Washington Kurdish Institute
October 30, 2018
On October 18, 2018, Turkey’s Council of State, the highest administrative court in the country, ruled in favor of reinstating the use of the Student Oath in Turkey’s schools. For most of modern Turkey’s history, it has been mandatory that the school day begin with the reading of this oath. The Student Oath was composed and institutionalized during the reign of Turkey’s founding leader, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, a staunch nationalist who established modern Turkey as a nation-state that grants primacy to the ethnic Turks at the expense of minority groups who had long resided within the newly-established country’s borders, alternatively subjugating them and denying their existence. The Student Oath begins, “I am a Turk, honest and hardworking,” and pointedly ignores and delegitimizes the very being, contributions, and aspirations of over 20% of the citizenry who are not of Turkish ethnicity.
The practice of reciting the Student Oath was ended in 2013 during Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s third term as Prime Minister (note: Erdogan is now Turkey’s president, and the position of Prime Minister has been abolished as Erdogan has strengthened the role of the country’s president at the expense of various other institutions). The Erdogan-led Justice and Development Party (AKP) government of 2013 ostensibly took the step of eliminating recitation of the oath as part of their sweeping package of reforms, which was said to be designed to grant more rights to both religious people and minorities in the country. Indeed, Erdogan criticized the decision to reinstate the recitation of the Student Oath, and warned the council for its decision, and stating that the council had overstepped its powers.
Erdogan’s hypocrisy and racist rhetoric
To grab power from Turkey’s traditional secular, nationalist old guard, Erdogan and the AKP used the minorities, including the Kurds, to upend the order that had controlled the country since its founding. Erdogan initially branded himself as a new type of Turkish politician, one who was in touch with the masses and could act as a moderator and potentially end the state of war that existed between the Turkish state and the Kurdish people. Indeed, he did participate in peace talks with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), and broke certain taboos. For example, Erdogan stated that Turkey had become a “cemetery for political parties,” seemingly a reference to the various Islamist and Kurdish parties that had been forcibly shut down by the state since its founding. Erdogan made various gestures to the Kurdish community in an attempt to win their support. In 2009, Erdogan agreed to launch a state-run Kurdish language television channel. While this channel broadcast Turkish state-sanctioned propaganda, its establishment was nonetheless opposed by certain nationalist groups because it used the Kurdish language. In a statement now proven to be dishonest pandering to the Kurdish masses to win Kurdish votes, Erdogan stated that the Kurdish question cannot be solved via “military means.” “More democracy, not more repression, was the answer to the Kurds’ long-running grievances,” he said. He often spoke directly to Kurdish voters, many of whom are religious and socially conservative, claiming to understand their plight and explaining that only he could finally address the Kurdish question. At a rally in 2011 in Turkey’s largest Kurdish city, Amed (Diyarbakir in Turkish), he said, “I know what the status quo made my Kurdish brothers live through. I come from within this struggle. I know policies of dismissal, I know denial.” During the 2013 peace process, Erdogan also won the support from the international community as a leader who seemed motivated to address the nation’s most sensitive issue, the Kurdish question.
In Turkey’s June 2015 general elections, the progressive People’s Democratic Party (HDP), a left-wing party that included many of Turkey’s most prominent Kurdish politicians among its ranks, made history. For the first time since the founding of the republic, a Kurdish dominated party entered the Turkish parliament as a bloc, having exceeded the country’s 10% electoral threshold. Having won a surprising 13.12% of the votes, the HDP entered parliament with 80 seats, representing a potent political force to represent the oppressed peoples of the country – one that, ideologically speaking, was diametrically opposed to the AKP and its politics of ethnic and religious chauvinism and misogyny. Erdogan was keenly aware of power of this motivated opposition, and was also increasingly concerned by developments next door in Syria, where the country’s Kurds and their allies were achieving great success on the battlefield against ISIS and various jihadist groups supported by the Turkish state and establishing institutions to administer their own affairs. Erdogan was no longer feigned interest in addressing the Kurdish question, and instead shifted to policies of force and denial in addressing the Kurdish people of Turkey and beyond the country’s borders. In the political arena, Erdogan formed an alliance with the ultra-nationalist MHP based on a common approach to the Kurdish people. Turkey’s token gestures of reform which took place during dialogue with the Kurdish movement were rolled back. Restrictions were once again placed on the use of the Kurdish language, and signs posted by municipalities throughout Turkey in Kurdish and other local languages were removed. Increased military confrontation ensured, and thousands were killed, injured, and displaced. Yet again, the full might of Turkey’s NATO army and air force were used against Turkish citizens of Kurdish origin.
Erdogan consolidates power after failed coup
In July 2016, a faction of the Turkish military executed a coup attempt, and this attempted putsch was suppressed by Erdogan and elements of the military who remained loyal to him. Following the failed coup attempt, Erdogan took sweeping powers into his hands and harshly purged the ranks of not only suspected coup plotters and sympathizers but all other opposition as well. The country’s leading Kurdish politicians, members of the HDP, were among the first to denounce the coup attempt even before its ultimate failure, but nonetheless found itself as one of the primary targets of Erdogan’s unchecked ire in the months that followed. Erdogan purged thousands of journalists, academics, government employees, and teachers. Citizens from all walks of life found themselves unemployed, and many faced court cases for “membership of a terror organization” or “insulting the head of the state.” Dozens of HDP lawmakers and other members were persecuted and jailed. 87 Kurdish local leaders, democratically-elected mayors and heads of municipalities, were removed from their posts and replaced by government-appointed trustees. The entire local leadership of the Kurdish majority region within Turkey’s borders was changed by decree.
A new era of one-man rule
Following the coup, Erdogan effectively eliminated all checks and balances within Turkey’s governmental structure and judiciary. Ruling under a declared state of emergency, Erdogan and his AKP government pressed ahead with a planned constitutional referendum in April 2017. To increase his changes of prevailing, Erdogan formed an alliance with the ultra-nationalist MHP, which joined the AKP in campaigning for a “yes” vote that would strengthen the presidency. Under a virtual state of martial law, this vote went ahead and, despite allegations of fraud, the “yes” vote was declared victorious and additional powers were concentrated in the presidency, with the country’s parliament losing much of its influence.
A new stage in Turkish state oppression and terror
The violence, oppression, and absence of freedom that characterize Turkey’s society today are the natural result of Erdogan’s fascist rhetoric and demagoguery – now put intro practice and even enshrined in law. Even so, Erdogan and, more broadly, the Turkish state, continue to cling to certain untruths that were a central feature of state discourse long before the rise of the AKP, claiming to have no problem with Kurds, but rather only with the PKK. Of course, this assertion is shown to be hollow when Turkey restricts expression of Kurdish identity in all forms, and uses its military to attack and even occupy Kurdish areas in Syria and Iraq – and pursues agreements with the Iranian regime to work against the Kurdish people of Iran.
Erdogan’s opposition to the decision of Turkey’s Council of State to reinstitute the recitation of the Student Oath has nothing to do with the concerns of the Kurdish people – and is simply a reflection of Erdogan’s fear of allowing any other decision-making body to exist outside of the shadow of his executive presidency. Any statements to the contrary are yet another effort to once again win the trust of some portion of the Kurdish citizenry to support his campaigns of terror and grift. As the Turkish state continues to kill and otherwise terrorize Kurds throughout Turkey and beyond the Turkey’s borders, Kurdish students will be forced to assert how happy they are to be called Turks everyday as school begins. From Erdogan’s palace to Kurdish villages of Syria and to classrooms throughout Turkey, there is complete continuity in the Turkish state’s approach to the Kurdish people – and the architect of this sad state of affairs is none other than Erdogan.