Washington Kurdish Institute
June 4, 2019
After coming to power in 2002, Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development (AKP) headed by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, suffered major losses in the recent local elections held on March 31. The AKP lost Turkey’s leading cities to the opposition, including Istanbul, the financial capital of Turkey. However, Erdogan refused to recognize the results and pressured the Supreme Electoral Council to rerun Istanbul elections on June 23. Erdogan and his party also stripped at least five Kurdish mayoral winners in the Kurdish cities and towns, as part of the ongoing war against the Kurds since 2015 when the Turkish government ended the peace process with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Erdogan jailed thousands of Kurdish people, including lawmakers, journalists, and academics. Simultaneously, Erdogan has jailed tens of thousands of Turks for voicing concerns about his authoritarian regime.
To talk about the importance of Istanbul’s rerun elections and the Kurdish question in Turkey, the Washington Kurdish Institute hosted Dr. Aykan Erdemir. Dr. Erdemir is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former member of the Turkish Parliament (2011 to 2015) who served in the EU-Turkey Joint Parliamentary Committee. As an outspoken defender of pluralism, minority rights, and religious freedoms in the Middle East, Dr. Erdemir has been at the forefront of the struggle against religious persecution, hate crimes, and hate speech in Turkey. He is a founding member of the International Panel of Parliamentarians for Freedom of Religion or Belief.
Q: Before the rerun of Istanbul elections, we sense a somewhat a softer approach toward the Kurds by the ruling Justice and Development (AKP). Recently we saw that the Turkish government has lifted the visit ban of the imprisoned Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan. We sense that the AKP is trying somewhat to restart the peace process with the Kurds. Why now? What could you tell us about the Istanbul rerun elections?
[quote font_style=”italic”]”The repression against Turkey’s Kurds continue full scale” [/quote]
Dr. Erdemir: First, I would argue that the new approach is not a softer approach but an ambivalent approach. So, on the one hand it is more accommodating, allowing Abdullah Öcalan’s lawyers to visit him after eight years, but on the other hand, the repression against Turkey’s Kurds continue full scale. And there has been a recent cross-border operation against the PKK, which again is one of the rally-round-the-flag strategies of Turkish president Erdogan. Turkey’s Kurds have been receiving a lot of mixed signals lately and there has been a couple of different motivations behind these mixed signals. On the one hand, there has been a massive hunger strike in Turkey and across the world, including some HDP lawmakers, prominent intellectuals and thousands of participants. So far, eight people have killed themselves as part of these protests. So, the government has been under pressure through this campaign, but at the same time there is now the rerun of Istanbul elections. And Erdogan is a smart politician who has seen that hardline policies against the Kurds in Turkey cost him not only the Istanbul but also a number of cities from Antalya to Ankara. And also, his far-right partner the MHP has lost Adana and Mersin and again because of the Kurdish votes. Erdogan knows that his policies are very costly, even at the municipal level. So, this move can also be seen as part of an attempt to at least undermine the tactical alliance that brought together center-right and center center-left and moderate Islamists, as well as the Kurds. The reason for the mixed signaling and the ambivalence is because ultimately Erdogan has to depend on his ultranationalist partners, the MHP.
The MHP’s trademark in politics is this strong nationalism as well as anti-Kurdish sentiments. So, there is a limit to which Erdogan can be flexible on the Kurdish issue as long as he keeps the MHP as a partner. At this point, he doesn’t have much of a chance to change his partners. So, after the local elections, I think it might be a different story, but up until the Istanbul elections, the rerun of Istanbul elections, we will continue to see mixed signaling on the part of Erdogan as he tries to balance the requirements of his MHP partners as well as his attempts to undermine the Kurdish tactical alliance of the opposition.
Q: Are these policies by the AKP used to target the central-left and to break the broad opposition alliance around the CHP candidate?
[quote font_style=”italic”]”Almost every single Kurdish political party have been criminalized, banned and their lawmakers and officials have been jailed”[/quote]
Dr. Erdemir: I think, Erdogan has learned a lesson the hard way. He, together with the MHP, recrafted the entire Turkish political system, turned it into an executive presidential system and amassed executive, legislative, and judicial powers in his office, in the presidential office. And he assumed this would win him elections and this would give him Turkey. The MHP in this process would come to the scene as the kingmakers, as a key partner. Without realizing they made Turkey’s Kurds the king makers; they make the HDP the kingmakers. Without realizing, they made the jailed leader of the HDP, Selahattin Demirtaş, the kingmaker. So, this was on the part of Demirtaş a brilliant chess move at a moment when Turkey’s ruling bloc assumed “Demirtaş is over, he is in prison and he has lost all political power.” He demonstrated that even from prison, he could be, Turkey’s most effective politician because when we take a look at the local elections in Turkey, Demirtaş is the winner. From his prison cell he singlehandedly crafted a tactical alliance and it was a very nuanced alliance and he didn’t necessarily say “go vote for the CHP.” He said, go make the ruling bloc, go make the AKP and the MHP, Erdogan and Devlet Bahçeli lose and that was the result of the local elections. I think looking into the future, we are beginning to see the very beginnings of an opposition bloc. It is a very loose bloc. It is a very heterogeneous block. It has the pro-secular, center-left CHP, it has another Islamic party, the Felicity Party. It has a splinter group from the MHP, called the ‘Good party’, the IYI Party, which is now trying to become a center-right, moderate nationalist party. And then, it has the HDP. So technically, it would be very difficult to imagine that all these four groups could come together.
But I think they all owe it to Erdogan and Bahçeli. The fact that they made the mistake of polarizing politics and criminalizing the entire opposition brought all the opposition together. In a way they created empathy. Turkey’s other opposition parties, now that they are also criminalized by Bahçeli and Erdogan, began to develop empathy for what the Kurds have been living through – because the Kurds have been criminalized from day one. Almost every single Kurdish political party have been criminalized, banned and their lawmakers and officials have been jailed. So now for other Turkish politicians across the political spectrum, they feel they experience what pro-Kurdish politicians have been going through. So ultimately, I would say this was a major miscalculation on the part of Erdogan and Bahçeli and also a masterful move by Demirtaş.
Q: So that brings up a point where a lot of Kurds have concerns in Turkey based on previous policies by center-left parties. For example, from 1991 to 2002 five Kurdish parties have been shut down by the Turkish government. So, do you think there’s an evolution to the central-left parties to open up to the Kurdish question and the Kurdish rights? Also, what is your advice for the Kurdish voters and the HDP? Should they continue this path in supporting the opposition? or if they have an opportunity, they should go back to sort the peace process with the AKP?
[quote font_style=”italic”]”For Turkey’s Kurds, this is now really the beginning of a new era when they will engage with their counterparts, not just about tactical alliances and winning elections”[/quote]
Dr. Erdemir: For Turkey’s Kurds, Turkish republican history has quite a number of lessons and I think one key lesson is that across the political spectrum, you know from the nationalist-right to center-right to center-left to the Islamist parties often there is very little difference in policy when it comes to the Kurds. Ruling parties have changed over the years in Turkey: we have had center-right governments, center-left governments, coalition governments, broad coalitions, narrow coalitions. But one thing remains constant and that is the systematic exclusion of Kurds, discrimination against Kurds, and failing to provide various cultural, social, and economic rights to Turkey’s Kurdish citizens. So at this point, yes, I’ve mentioned a tactical alliance in the making, an open-ended alliance, but I’m sure the pro-Kurdish HDP officials know that beyond winning the elections, there has to be a completely new way of thinking about Turkey.
I am sure they are not naive politicians. Demirtaş is a very smart politician. He knows that this is a slow and long change, a change that needs to happen not only in the HDP’s tactical allies, but also in the entire Turkish political landscape. I call it a cognitive transformation in which the average Turkish politician no longer thinks of Kurds as a marginal element, as a secondary element of Turkish politics and transitions to what I call an equal citizenship understanding. Meaning people, regardless of their ethnic background, regardless of their faith, regardless of their class or the region they come from should have the same rights. And often the problem is many Turkish politicians who argue, “I’m all for the republic, I’m all for equal citizenship,” don’t realize that equal citizenship means at times being blind to difference and treating everyone equally, and at others being very attentive to difference and accommodating difference.
I think this was the main shortcoming. People fail to accommodate ethnic and linguistic differences. People fail to accommodate that in certain parts of Turkey Turkish citizens could want education in their mother tongue, could want services in their own mother tongue. For example, whether it is social services, whether it is medical services, whether it is access to media, whether it is state broadcasting, and so on and so forth. So, I think Turkey is a late comer to this game of an inclusive and accommodating politics. We have seen this executed quite brilliantly across Europe, and Turkey is an aspiring European Union member although the membership process is now almost dead. But nevertheless, Turkey is a member of the Council of Europe and is an accession country to the European Union. And the model there is very clear. It is a model that is inclusive, accommodating, that embraces cultural differences and is both blind to difference and at the same time is very attentive to the specific needs of different linguistic and cultural groups.
I think for Turkey’s Kurds, this is now really the beginning of a new era when they will engage with their counterparts, not just about tactical alliances and winning elections, but at the same time about transforming the entire thinking. And I think we are beginning to see some fruits of such new politics. For example, just last week, CHP leader Kılıçdaroğlu made a quite bold statement and saying, Turkey’s Kurds have demands about education in mother tongue and that there should be some legislative change about that. And I think this is what I’m talking about, the beginning of a debate that’s beyond, “let’s work together to win elections.” And it is more about “let’s work together to build an inclusive and embracing Turkey.”
Q: Equal citizenship of the people of Turkey should start with a peace process after four decades of bloody war between the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the Turkish government which also the Turkish side had suffered from. We know there was a peace process engineered by Abdullah Öcalan in 2013 but that did not go so far. Previously you criticized the peace process by saying it wasn’t based on institutions but rather a deal between the intelligence community and the PKK. How should the peace process start once again that could be a profound solution to the Kurdish question.
[quote font_style=”italic”]”There can be no democratization without the Kurdish peace process, and there can be no Kurdish peace process without democratization”[/quote]
Dr. Erdemir: During the peace process, I was both a member of the opposition who signed a declaration in support of the peace process and at the same time, I criticized the manner in which the peace process was carried out because it wasn’t inclusive. It didn’t involve the parliament, it didn’t involve a more institutionalized peace building process. And I think we have all learned a lesson from that failure, which we predicted back then. And the lesson is that there can be no democratization without the Kurdish peace process, and there can be no Kurdish peace process without democratization. So now Turkey knows that both processes need to go together. And the second lesson we learned is this cannot be just an elite negotiation behind closed doors. Certainly, there is room for that in all of the world’s peace processes. There is always a back channel secret talks.
But for a sustainable peace building process, we need to bring in all stakeholders. I know, back in 2013, 2014, and 2015, as we were discussing these issues in the parliament and elsewhere, our colleagues were saying, “Oh, but that’s so cumbersome, that so tiresome. It is a lot of effort.” And I said, no one told us that this could be an easy process. It will have to be a very difficult process, meaning we will have to engage with stakeholders, including skeptical stakeholders. This has to be a persuasion game. This has to be a consultation process, meaning we have to invest the effort to bring in different stakeholders and we have to invest the effort to build a moral majority around a negotiated settlement. And, are we closer to that goal today? I would say yes and no. Yes, because we have the lessons of the failed peace process.
So, it is my hope that there will not be a second attempt of that kind of ill-designed peace process. But then at the same time, my no answer, my pessimistic answer comes from the fact that Turkish democratic backsliding continues and today we are at a place much worse than 2011, 2012, and 2013. So, the possibility of building an inclusive, deliberative process is much less likely than the 2013 process. This doesn’t mean that we have to give up hope. I think it is crucial that both Turkey’s opposition and Turkey’s intellectual circles, academics, journalists, NGO volunteers, and activists to keep the idea alive. And I don’t want to be naive. I know keeping the idea alive is very costly and difficult. We have had academics for peace who have been purged, who have been prisoned. We have had journalists who again have been beaten, sent to prison, fired from their positions. We have NGO activists who are still in prison, the leading figure, Osman Kavala, one of Turkey’s top philanthropists. So all of these key stakeholders have paid dearly for investing in this democratic process. But nevertheless, I think keeping the idea alive is very important so that, there is always a day after. Once the authoritarian regime in Turkey crumbles under its own weight, we will have to restart from scratch. And when we restart, I think if the idea is alive, then we can build the second Kurdish peace process on a stronger footing. And that would not only be great news for Turkey because for Turkey it would mean peace, prosperity, and a stronger economy. But also for Turkey’s neighbors including Kurdish neighbors, Arab neighbors, Persian neighbors, and Balkan neighbors, this would mean a more positive neighbor, a neighbor that is more likely to engage in win-win relationships. Again, at this point this is a dream, but we all know that if you insist on your dreams, one day it might come true.
Q: After the AKP-led government allowed Öcalan to be seen by his lawyers. On May 2, Öcalan released a joint statement with seven points with two of his comrades. However there are two interpretations in regards to his statement: one is that Öcalan is under pressure and the AKP is trying to play Öcalan to calm things down so they focus on other issues and priorities and the other is that Öcalan would like to restart the peace process for the sake of the Syrian Kurds to prevent Turkey to further invade the Kurdish region in Syria. How do you value the effective of Öcalan’s statement? And the conditions that he was allowed to be seen after almost eight years of visit ban.
[quote font_style=”italic”]”Istanbul’s election results could reshuffle the cards in the Turkish political game once again.”[/quote]
Dr. Erdemir: I think there are immediate goals for both parties, both for the Turkish government and for Öcalan, maybe also mid- to long-term goals. So, the immediate win for both sides was this: on the government side, ending hunger strikes, ending the global embarrassment around it, and also potentially undermining the Kurdish tactical alliance in the run up to the rerun of Istanbul elections. But for Öcalan, the immediate goal was to end his isolation. So, after eight years he made a comeback at a time when no one was expecting. And at a time when the MHP is really very strong in the Turkish government. I think Öcalan demonstrated again that as a chess player, he could take advantage of the peculiar circumstances and even when Bahçeli and the MHP are maybe at the peak of their power, he can break free from this isolation.
So these were the immediate goals. But then beyond the short term, of course, this is a very complex chess game. Potentially Erdogan who has changed many partners since the first day he has been in office is probably thinking about, “Okay, what comes after the MHP?” because to this day Erdogan has not only sold out all his partners in politics, he has destroyed them as he was abandoning them. So, there might come a day, when Erdogan will do the same or will want to do the same to the MHP. And if he wants to do that, of course, there has to be a plan for the day after. And Turkey’s Kurds happened to be one of the potential counterweights, counterbalances to the MHP. But beyond that tactical issue, Erdogan might also be thinking about a second Kurdish peace process. For Öcalan, it is a more complex theme. We do not know to what extent he has kept up with all the news over the last eight years. We do not know to what extent he has been isolated. But we can be sure that he is thinking about the future of Syria. We can be sure that he is thinking about a second Kurdish peace process in Turkey. Probably he is thinking about the future of the HDP in Turkey. And I would say it might be a bit early right now to figure out what is really at play, because the first letter and then some of the short statements by his attorneys are, I think, still very cryptic. They are quite brief, difficult to read in between the lines. And I think probably there is a strategic reason for the ambiguity of the statements. I would say, as a former politician and an academic, probably everyone is waiting for the day after the local elections because Istanbul’s election results could reshuffle the cards in the Turkish political game once again. Because if Erdogan loses again, despite the very uneven playing field, despite playing all the tricks in the book, it may lead to a major crack among the ranks of not only the ruling coalition bloc but also within the AKP itself. And, my guess is Öcalan is waiting to see what emerges the day after local elections. Probably after that we might begin to see less ambiguous statements.
Q: The international community and the European Union have criticized Erdogan’s government for unfair circumstances during elections, especially during the 2018 referendum when Erdogan granted himself more presidential powers. Is the opposition afraid of fraud voting once again during the rerun of Istanbul local election? What would be their reaction?
[quote font_style=”italic”]”Turkey’s democratic backsliding has been most evident in the elections”[/quote]
Dr. Erdemir: Turkey’s democratic backsliding has been most evident in the elections. Since 1950, Turkey has had free and fair elections, but unfortunately the elections have started to be less free and less fair over the years. And, we are almost at a point where we can say that there are no more fair elections. The playing field is extremely uneven, Erdogan has 90 percent of the media and the air time. He has a vast majority of the budget, public budget at his service. But nevertheless, he can lose, as we have seen. And when it comes to the freeness of the elections, there have been cases where, we can call elections as semi-free. For example, moving some of the Kurdish-majority ballot boxes and the intimidation of some of the voters. But moreover, with the latest elections, we have seen the appointment of the runner ups instead of some of the Kurdish mayors. We have seen last time around replacement of elected mayors with trustees. And also, lately we have seen these tricks to change the results of the elections. Basically we are now at a new moment in Turkish political history where winning the election at the ballot box does not necessarily guarantee that you will rule and hence, the opposition continues to have legitimate concerns. But at the same time, I think they have demonstrated that when they join forces, they can effectively –given the extremely unfair conditions– they can still win elections. I’m pretty sure that the last time around, even in Istanbul, there were a lot of irregularities and nevertheless, the opposition won by a narrow margin. And this time around too, since it is just the Istanbul election, there will be tens of thousands of opposition volunteers from around Turkey rushing to Istanbul to monitor the ballot boxes, thereby giving Erdogan a much less opportunity to tweak the results.
Yes, the anxiety is there, the likelihood of cheating is there. But I see a very resilient opposition. I see a very united opposition, and I still want to believe that, İmamoğlu [CHP candidate for Istanbul] will again emerge as victorious from the rerun elections. But more importan than İmamoğlu’s victory as Istanbul’s mayor is the victory of this new discourse, this inclusive, embracing, and democratic discourse that İmamoğlu represents. Because after all, he’s not just a mayoral candidate at this point. He’s now a symbol. He is the symbol of a new Turkey, is the symbol of an inclusive, embracing politician who has been on the record, embracing Istanbul’s Kurds, Arabs, Jews, Christians, Armenians, Greeks, Alevis, seculars and pious Muslims. He did not hesitate to state these out loud in rallies and in the media despite the pushback, despite some xenophobic, Kurdphobic, antisemitic and antichristian pushback. He did not take a step back. He insisted on this new, inclusive and multicultural message. I think that is the big victory that Turkey’s opposition should not miss because that could really be the spark of that New Turkey – inclusive, prosperous, and democratic Turkey that we would like to see across the country. So, the rerun is more than just about Istanbul. The rerun is also about Diyarbakir and Ankara. It is also about Adana. It is basically about the entire Turkey as well as the Middle East.
Dr. Aykan Erdemir, senior fellow at FDD, is a former member of the Turkish Parliament (2011 to 2015) who served in the EU-Turkey Joint Parliamentary Committee, EU Harmonization Committee, and the Ad Hoc Parliamentary Committee on the IT Sector and the Internet. As an outspoken defender of pluralism, minority rights, and religious freedoms in the Middle East, Aykan has been at the forefront of the struggle against religious persecution, hate crimes, and hate speech in Turkey. He is a founding member of the International Panel of Parliamentarians for Freedom of Religion or Belief, and a drafter of and signatory to the Oslo Charter for Freedom of Religion or Belief (2014), as well as a signatory legislator to the London Declaration on Combating Antisemitism.
He has edited seven books, including Rethinking Global Migration: Practices, Policies, and Discourses in the European Neighbourhood (KORA) and Social Dynamics of Global Terrorism: Risk and Prevention Policies (IOS Press). He is co-author of the 2016 book Antagonistic Tolerance: Competitive Sharing of Religious Sites and Spaces (Routledge). On April 27, 2016, Aykan was awarded the Stefanus Prize for Religious Freedom in recognition of his advocacy for minority rights and religious freedoms. In March 2015, he was awarded a distinguished fellowship at the Oxford Centre for the Study of Law and Public Policy. His work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, The Hill, Politico Europe, The Huffington Post, The National Interest, War On The Rocks, The Cipher Brief, Business Insider, Turkish Policy Quarterly, Hurriyet Daily News, Ahram Online, and The Times of Israel.After completing his BA in International Relations at Bilkent University, Ankara, Aykan received an MA in Middle Eastern Studies and PhD in Anthropology and Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard University, where his doctoral dissertation was entitled, “Incorporating Alevis: The Transformation of Governance and Faith-based Collective Action in Turkey.” He also worked as a doctoral fellow at Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and a research associate at the University of Oxford’s Center on Migration, Policy and Society.