Washington Kurdish Institute
August 21, 2018
Part V of a series on Turkey’s future
The Kurds are the largest non-Turkish ethnic group in Turkey, and, as such, are vital component of the modern Republic of Turkey. The relations between the Kurdish and Turkish communities have not always been as frayed as they have been in recent decades. Many Kurds served in the military of the Ottoman Empire, as cavalry and irregular forces serving in the southeast and east of northern Kurdistan, the portion of the ancestral homeland of the Kurds that now lies within Turkey’s borders. To administer this region, the Ottoman authorities formed alliances with tribal Kurdish leaders. While some Kurdish tribal leaders revolted against the rule of the Sultans, many others did not, retaining their own local power and acknowledging the overarching authority of the Ottoman rulers. The collapse of the Ottoman Empire following defeat in the First World War and the rise of ethnic nationalism throughout what was previously a religious empire – indeed, the Ottoman Empire was an Islamic caliphate – would fundamentally change the dynamic between the majority Turkish population and ethnic minorities, including the Kurds, most of whom, like the Turks, were Sunni Muslims.
The emergence of the Turkish Republic from the ashes of the withered Ottoman Empire created a state predicated Turkish ethno-nationalism, which was by nature hostile to attempts by minority groups to affirm their distinct identities, let alone exercise any measure of self determination. The mold created by Kemal Ataturk could not accommodate non-Turks in an explicitly Turkish republic. Starting around the beginning of the First World War and continuing into the first decade of the Turkish republic, the government engaged in the systematic extermination of non-Turks, in a series of several genocides that still scar the communities which suffered under them. The largest of these purges were the Armenian and Greek genocides, which killed 1.5 million and 750,000 natives of Anatolia, respectively. To this day, the Turkish government still denies these crimes. The Kurds saw forced resettlement to infertile regions of the country, and uncompensated seizure of their properties as part of a new series of Turkish laws under the republic. In 1925, Sheikh Said Piran, a Kurdish Sunni spiritual and political leader led a rebellion of former Ottoman soldiers against the Turkish military. Sheikh Said’s demands were a re-institution of the Islamic caliphate and system of governance, as well as proper recognition of the Kurds as a distinct people with a defined homeland and identity. The technological superiority of the Turkish military led to the defeat of the rebellion, marking the last major effort by Kurds to revive the Islamic caliphate. Despite the failure of the Sheikh Said revolt, it would by no means be the last attempt by Kurds in Turkey to liberate themselves from oppression. In 1937, following years of forced migration and violent repression, the Dersim Rebellion, in which primarily Zaza Kurds led by Alevi spiritual leader Seyid Riza revolted against the Turkish military, was sparked. For months Riza led his fighters across the southeast, attacking government positions and burning entryways into the mountains. The rebellion was crushed by the indiscriminate use of military air and ground forces, and Turkey’s uncompromising and bloody approach to dealing with the concerns of non-Turkish groups was well established, but the message was also conveyed – Kurds would not suffer atrocities lying down. The Turkish government only recently admitted to the crime, and puts the total dead at 13,000, fewer than most other estimates. Furthermore, despite the explicit targeting of Kurdish communities by the resettlement campaign, Turkish courts in 2011 refused to label it as a genocide, instead labelling it a resettlement plan.
The history of Kurdish resistance in Turkey changed drastically during the 1970’s, when political polarization swept the country. Conflict between far-right and far-left became commonplace, and the intrinsically anti-Kurdish nature of the Turkish ultranationalists such as the Grey Wolves (a violent Turkish group affiliated the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), who are now part of Turkey’s government), pushed many Kurds, especially of the younger generation, to the left-wing of the political spectrum. In 1978, Abdullah Ocalan, then a young Kurdish student with political aspirations, founded the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), initially a Marxist-Leninist group dedicated to the liberation of Kurdistan from Turkish occupation. The PKK rapidly grew in strength, and launched an armed struggle against the Turkish state’s oppression of the Kurds in 1984, waging war from bases in Lebanon, Syria and in the mountains of Kurdistan, until his capture in 1999, in Nairobi, Kenya. Ocalan was found guilty of terrorism and crimes against the state, and was sentenced to death, although that sentence would later be converted to life imprisonment after the removal of the death penalty from Turkish legal code. It is worth noting, the European Court of Human Rights found in their investigation and summary of the case that there were multiple violations of Ocalan’s legal and human rights during the trial conducted by the Turkish government. During his first few years in solitary imprisonment on Imrali Island, Ocalan studied the works of many philosophers and political theorists, and found himself drawn to the works of ecological socialist, Murray Bookchin. The ideas Ocalan absorbed led to adjust his ideology, and he instructed the PKK in this new thought and set out plans for implementation of a new system based on these theories. His new philosophy, which he labelled ‘democratic confederalism’ sought a federal system in Turkey, rather than an independent Kurdish state, with rights for minorities and women enshrined into law. This change greatly affected the militant Kurdish resistance to Turkish oppression, and was representative of the long-term shift in ideology pursued by Kurds in respect to their pursuit of freedom and self-rule.
When Recep Tayyip Erdogan ascended to the role of Prime Minister in 2003, some were hopeful that he could de-escalate the ongoing conflict with the Kurds, however, that optimism would soon sour. Despite certain measures being taken to roll back the Turkish state’s oppressive measures against Kurds (e.g. allowing Kurdish prisoners to communicate with visitors in their native language) , Erdogan’s government, which had previously courted the votes of conservatives within the country’s Kurdish community, has failed to address the Kurdish question and end the Turkish state’s conflict with the Kurdish people, and the condition of the average Kurdish citizen has not improved greatly since the AKP took control. Indeed, that very same year, the Turkish government also banned the only Kurdish political party in the National Assembly. Erdogan’s Turkey has embraced right-wing Islamist, ultra-nationalism in a way which intrinsically isolates the non-Turkish Kurds. Ankara has also pursued major infrastructure projects in the Kurdish region to ostensibly develop the region, under the aegis of the Southeastern Anatolia Project (GAP). The GAP has been criticized by some for its over budget costs often funded by outside investors, but by others by the threat some of its elements pose to Kurdish historical sites in the region. Despite protests and outcry from historians, archaeologists and artists, Erdogan signed off on the construction of the controversial Ilisu Dam, which threatened to flood the ancient town of Hasankeyf, which has stood for over 10,000 years, and contains many historical treasures, including many of Kurdish origin. Similar projects have posed threats to the ecology and housing of primarily Kurdish regions in the southeast of Turkey. The Turkish state has seen the intensity of the conflict with the Kurds rise and fall over the years, however, recently the escalation of pressure on the Kurds and the resulting tensions have proven to be more persistent.
Since the failed coup in 2016, Kurds, especially those in the political sphere, have been widely swept up in the post-coup crackdown. HDP has been a particular target of the Turkish government, despite the fact that the HDP was against Gulen and his movement (the purported mastermind of the 2016 failed coup), as the religious cleric had previously advocated for an aggressive stance on the Kurdish question – and indeed immediately and unequivocally condemned the coup, standing firm against all military coup scenarios.
Erdogan is making the relationship worse in his efforts to silence dissent. By arresting pro-Kurdish political party members and Kurdish journalists and lawyers, he fuels the outrage of the country’s Kurdish population and prompts them to reconsider the ways in which they demand their rights and express their frustration – as legal avenues for addressing grievances are quickly disappearing. As the prospect of a political solution, or even a visible pathway to discuss a possible solution, dissolves in Erdogan’s purge, Erdogan potentially pushes Kurds to revert to armed struggle.
After intensifying nationalist rhetoric over the years, bombing and even invading Kurdish regions in Iraq and Syria, and forming a coalition with the ultranationalist MHP, Erdogan has made it clear that the Turkish state has no interest in letting the Kurdish people of any country live in peace, and certainly no plan to address the historical injustices that the Turkish state has perpetrated against the Kurdish of Turkey since the founding of the republic. Erdogan is known for building his way out of any problem but with the lira losing its value, debt in foreign currency increasing, and Erdogan’s behavior scaring away investment, the Turkish government cannot afford to keep building. The loan recently promised from Qatar may finance further projects, but such spending at a time when the rest of the country falls deeper in debt is not going to be well-received by any but Erdogan’s most fervent and die-hard supporters.
The Kurds in Turkey have long experienced discrimination and denial of human rights, which has both hindered their economic and social development relative to the rest of Turkey, and hardened them to a bleak political reality that others in Turkey are only just beginning to experience.
The Kurds of Turkey are habituated to working in an environment of oppression, and may be the strongest and most skilled and organized opposition to Erdogan. Knowing this, Erdogan, like Turkish leaders before him, conflates the HDP, an active legal political party with a large national following, and the PKK, and associates any and all expression of Kurdish identity with illegal activity. Recently, former HDP co-leader Selahattin Demirtas was arrested for terrorist propaganda charges, accused of working on behalf of the PKK. Erdogan knows that, as he cracks down on all criticism, takes over institutions and purges the military, the only group that can confront his power will groups that operate outside the law, such as the PKK.
The transformation of Turkey under Erdogan is visibly displayed by the increasingly imperialistic tendencies of the republic, which has engaged in military adventures across Syria and Iraq. The desire to re-assert Turkish control, both directly and indirectly, in formerly Ottoman territories has been a major pillar of Erdogan’s foreign policy approach. In January 2018, Erdogan launched a military invasion into Northern Syria, against Kurdish YPG forces, backing jihadist terror groups in their push to seize the city of Afrin and the surrounding area. After 2 months of siege, the rebels and their backers declared victory, and the Turkish military set out to make an example of the once-peaceful enclave in northwestern Syria. The Turkish forces restored the military headquarters of Kemal Ataturk in Afrin, which he had used as a general in the Ottoman military during World War I. Similar acts of engaging militarily in former Ottoman territories helps further Erdogan’s narrative of restoring old Ottoman glory, and endears him to many of the more conservative and traditional members of Turkish society, at the expense of Kurdish lives. The Turkish occupation of Afrin has been brutal, essentially allowing fundamentalist Arab and Turkmen fighters to run amuck, torturing, looting, and murdering with impunity. While Ankara maintains a strong trade relationship with Iraqi Kurdistan, from the Turkish state nonetheless repeatedly violates Iraqi Kurdistan’s territorial sovereignty by bombing the region indiscriminantly, usingalleged PKK presence as a pretence for doing so, and actively supporting Turkmen militias, and training other Sunni militia forces to destabilize Iraq. Most recently, Erdogan has initiated another campaign of airstrikes in the Qandil Mountains of Iraq, ostensibly aiming to hit PKK fighters situated there, and showing no regard for the lives of villagers in the region. The clear violation of the borders and rights of two sovereign states by Turkey is in direct conflict with international law and agreements. By refusing to play by the rules set by the international community, Erdogan is flaunting his disrespect for diplomacy and cooperation in matters of significant transnational importance. The ‘bully role’ is one well-suited to strongmen such as Erdogan, and, while it may purchase him some short-term political capital among Turkish nationalists, the loss of credibility and respect by global actors and Kurdish citizens alike will have negative consequences for him as well.
It will be incredibly taxing on Turkey to sustain bad relations with both the Kurds of Turkey and the United States. Erdogan has shown he chooses self-aggrandizement over what his best for Turkey. The country as a whole can only benefit from a peace agreement with the PKK, and a stable Kurdish region would not only bring prosperity to Turkey, but also have positive consequences for Syria and the broader region as well. However, a stable and thriving Kurdish region is almost the last thing Erdogan wants. Erdogan’s enmity to the Kurds is not based simply on ethnic chauvinism or ‘national security’. Rather, Erdogan is afraid, not of actual Kurdish secession (which most Kurds do not claim to want), but the decentralization of power. Any lasting and meaningful peace with the Kurds must include giving them, to some extent, the right to have a say in their own affairs, rather than remain powerless subjects oppressed by the discriminatory federal legal and judicial framework of the Turkish state in its current form.
With Kurds making up over fifth of Turkey’s population and occupying a distinct and sizable geographical territory, any concession to Kurdish identity, political rights, and economic empowerment would mean a change to Turkey’s unitary system of government that keeps local administrative power at a minimum. If Ankara loosened its chokehold on the Kurdish region (the one that historically and most vocally advocates for self-rule) and Kurds were allowed to educate themselves, run their own cities, vote on their own issues and levy local taxes for their own regional projects without the need for approval of parliament, then other regions would perhaps want the same – and that is the true danger for Erdogan. If he loosens his grip on the Kurdish region, what next? Would Istanbul rebel against Ankara’s inept meddling in the economical capital of the country? Regions that are more socially liberal and/or economically successful may also see the merits of decentralization. Erdogan’s arguments for increased centralism and, indeed, authoritarianism, based in religious and nationalistic fervor, may ultimately become a relic of the past – as would his ability to maintain an influence that comes with a centralized system of patronage that he currently maintains. Cronyism would decline. Efficiency would increase. Indeed, a measure of decentralization would be beneficial to Turkey’s social and administrative health. But it is not what benefits Turkey that matters, but what benefits Turkey’s president.
Essentially, any long-term peace with the Kurds would mean increased self-administration, which will chip away at the current system of one man rule in which Erdogan rules almost completely by decree – a system which was the culmination of 15 years of political maneuvering by Erdogan. To Erdogan, the most dangerous thing about the Kurds is not violence, as he repeatedly states, but the prospect of decentralization (whether via democratic confederalism or another system), which would challenge his unquestioned authority and compel him to act within the law and take responsibility for his own illegal actions.