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Kurds and Disappointment
Source: Turkish Daily News,
04 April 2005
Dogu Ergil
We are a nation that often confuses results with reasons. However,
we are not unique in this flaw, otherwise there would be no social
science or social theory. Yet, when a nation collectively chooses to
deal with results without pondering on reasons, problems mount up,
changes shape and, at times, turn into intractable conflicts. Then
super or superior powers are blamed for the creation of these problems
that have exceeded our ability to contain them. Three such problems
block our path to healthy relations with the rest of the world:
The Cyprus, the Armenian and the Kurdish problems. There are enough
experts to offer meaningful assessments for the first two. Allow me
to address the latter.
When one studies what may be called the "Kurdish problem" with a
historical perspective (from the 1880s through 1940s) there is enough
documentation in the archives in the form of reports by governors,
inspector generals and military commanders, in addition to special
investigators, that show objective reasons that have hardly been
noticed by officials who thought they could rule a vast country like
Turkey from an Ankara through direct orders. Well, they were wrong.
Almost all reports repeat the same point with approximately five-year
intervals written after turmoil and recurring riots in the east.
These reports allude to the poverty of the local people due to
large landlordism (aga-lik) and their dependence on the local
notables (clientelism) that allows neither entrepreneurship nor
individualization that could be the basis of democratic involvement.
The second issue is tribalism that drives a wedge between communities
who are in constant competition over pasture and cultivable land. The
keen competition among tribes has developed a harsh militant attitude
against the "others" that evinces itself in the form of armed conflict
among tribes and riots against the central authority as well as
cultural patterns like blood feuds (vendetta) and honor crimes.
Rather than eliminating these pre-capitalistic and anachronistic
socio-economic formations consonant with its vision of transforming a
traditional society into a modern one, the republican elite found it
more expedient to form alliances with the agas, tribal chieftains
and local sheiks to maintain the rural status quo for the sake
of security and stability. Of course this poor strategy betrayed
its expected purpose. Dispossessed and dissatisfied, local Kurdish
populations followed their leaders in their rebellion against the
government who tried to tighten the reigns of local notables in order
to implement the centralist policies of the new nationalist regime.
All rebellions were crushed brutally.
In the 1960s Kurdish intelligentsia sought their place in the
mainstream leftist movement of Turkey to no avail. Neither the leftist
movement succeeded in creating a more pluralist democracy due to the
lack of popular support (Turkey is a haven of small enterprise and
proprietorship), nor the ruling elite gave it a chance to do so.
The 1971 military coup swept through the country like a bulldozer
and left nothing standing other than the official view and official
organization of the state. Incipient expression of Kurdish identity
was one of the targets of official wrath that wiped out all buds of
democratic organizations. The last organization left standing was
the one that took on the challenge of an armed struggle, ultimate
hardship like living in the mountain caves and wandering from one
country to another looking for opportunities to hit back and hurt.
This illegal armed organization headed by a university dropout, a
peasant boy fashioned after Stalin proved to be the leader of a rural
movement that wanted to get rid of the traditional socio-economic
structure that dwarfed the region as well as the central authority
that neither acknowledged their cultural identity nor communicated
directly with the people in order to improve their lives. The name of
the organization was the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). It carried
on a guerilla type of warfare with militia up to 15,000 at its heyday
between 1984 and 1999 until its military defeat and capture of its
leader Abdullah Ocalan (Apo).
Apo apologized to the people of Turkey for the destruction and lives
lost in the armed struggle he led for a decade and half and declared
his strategy foul. Instead he proposed to work for and to dedicate
his life to the building of a democratic republic instead of the
bureaucratic republic, which he saw as the cause of problems. He
ordered his militia to leave Turkey and wait for his orders in North
Iraq. Since February 1999 Apo has been on an island prison in the
Marmara Sea. He kept the paramilitary wing of the PKK intact to bargain
for his life and to use it as a rump card in return for obtaining
concessions from the government for his organization and his followers.
How representative is Apo and his organization of the Kurds of Turkey,
who are estimated to be approximately 15 million? My own research into
the attitude of the Kurds realized at the height of armed struggle
(1994-1995) revealed that the PKK was a locomotive intended to go to
the last station: independent Kurdistan. Only about 10 percent of Kurds
wanted to go along to the last terminal station with the PKK. The rest
got on and off the train pulled by the PKK at different stations like
cultural rights, self-respect, good governance, liberties, more income,
employment, better healthcare and educational services etc. This
data afforded clues to differentiate the militant/terrorist from the
sympathizer, which the government never acknowledged. For the ruling
elite of Turkey, the Kurdish intransigence was a security matter and
only stringent measures could eradicate it. The complex nature of the
matter was neither understood nor guided policy implementation. This
was indeed an indication of the eclipse of rational politics.
On the Kurdish side, although a small portion of Kurds support the
PKK, and the majority of whom do not vote for political parties
(HEP, DEP, HADEP, DEHAP consecutively) that it has given life to,
this organization has become the symbol of Kurdish defiance to
submission and condemnation to poverty and underdevelopment. Many
families have lost their sons in the course of struggle led by the
PKK and young women identify with it as an instrument of women's
emancipation because the organization also defied the traditional
authorities and social relations they upheld in the region. Yet the PKK
brought more misery and pain to the Kurdish people in Turkey because
the journey it started as a staunch Marxist-Leninist organization
evolved into Kurdish nationalism that runs counter to the latter and
more reasonable proposal of Apo: A Democratic Republic that would be
the guarantee of pluralism, multiculturalism and good governance.
The inbuilt contradiction in nationalism is that it never ceases
to breed and sharpen other nationalist groups. Just as much as
Turkish nationalism is intent on Turkifying the whole population,
it has created a strong sense of Kurdish nationalism of irredentist
inclinations, Kurdish nationalism, in turn, is reinforcing Turkish
nationalism. A pluralist democracy built on culture of tolerance and
reconciliation finds it very hard to flourish in this environment. It
is no wonder that Apo had to abandon this "democratic republic"
thesis and came up with a surprising revelation last week: a "stateless
democratic confederation." Don't you try encyclopedias or theory books;
there is no such thing either in constitutional law or international
relations books It seems that this "people's leader" as he calls
himself, "claims the honor of declaring this brand new invention"
(Ozgur Politika, March 22, 2005) which is no more than falling
back to his declaration of an independent Kurdistan. However,
carving a Kurdistan out of Turkey does not satisfy him. He wants
similar formations to appear in neighboring Syria, Iraq and Iran as
well. Then, these smaller statehoods will unite as a confederation
that in turn will be a part of a concentric confederation with states
out of which they have emerged. Yet, there will be no statehood over
this agglomerate. How about it?
You may not be speechless with the brilliance of the revelation
or the invention, but the four Kurdish (DEP) former M.P.s who have
suffered through a ten year prison term until recently are waiving
this proposal in their hands as the most democratic offer put forth
by the Republic of Turkey. You expect them to be wiser after ten long
years of contemplation especially after observing that while there
are about eight million voters of Kurdish origin in this country only
2 million vote for a Kurdish (nationalist) party that falls short of
the 10 percent national election threshold. Kurds simply do not see
Kurdish nationalism as a panacea to their problems, they vote for other
parties whom they believe may serve them better in practical life.
What happens in the end is the stark truth that those Kurds who are
still loyal to the PKK and its leader cannot put their weight and
energy behind the reformation and democratization of the system.
By not doing so their expectations of normalization, by which they
can have more rights, less discrimination and more power sharing
is delayed. This delay is perceived as victimization and feeds
into a vicious circle of defiance and the system's resistance of
accommodating them.
What a pity! The six million Kurds who remain aloof to the PKK inspired
political climate is either unorganized or are intimidated by this
organization. At the same time that lack the encouragement of the
government to create a different political climate, organization and
leadership. Thus, they remain ineffective to check and neutralize the
influence of the PKK and its irrational reflexes. Millions of Kurds
remain unrepresented in the void of organizations and leaders who
would defend their cultural identities as well as their legal rights
just because they are equal citizens but at the same time assure
the government and the public at large that they are loyal citizens
of the country and they do not pose a danger to the unity of the
nation. Thus far Ms. Leyla Zana and her comrades who are preparing
to launch another Kurdish political party by consuming existing DEHAP
and other organizations affiliated with the PKK really do not offer
a fresh alternative which the country is so much in need of. Instead
they follow the instructions of a political leader in prison who
has replaced the traditional tribal system with a political one and
offering irrelevant recipes by relying on an armed guerilla force
that has no place in a democracy. With this eclipse of the mind,
how in the world can Kurds expect to have an honorable and equal
place in a democratic system which they consciously or (more likely)
unconsciously refrain from contributing to its making.
--Boundary_(ID_i3u8fr86A7H640l3UmVnaQ)--
Source: Turkish Daily News,
04 April 2005
Dogu Ergil
We are a nation that often confuses results with reasons. However,
we are not unique in this flaw, otherwise there would be no social
science or social theory. Yet, when a nation collectively chooses to
deal with results without pondering on reasons, problems mount up,
changes shape and, at times, turn into intractable conflicts. Then
super or superior powers are blamed for the creation of these problems
that have exceeded our ability to contain them. Three such problems
block our path to healthy relations with the rest of the world:
The Cyprus, the Armenian and the Kurdish problems. There are enough
experts to offer meaningful assessments for the first two. Allow me
to address the latter.
When one studies what may be called the "Kurdish problem" with a
historical perspective (from the 1880s through 1940s) there is enough
documentation in the archives in the form of reports by governors,
inspector generals and military commanders, in addition to special
investigators, that show objective reasons that have hardly been
noticed by officials who thought they could rule a vast country like
Turkey from an Ankara through direct orders. Well, they were wrong.
Almost all reports repeat the same point with approximately five-year
intervals written after turmoil and recurring riots in the east.
These reports allude to the poverty of the local people due to
large landlordism (aga-lik) and their dependence on the local
notables (clientelism) that allows neither entrepreneurship nor
individualization that could be the basis of democratic involvement.
The second issue is tribalism that drives a wedge between communities
who are in constant competition over pasture and cultivable land. The
keen competition among tribes has developed a harsh militant attitude
against the "others" that evinces itself in the form of armed conflict
among tribes and riots against the central authority as well as
cultural patterns like blood feuds (vendetta) and honor crimes.
Rather than eliminating these pre-capitalistic and anachronistic
socio-economic formations consonant with its vision of transforming a
traditional society into a modern one, the republican elite found it
more expedient to form alliances with the agas, tribal chieftains
and local sheiks to maintain the rural status quo for the sake
of security and stability. Of course this poor strategy betrayed
its expected purpose. Dispossessed and dissatisfied, local Kurdish
populations followed their leaders in their rebellion against the
government who tried to tighten the reigns of local notables in order
to implement the centralist policies of the new nationalist regime.
All rebellions were crushed brutally.
In the 1960s Kurdish intelligentsia sought their place in the
mainstream leftist movement of Turkey to no avail. Neither the leftist
movement succeeded in creating a more pluralist democracy due to the
lack of popular support (Turkey is a haven of small enterprise and
proprietorship), nor the ruling elite gave it a chance to do so.
The 1971 military coup swept through the country like a bulldozer
and left nothing standing other than the official view and official
organization of the state. Incipient expression of Kurdish identity
was one of the targets of official wrath that wiped out all buds of
democratic organizations. The last organization left standing was
the one that took on the challenge of an armed struggle, ultimate
hardship like living in the mountain caves and wandering from one
country to another looking for opportunities to hit back and hurt.
This illegal armed organization headed by a university dropout, a
peasant boy fashioned after Stalin proved to be the leader of a rural
movement that wanted to get rid of the traditional socio-economic
structure that dwarfed the region as well as the central authority
that neither acknowledged their cultural identity nor communicated
directly with the people in order to improve their lives. The name of
the organization was the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). It carried
on a guerilla type of warfare with militia up to 15,000 at its heyday
between 1984 and 1999 until its military defeat and capture of its
leader Abdullah Ocalan (Apo).
Apo apologized to the people of Turkey for the destruction and lives
lost in the armed struggle he led for a decade and half and declared
his strategy foul. Instead he proposed to work for and to dedicate
his life to the building of a democratic republic instead of the
bureaucratic republic, which he saw as the cause of problems. He
ordered his militia to leave Turkey and wait for his orders in North
Iraq. Since February 1999 Apo has been on an island prison in the
Marmara Sea. He kept the paramilitary wing of the PKK intact to bargain
for his life and to use it as a rump card in return for obtaining
concessions from the government for his organization and his followers.
How representative is Apo and his organization of the Kurds of Turkey,
who are estimated to be approximately 15 million? My own research into
the attitude of the Kurds realized at the height of armed struggle
(1994-1995) revealed that the PKK was a locomotive intended to go to
the last station: independent Kurdistan. Only about 10 percent of Kurds
wanted to go along to the last terminal station with the PKK. The rest
got on and off the train pulled by the PKK at different stations like
cultural rights, self-respect, good governance, liberties, more income,
employment, better healthcare and educational services etc. This
data afforded clues to differentiate the militant/terrorist from the
sympathizer, which the government never acknowledged. For the ruling
elite of Turkey, the Kurdish intransigence was a security matter and
only stringent measures could eradicate it. The complex nature of the
matter was neither understood nor guided policy implementation. This
was indeed an indication of the eclipse of rational politics.
On the Kurdish side, although a small portion of Kurds support the
PKK, and the majority of whom do not vote for political parties
(HEP, DEP, HADEP, DEHAP consecutively) that it has given life to,
this organization has become the symbol of Kurdish defiance to
submission and condemnation to poverty and underdevelopment. Many
families have lost their sons in the course of struggle led by the
PKK and young women identify with it as an instrument of women's
emancipation because the organization also defied the traditional
authorities and social relations they upheld in the region. Yet the PKK
brought more misery and pain to the Kurdish people in Turkey because
the journey it started as a staunch Marxist-Leninist organization
evolved into Kurdish nationalism that runs counter to the latter and
more reasonable proposal of Apo: A Democratic Republic that would be
the guarantee of pluralism, multiculturalism and good governance.
The inbuilt contradiction in nationalism is that it never ceases
to breed and sharpen other nationalist groups. Just as much as
Turkish nationalism is intent on Turkifying the whole population,
it has created a strong sense of Kurdish nationalism of irredentist
inclinations, Kurdish nationalism, in turn, is reinforcing Turkish
nationalism. A pluralist democracy built on culture of tolerance and
reconciliation finds it very hard to flourish in this environment. It
is no wonder that Apo had to abandon this "democratic republic"
thesis and came up with a surprising revelation last week: a "stateless
democratic confederation." Don't you try encyclopedias or theory books;
there is no such thing either in constitutional law or international
relations books It seems that this "people's leader" as he calls
himself, "claims the honor of declaring this brand new invention"
(Ozgur Politika, March 22, 2005) which is no more than falling
back to his declaration of an independent Kurdistan. However,
carving a Kurdistan out of Turkey does not satisfy him. He wants
similar formations to appear in neighboring Syria, Iraq and Iran as
well. Then, these smaller statehoods will unite as a confederation
that in turn will be a part of a concentric confederation with states
out of which they have emerged. Yet, there will be no statehood over
this agglomerate. How about it?
You may not be speechless with the brilliance of the revelation
or the invention, but the four Kurdish (DEP) former M.P.s who have
suffered through a ten year prison term until recently are waiving
this proposal in their hands as the most democratic offer put forth
by the Republic of Turkey. You expect them to be wiser after ten long
years of contemplation especially after observing that while there
are about eight million voters of Kurdish origin in this country only
2 million vote for a Kurdish (nationalist) party that falls short of
the 10 percent national election threshold. Kurds simply do not see
Kurdish nationalism as a panacea to their problems, they vote for other
parties whom they believe may serve them better in practical life.
What happens in the end is the stark truth that those Kurds who are
still loyal to the PKK and its leader cannot put their weight and
energy behind the reformation and democratization of the system.
By not doing so their expectations of normalization, by which they
can have more rights, less discrimination and more power sharing
is delayed. This delay is perceived as victimization and feeds
into a vicious circle of defiance and the system's resistance of
accommodating them.
What a pity! The six million Kurds who remain aloof to the PKK inspired
political climate is either unorganized or are intimidated by this
organization. At the same time that lack the encouragement of the
government to create a different political climate, organization and
leadership. Thus, they remain ineffective to check and neutralize the
influence of the PKK and its irrational reflexes. Millions of Kurds
remain unrepresented in the void of organizations and leaders who
would defend their cultural identities as well as their legal rights
just because they are equal citizens but at the same time assure
the government and the public at large that they are loyal citizens
of the country and they do not pose a danger to the unity of the
nation. Thus far Ms. Leyla Zana and her comrades who are preparing
to launch another Kurdish political party by consuming existing DEHAP
and other organizations affiliated with the PKK really do not offer
a fresh alternative which the country is so much in need of. Instead
they follow the instructions of a political leader in prison who
has replaced the traditional tribal system with a political one and
offering irrelevant recipes by relying on an armed guerilla force
that has no place in a democracy. With this eclipse of the mind,
how in the world can Kurds expect to have an honorable and equal
place in a democratic system which they consciously or (more likely)
unconsciously refrain from contributing to its making.
--Boundary_(ID_i3u8fr86A7H640l3UmVnaQ)--