Isolated Erdoğan Vying for Broader Kurdish Ties

It reminds me of the words of prominent Kurdish politician Leyla Zana’s statement last year, wherein she emphasised: “I believe that he [Prime Minister Erdogan] will be able to solve this [Kurdish] issue. I have never lost my faith in him solving this issue. And I don’t want to lose my faith in him.”  ‘Be that as it may’, Zana’s trust is not justified entirely by the September 30 democratisation package announced by Erdogan but termed by many observers as a good beginning of a long process.

To grasp Turkey’s contemporary Kurdish policy, it is essential to put it in perspective with the past. Yet, the Kurdish question is a complex and multi-layered topic and its history is manifold; one could say that there are several histories of the Kurdish question. This starts with Turkey’s “policy of denial”, since the formation of Republic in 1923 by Mustafa Kamal, that the Kurds indeed constitute a minority.

It is worth mentioning here that in 1992 the then Turkish President Turgut Ozal even argued for the recognition of PKK as a participant in Turkey’s political system and for the amnesty of the PKK fighters. Ozal could not resist the military, Kemalist and Nationalist, over the protests of his reconciliation policy. He was forced to surrender the responsibility to deal with the Kurdish question to the military. That has taken the death toll of 40,000 people since the armed struggle started in the early eighties.

Writing for Al-Monitor on 3 October, eminent Turkish journalist and political expert Mustafa Akyol said: “The bulk of the reforms in question relate to Turkey’s most serious and lethal problem: the “Kurdish question,” or the tension between Turkey’s strict official nationalism and the aspirations of its large Kurdish minority. Throughout much of the 20th century, the Turkish Republic tried to “solve” this problem in very crude ways: simply by banning the Kurdish language and culture and suppressing Kurdish revolts with heavy-handed security measures. Yet, since it came to power in 2002, Erdogan’s AKP (Justice and Development Party) has replaced both of these long-time policies with legal reforms for Kurdish rights and political dialogue with Kurdish separatists.”

To remind the reform process under AKP government led by Prime Minister Erdogan, we have to revisit the 18 December 2002 regulation concerning the language of Radio and broadcast. This regulation authorised the state owned Turkish Radio and Television (TRT) in the non-official language.  

The lifting of a common oath taken by school children is also a reform that may win some Kurdish hearts and minds, since it used to begin with the proclamation, “I am a Turk,” and end with a bizarre line that reflected the totalitarian aspects of Turkey’s founding ideology: “Let my existence be a gift to Turkish existence!” In Erdoğan’s own words he uttered during a mass opening ceremony in Adana on 5 October “Lining up kids every morning and making them chant slogans from the 1930s, the Cold War and the era of the Iron Curtain, is not nationalism. Nationalism is building classrooms where those kids can receive education in humane conditions.”

While Erdogan’s reforms might indeed be “just a half-full glass,” as prominent Turkish journalist and editor of Hurriyat daily, Murat Yetkin, in his 1 October 2013 editorial, puts it, but there is no major political party in the country that offers anything better.

Among numerous negative developments ‘from Iraq to Syria and from Iran to Egypt’ in the region, Ankara’s only consolation is its deepening ties with the Kurds of the region ranging from Iraq to Syria to Iran and of course among its own Kurdish population with the help of ongoing peace process.

The ties between Turkey and Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Northern Iraq have deepened in last few years and both the sides refer to it as “strategic relations”. Without a doubt, their annual volume of trade, which has reached $9 billion in 2012, lends the impression of strategic depth, but the springtime weather along the Ankara-Erbil axis remains a bit unstable.

If Turkey manages to complete its terrorism settlement process with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), it will have great influence on other Kurdish populations in the region, said Abdulbaset Sieda, former head of the Syrian National Council (SNC), Syria’s political opposition in exile. Sieda, who is Kurdish, was the leader of the SNC between June and November of last year. He is also an academic who has written a number of books on the Kurdish population in Syria.

Regionally isolated Erdogan is now solely banking on deepening Turkish-Kurdish ties that are not only limited to his own Kurdish population inside Turkey and with the Kurds in Iraq who are ruling the northern part of the country almost independently from Baghdad.

A visit of Syrian Kurd leader Saleh Muslim to Turkey has cleared the mistrust with Syrian Kurds. Turkey has okayed the Partiya Yekîtiya Demokrat (PYD) administration in the Northern part of Syria that borders with Turkey. Turkey’s backing of the regional Kurdish conference in Northern Iraq is a growing signal of broader Turkish-Kurdish understanding that is not only limited to solving its local Kurdish issue. Though, Turkey very well knows that solving its own Kurdish issue is a must before erecting a grand alliance with the Kurds of the region.

Turkish Government’s peace process with the rebels of Kurdistan workers Party (PKK) is going through withdrawal process of PKK fighters from Turkish territory to the mountains of Kandil governed by autonomous Kurdistan Regional government in Iraq. The Turkish Government, through accord with the Kurdish fighters, wants the bloodshed to be stopped which has taken a toll of 40,000 people since arms struggle started in the year 1985.

There have been previous instances when Turkish authorities reached the peace deal with PKK guerrillas but that truce could not last long and PKK fighters took the arms again. But this time it looks like that the process is comprehensive and having huge impact on regional power equation since the Kurds are divided in four countries of the region namely Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey.

Though, the peace process between the Turkish government and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has cleared the first stage yet it has many internal and external challenges and obstacles on the path ahead, so far both the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government and the PKK seem to be fully committed to the signing of a peace agreement that will have far-reaching consequences for Turkey and beyond. If peace prevails, everybody stands to gain something – except Iran, Syria and of course, Nouri Al Maliki’s Iraq.

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