdish communities also live. Seeking to destroy the PKK’s network of bases in Iraq in March 1995, the Turkish armed forces launched the largest assault hitherto against the Kurdish insurgents in northern Iraq. This was followed up a few months later by a smaller scale Turkish operation in northern Iraq. The PKK’s declaration of a unilateral ceasefire in December 1995 had little impact on the course of events.

The resolution of what one may call here a trans-state ethnic conflict between the Turkish government and Kurdish elements – the conflict is not confined within the borders of Turkey – will not be achieved without serious difficulties, given developments since the foundation of the Turkish Republic in 1923. Most Turkish officials are aware that a peaceful solution of the Kurdish question in Turkey would improve Turkey’s image abroad and would, for example, improve prospects for Turkish admission into the EU as a full member.

The official line of Turkish governments has been to deny the existence of a Kurdish minority let alone a separate Kurdish nation in Turkey. Indeed, only in recent years have certain leading Turkish politicians acknowledged the existence of a Kurdish ‘reality’ in Turkey. The Treaty of Lausanne of 1923 had referred only to the presence of non-Moslem minorities – Armenians, Greeks and Jews – within Turkey. According to the millet system of the Ottoman Empire, non-Moslem communities were allowed a measure of self- government, but the Moslem inhabitants were considered to be united as members of the ‘nation of Islam’ and were thus subjects of the Sultan who was also their Caliph. The Kurds, along with the Albanians, Arabs, Bosnians, Circassians, Laz, Pomaks, Tatars and Turks, were grouped together within the single nation of Islam. Today, the Turkish authorities are prepared to acknowledge the existence of people of Kurdish origin who as citizens of Turkey enjoy, or should enjoy, the full rights of Turkish citizenship. Accordingly, it is argued in official circles that there is no need for the people of Kurdish origin to press for the recognition of a Kurdish minority and the granting of minority rights since full rights are already bestowed upon them as citizens of Turkey. In the opinion of some officials in Ankara, there is not a Kurdish issue or problem per se. Rather, the problem is solely one of PKK- sponsored terrorism.

In February 1995 a state security court in Ankara passed an important ruling in a lawsuit against Yavuz Önen, Chairman of the Turkish Human Rights Foundation (IFIV), and Fevzi Argun, a member of the executive board of the foundation. Both were tried on charges of spreading separatist propaganda in a booklet entitled Torture File. The ruling noted that the phrase ‘Kurdish people’ did not come under the crime of spreading separatist propaganda and thus was not against Article 8 paragraph 1 of the Anti-terror Law of Turkey.¹ This article was revised in October 1995. The Turkish authorities were hence prepared to tolerate the expression and the notion of a ‘Kurdish people’. An acknowledgement of the Kurdish ‘reality’ was clearly in evidence.

As well as addressing the question of what does it mean to be a Kurd, one should also attempt to come to terms with the related question of what does it mean to be a Turk. One of Mustafa Kemal ‘Atatürk”s most famous phrases was ‘Ne mutlu Türküm diyene’ – ‘Happy is one who can say one is a Turk’. Schools throughout Turkey proudly carry an inscription of this phrase. The hillsides of south-eastern Turkey are also marked out with the words in bold letters. It was particularly interesting and striking, therefore, when in early January 1995 the Turkish Prime Minister Tansu Çiller in a speech at Karabiik declared, ‘Happy is one who can say one is a citizen of Turkey’.² The implication here was that the importance of common citizenship had not been adequately stressed in the past with reference to the designation ‘Turk’. What did Mustafa Kemal exactly mean when he referred to a Turk? Was a specific ethnic group, an ethnic group of the Turks, actually implied? Or was the term ‘Turk’ meant to be an all-embracing and inclusive one where if someone said he/she was a Turk then that person was indeed a Turk? This, of course, left open the question of how to react when individuals in the new Turkish Republic did not perceive themselves as Turks. How have other officials in the Turkish Republic interpreted the term Turk?

Significantly, President Süleyman Demirel in his end of year press conference in late December 1994 stated that the constitutions of the Turkish Republic did not specify origin, belief or language as the basis for citizenship or ‘national belonging’. Membership of the Turkish nation merely entailed that one must be a Turkish citizen.³ Therefore a Turk was anyone who was a citizen of Turkey Hence, in practice, the term ‘Kurdish Turks’ was permissible, i.e., referring to a people ofa different origin who were currently citizens of Turkey. On the other hand, the term ‘Turkish Kurd’, with its emphasis on Kurdishness as opposed to Turkishness would be much more problematic for the authorities in Ankara.

The Kurdish question, and more specifically relations between the Turkish government and the Kurds in Turkey are topics which are increasingly attracting the interest of Western scholars and commentators. Many of these analyses develop a position sympathetic to the Kurds and hostile to the policies of the Turkish state. There is a tendency here though to examine the Turks, the Kurds and the Turkish state as monolithic entities. Often there is little attempt among analysts, including those within Turkey, to differentiate between the aims and objectives of Turkish and Kurdish elites in Turkey and the views and opinions of the Turkish and Kurdish masses. Indeed, identifying individuals within Turkey who perceive themselves as Kurds is no easy matter. Some people may identify themselves as being both Turk and Kurd. The views and opinions of individuals are also subject to change over time. Moreover, the lifestyle and values of a Kurd living in Istanbul may be in stark contrast to the attitudes and way of life of a Kurd working on the land in south-eastern Turkey. And in that area there are divisions between Kurdish groupings often along tribal lines.

The Kurds have been labelled a ‘stateless nation’, a ‘people without a country’, and are referred to as the largest national group in the Middle East without a state.⁴ Along with the Basques, Sikhs and Tamils, for example, the Kurds have been listed as an example of an ‘ethnonationalist movement’ or ‘proto-nation’. Proto-nations have been depicted as ‘nations without a state’ which are seeking to establish their own state.⁵ But what is a nation in the first place? And do nations actually establish states? It would seem that the role of key individuals and elites within certain ethnic groups is in fact crucial.

Focusing on the specific case of Turkey and the Kurdish question, one should avoid the ambiguous use of such terms as ‘proto-nation’ and ‘stateless nation’. The conceptual tools at our disposal, such as, for instance, ‘nation’ and ‘ethnic group’, do not adequately convey the sense of identity or multiple forms of identity that individuals and groups within a population may hold. The term ‘nation’ in particular is politically loaded. Liberal use of this term by scholars, journalists, commentators and the like may aggravate what may probably already be tense relations between the central authorities of a state and a section of the population which may perceive themselves as having a separate identity Tensions could further escalate if politicians elsewhere are thereby encouraged to take up the cause of the supposed nation or ethnic group in question.

In the case of Turkey and the Kurds, it will also be seen that single-factor or mono-causal explanations do not enable one to comprehend fully what are in effect highly complex processes of state-building and nation-building. Taking into account the on-going and violent conflict between the Turkish state and elements of the Kurdish population, and given the seemingly intractable nature of this trans-state ethnic conflict, it is admittedly no easy task to avoid passing value judgements and to remain unaffected by deep-rooted and longstanding popular prejudices prevalent within Turkey and beyond.

Originally, modernization and social mobilization theories argued that improvements in communications and transportation and the development of mass education and literacy programmes together with increased urbanization within states would lead to more intense contacts between population groups whose separate ethnic identities would in effect wither away.⁶ In practice, the reverse could take place. The processes involved in modernization may threaten the continued existence of separate ethnic groups which could no longer remain isolated and which may at the same time be made more aware of the differences between themselves and other ethnic groups within the same state.⁷ Members of these threatened ethnic groups, particularly privileged elites, as in the case of the Shaikh Said rebellion in Turkey, could feel that their culture was under attack from the state. These groups may perceive the state as identifying itself with the interests of a majority/dominant ethnic group/nation.

Certainly, beginning in the 1960s groups such as the Bretons, Catalans, Basques and French Canadians have been striving for autonomy within their states and have even pushed for secession. With the crumbling of communism in eastern Europe and the disintegration of Yugoslavia and the former Soviet Union, the issues of nationalism and ethnicity are likely to remain a prominent feature of European politics for the foreseeable future. Many Marxists had believed that the advent of socialism would lead to the disappearance of ethnic consciousness and the tensions and conflict associated with it. The international community’s heightened interest in recent years on the question of the right of self-determination as a basic one of all peoples, and the increased concerns of human rights organizations to monitor and attempt to prevent the discrimination and repression of ethnic groups by particular regimes, are also likely to encourage the ethnic mobilization of what were previously ‘quiescent communities’.⁸

Problems associated with nationalism and ethnicity with reference to Turkey and the Kurdish question are not likely to disappear in the short to medium term. The future prospects for the Kurds within Turkey could be viewed in line with three possible options: ‘exit’, ‘voice’ or ‘loyalty’, to employ Gurr’s use of Hirschman’s original terms.⁹ ‘Exit’ would entail ultimate secession. ‘Voice’ could consist of protests aimed at improving conditions for the Kurds within Turkey. With regard to ‘loyalty’, the Kurds would not question the political system within Turkey but would seek to improve their lot by making use of opportunities provided within the Turkish polity. However, different elements within the Kurdish population in Turkey, assuming that they were aware of their identity in the first place, could be pursuing each of these three options simultaneously. The three options are also not necessarily mutually exclusive. Certainly groups professing ‘loyalty’ could also be demanding a greater ‘voice’ in the running of affairs in the state. Within each option there are also various permutations possible.

What Is a Nation? What Is an Ethnic Group?

There has been a debate over whether more emphasis should be given to subjective or objective criteria in defining a nation. According to one argument, the members of a nation must feel bound by a sense of solidarity, common culture and national consciousness.¹⁰ Self-awareness and self-perception are key determinants. If a particular identity means nothing to a particular population, then that population does not have that identity.¹¹ However, there is a problem of identifying which self-aware community should be regarded as a nation and which should be regarded as another form of grouping, club, association or whatever. It would seem that other criteria are required to help to instill a feeling of national consciousness. Furthermore, how many members of a particular community need to feel that they are a nation before this nation is said to exist? Do a majority of members need to be self-aware, or do only a small number of leaders within a particular community need to perceive themselves as a nation?

What objective criteria would be necessary for a nation? A certain territory, and shared language, religion, culture and a common descent are some characteristics which come to mind. Smith has defined a nation as ‘... a named human population sharing an historic territory, common myths and historical memories, a mass public culture, a common economy and common legal rights and duties for all members’.¹² A combination of objective and subjective elements may be employed to define a nation. For example, Gurr has noted: ‘The key to identifying communal groups is not the presence of a particular trait or combination of traits, but rather the shared perception that the defining traits, whatever they are, set the group apart’.¹³ Although he was referring to a much broader category, a ‘communal group’, Gurr’s assertion is also relevant for the identification of a nation. Again, though, how many and which members of a nation should perceive these defining traits?

There is also a difference of opinion concerning the relative importance of a nation being self-defined or rather ‘other-defined’. Clearly, any self-defined group needs to be self-aware.¹⁴ A group is other-defined when it is perceived as a group by an authority. Tilly has stated: ‘A connected set of people qualify as a nation when they receive (whether willingly or not) some authorities’ certification of distinctiveness in origin and culture sufficient to justify separate treatment with respect to rights and obligations of citizenship.’¹⁵ However, even though a nation may have certain objective characteristics and may have a degree of self-awareness, according to Tilly recognition and hence certification would come about only through a group providing a convincing demonstration that it merits the title nation.¹⁶

The relevance of ‘other-definition’ must be taken into account in attempting to differentiate a nation from other groupings. One may argue that for a nation to exist it should be other-defined by the government of the state whose territory the nation inhabits, or by the governments of other states. Recognition of a nation by scholars and journalists, for example, would mean little inpractice without this official sanctioning, although, of course, scholars and journalist...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Tables
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• 1. INTRODUCTION
• 2. MINORITY RIGHTS AND THE ISSUE OF SELF-DETERMINATION
• 3. THE ORIGINS OF THE KURDISH QUESTION
• 4. THE EVOLUTION OF THE KURDISH QUESTION IN TURKEY
• 5. THE KURDISH QUESTION AND RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN TURKEY
• 6. THE INTERNATIONAL DIMENSION OF THE KURDISH QUESTION
• 7. POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS TO THE KURDISH QUESTION
• 8. CONCLUSION
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• INDEX