Reviving the "Kurdish Opening"

The International Crisis Group today released a superb report that examines Turkey's lingering Kurdish issue and the failure of recent efforts to solve, and that also offers some very clear and practical advice for how to move the issue forward. From the summary of the report, entitled "Turkey: Ending the PKK Insurgency":

A surge in violence has dashed plans for a negotiated end to the 27-year-old Kurdistan Workers’ Party (Partiya Kar­ke­rên Kurdistan, PKK) insurgency. Since Turkey’s elections in mid-June, clashes have killed more than 110 people, country-wide ethnic friction has hardened opinion, and the government has started bombing PKK bases and talking about an imminent ground offensive in northern Iraq. The PKK must immediately end its new wave of terrorist and insurgent attacks, and the Turkish authorities must control the escalation with the aim to halt all violence. A hot war and militaristic tactics did not solve the Kurdish problem in the 1990s and will not now. A solution can only lie in advancing the constitutional, language and legal reforms of the past decade that have gone part way to giving Tur­kish Kurds equal rights. Given the recent violence, returning to a positive dynamic requires a substantial strategic leap of imagination from both sides. Neither should allow itself to be swept away by armed conflict that has already killed more than 30,000 since 1984.

The Turkish Kurd nationalist movement must firmly commit to a legal, non-violent struggle within Turkey, and its elected representatives must take up their seats in parliament, the only place to shape the country-wide reforms that can give Turkish Kurds long-denied universal rights. The Turkish authorities must implement radical judicial, social and political measures that persuade all Turkish Kurds they are fully respected citizens. They should reach out to non-violent nationalists and not abandon long-standing negotiations on disarmament with the PKK, including its jailed leader, Abdullah Öcalan. Although justified in acting resolutely to block the PKK’s recent attacks, the authorities must avoid falling into the trap of tit-for-tat escalation. Many big Turkish strikes against PKK bases in northern Iraq solved nothing in the past. As the more powerful party, the authorities should instead take the lead in creating opportunities to end the fighting.

For all its gaps, flaws, and unravelling since late 2009, the promises of the Democratic Opening developed by the ruling Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) remain the best way forward. That initiative counts as Turkey’s most credible attempt to heal the open wounds of conflict between the state and its estimated 15-20 per cent Kurdish-speaking population. This report details more than a dozen concrete steps it has involved so far, including broadening access to Kurdish-language television, legislating the right to make political speeches in Kurdish and overseeing an end to almost all torture in Turkish jails. Others have led to a new sense of freedom in Kurdish cities, high-level talks with Öcalan and a greater readiness by mainstream commentators to discuss previously forbidden ideas, like a change in Öcalan’s jail conditions after a full peace deal or a federal disposition for the Kurdish-majority south east.

The outline of a deal to end the insurgency that was also under negotiation – an end to the fighting, major legal reforms, an amnesty and Turkish Kurd acceptance to work within the legal Turkish system – remains the best long-term outcome for both sides. But while making these reforms, the authorities have arrested hundreds of Turkish Kurd nationalists, including many elected municipal officials and other nationalist party members. More than 3,000 nationalist activists are behind bars, many punished as “terrorists” for the non-violent expression of opinions under laws for which the AKP is responsible. On the other hand, what should have been the centrepiece of the Democratic Opening – a ground-breaking PKK amnesty in October 2009 – foundered when Turkish Kurd nationalists exploited it for propaganda purposes.

AKP’s relatively open-minded approach has won it half the Turkish Kurds’ votes, but the government has to go further and fully engage the other half and its representatives, who are the decision-makers in the Kurdish nationalist movement. It should offer educational options that respect Kur­dish languages and culture and rewrite laws that unfairly jail nationalists as terrorists. It must also ensure its policies are fully implemented by all military, judicial and state bodies. Otherwise, as developments since the June 2011 elections show, the nationalists will feel unconvinced and threatened and be unready to reach a compromise deal.

AKP leaders must also speak out to convince mainstream Turkish public opinion that reform is essential to resolve the Kurdish problem; granting universal rights is not a concession; Turkish is not being undermined as the country’s official language; and almost all Turkish Kurds wish to continue living in a united Turkey. The government must order the security forces to try whenever possible to capture rather than kill PKK insurgents, and should engage the legal Kurdish nationalist party to the maximum extent.

The full report can be found here. Previous posts about the "Kurdish Opening" are here.

ICG's report comes out only a few days after the leaking to the Turkish press of a recording a previously secret meeting (held either in Europe or Northern Iraq) between Hakan Fidan, the head of Turkey's intelligence agency, and senior members of the PKK. Although opposition figures have criticized the government for meeting with the PKK, there are also suggestions that now that the fact that these meetings took place is out in the open it will help normalize the idea of the Turkish state and the PKK actually sitting down to negotiate. More on this development here (Hurriyet Daily News) and here (The National).

Criminalizing Protest

Human Rights Watch has an excellent new report out that looks at the troubling use of anti-terror laws to imprison Kurdish protestors and stifle dissent in southeast Turkey.

According to Turkish law, protestors (even non-violent ones) can be accused of being members of a terrorist organization (read, the PKK) if they go to a demonstration that was deemed to have been organized by that organization. That had led to numerous cases of people who have been given fairly severe sentences for basically showing up at a protest. Some of examples covered in HRW's report include the case of an illiterate mother of six who was sentenced to seven years in jail for joining a protest where she held up a banner that said "The approach to peace lies through Ocalan" and that of a university student who was given six years in jail after being filmed flashing a victory sign at the Diyarbakir funeral procession of a slain PKK fighter and then later seen clapping his hands at a protest at his university.

From a release about the report:

....Over the past three years, courts have relied on broadly drafted terrorism laws introduced as provisions of the 2005 Turkish Penal Code, plus case law, to prosecute demonstrators. The courts have ruled that merely being present at a demonstration that the PKK encouraged people to attend amounts to acting under PKK orders. Demonstrators have been punished severely for acts of terrorism even if their offense was making a victory sign, clapping, shouting a PKK slogan, throwing a stone, or burning a tire....

...."When it comes to the Kurdish question, the courts in Turkey are all too quick to label political opposition as terrorism," said Emma Sinclair-Webb, Turkey researcher at Human Rights Watch and author of the report. "When you close off the space for free speech and association, it has the counterproductive effect of making armed opposition more attractive."

The report can be found here.

(photo: a group of Kurdish women at a 2007 rally in Diyarbakir. By Yigal Schleifer)

Referendum Talk

I was on Chicago Public Radio's "Worldview" program talking about the Sept. 12 referendum in Turkey and the constitutional reform package that Turkish voters passed today. You can hear the interview, which also covers a number of other related issues, here.

A (not so) Simple Yes or No Will Do

Constitutional reform is tricky business. Fortunately for the average Turk, who is being asked to vote on a constitutional reform package in a national referendum on Sept. 12, Turkey's political parties are making things simple. Rather than talking about what's in the package, they have turned the referendum into a vote of confidence on the ruling AKP government and boiled down the whole thing into a simple matter of "yes" versus "no." Like the government? vote "evet." Don't like the government? Vote "hayir."

Or maybe things are not so simple. Writes Andrew Finkel in Today's Zaman:

In a nation already susceptible to polarization, who, one might ask, was the bright spark who came up with the idea of a political mechanism where the issues could only be decided with a nod or a shake of the head. It has already got to the point, the press reports, where brides and groom are falling out even before they leave the registry office over whether to take their vows with a government-leaning “yes” or the more contrary “I do.”

So what's in the reform package (which was passed in parliament a few months ago, but not with enough votes to avoid going to referendum)? Like many other AKP initiatives, it's a strange confection, layers of sweet-tasting and sensible-sounding enticements wrapped around a core of harder to swallow and clumsily disguised political self-interest.

What's causing the most debate in the package are the amendments that would change the way judges are appointed to Turkey's top court and to the powerful Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors (HSYK). Joost Lagendijk, a former member of the European parliament, takes a look at some of the criticism that's being leveled at that part of the reform package in a recent Hurriyet Daily News column.

Turkey, of course, is in dire need of constitutional reform, currently burdened with a constitution that was drafted by the military after the 1980 coup. The current document is designed to protect the state, rather than individual citizens -- a mindset that still permeates much of Turkish law. The AKP had actually campaigned in 2007 with the promise of a new civil constitution, but backed off on that promise once it got into office, using the political capital of its 47 percent victory and large parliamentary majority to pass a single constitutional amendment, one which would allow for headscarves to be worn at universities (and which was promptly annulled by Turkey's Constitutional Court).

The current package, which has some 20 articles, is again being delivered with a promise that this is only a prelude to further amendments, if not the long-awaited complete overhaul of the problematic current constitution. But there is good reason to worry about if more constitutional reforms will be coming any time soon, if at all, especially after all the effort that will be spent on passing (or killing) the current reform package. Hard to imagine anyone in the government having the appetite to go through the process again. One group of liberal intellectuals, who are supporting the package, are running a campaign called "Not enough, but 'yes'" -- not quite a ringing endorsement and one that struck as carrying a whiff of resignation to it.

For those interested in the actual details of the package, SETA, a government-leaning think tank based in Ankara has a rundown of the reform package, which can be found here (pdf).

The Information Blockade

I am taking a break from flotilla-related writing to report about the latest developments in the ongoing case of Turkey v. Google. As recounted here previously, a ban on Google's YouTube ha been in place in Turkey since 2008 after a court ruled that certain videos that were up on the site violated the law against insulting Ataturk. The ban was made possible by new Turkish legislation that critics have called too broad and too arbitrary. You can read about it here.

In recent days, strange things have been happening with several other Google sites. They aren't quite blocked, but access to them has been slowed down to point of them not being usable. Google Maps, for example, is one of the victims. Turkish officials haven't really explained what's going on, but Turkey's transportation minister, also responsible for internet matters, hinted that there was some kind of tax dispute between Ankara and Google.

What's disturbing about the Google slowdown is that rather than by court order (like in the case of YouTube) this action is being done by Telecommunications Directorate, the government agency that monitors the Internet and which is allowed to shut down sites without a court order. A lawsuit in the matter has already been filed by a group of "media freedom activists" who want the Turkish government to lift its Google blockade. Today's Zaman columnist Beril Dedeoglu writes in Friday's paper about the cost of the slowdown to Turkey's e-commerce and tourism sector. Column here.

Obviously, there will be those wags out there who will somehow try to use the Google affair as further evidence that Turkey is "drifting east." This blog will not join them, except to say that liberally interpreting the rule of law and arbitrarily applying it, as well as thuggishly depriving a country's population access to important knowledge-based services to prove a point in a tax dispute, does certainly smack of some kind of drift, eastward or other.

Turkey's "Bloodless Civil War"

The Wall Street Journal's Istanbul correspondent, Marc Champion, has a terrific piece in today's paper about an ongoing court case that really goes to the heart of the current political battles that are raging in Turkey.

The case has to do with Ilhan Cihaner, until recently the respected chief prosecutor in the eastern Turkish city of Erzincan and currently under arrest and on trial for working to destabilize and perhaps overthrow Turkey's government. The case is deeply intertwined with all the big issues of day in Turkey -- Ergenekon, judicial and constitutional reform, the role of Islamic groups in political life -- with each side in the country's political divide seeing the case of proof of the correctness of their position. Ironically, from opposing perspectives both supporters of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government and its secularist critics see the Cihaner case as one rife with judicial interference, prosecutorial zealotry and illegal doings.

The case is a complicated one, with -- like other Ergenekon-related cases -- many bizarre twists and turns and plenty of alleged intrigue and skullduggery. Champion does a great job in unpacking some of what's behind the case. You can find the article here -- highly recommended reading.

Turkey's Internet Laws "Under Surveillance"

Reporters Without Borders has just issued its latest list of "Internet Enemies," looking at countries where online activity is monitored, restricted or punished. This year, RSF has designated Turkey as a country "Under Surveillance" -- joining Russia and Belarus, among others. As mentioned in these previous posts here, here and here, Turkey has some very strong -- and misguided -- internet censorship laws, which allow both the courts and the government to block access to websites (the ongoing ban on YouTube in the country the most famous example).

You can read RSF's report on Turkey here.

General Malaise

Ilter Turan, a respected professor of International Relations at Istanbul's Bilgi University, has written a briefing for the German Marshall Fund looking at the recent arrest of dozens of high-ranking Turkish military officers – among them the former heads of the Navy and Air Force – as part of an investigation into an alleged plot to overthrow Turkey’s AKP government.

The arrests in the investigation into the Balyoz ("Sledgehammer") plot have been rightly hailed as a milestone in Turkey's continuing struggle to increase civilian oversight over the powerful and historically meddlesome military. The arrests have also been described as an important step in Turkey's democratization. Turan makes the point that the deep political divisions in Turkey and some of the AKP's (or, more specifically, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's) illiberal and anti-democratic tendencies pose a challenge for Ankara to turn the Balyoz developments into an opportunity for consolidating democracy. From Turan's piece:

It is clear that the military has lost its political clout while the probability of a military intervention has all but disappeared. The courts, on the other hand, are no longer as uniformed on what defending the interests of the state means. Such changes do not, however, confirm that Turkish democracy is deepening. Checks on the government’s exercise of power have been weakening. The prime minister has been growing more authoritarian in word and deed, while the government has began to behave increasingly partisan in its daily conduct of business. The country is deeply polarized and faces an impasse. An election 18 months away may or may not offer a way out. Turkish politics is in need of a grand compromise to consolidate democracy. Political will, however, seems currently to be sorely lacking.

Turan's briefing also gives some interesting background about the political atmosphere that surrounded Turkey's previous coups. You can read it here (pdf).

Getting to Boring

I have a short analysis piece up in the new issue of the online magazine The Majalla. The question I was asked to answer was "Why Turkey Should Join the EU?" (from the Turkish perspective). The combination of Turkey's growing self-confidence on the world stage, the lack of political ambition being projected from Brussels and the economic turmoil in Greece certainly make it harder to make the case for Europe these days. Here's my take on why Turkey should still be keeping its eyes on the EU membership prize:

....many of Ankara’s long-term foreign policy objectives would get an important boost from a meaningful partnership with the EU. Turkey’s plan to turn itself into a major transit hub for oil and gas would be handicapped if the country were not fully integrated into Europe’s common energy policy and pipeline network. Meanwhile, Ankara’s plans to turn itself into a regional soft power broker, particularly in the Middle East, are tied up in being able to present Turkey as a “bridge” to Europe. Making that bridge easier to cross, something EU membership would do, would further enhance Turkey’s claim to being a country that spans East and West.

More significantly, EU membership will help Turkey overcome its domestic differences, which stand as the largest hurdle towards Ankara realizing the ambitious goals it has set out for itself. Ultimately, joining the EU—or at least meaningfully engaging in a process that would lead towards membership—offers Turkey the best chance at developing a political system that can successfully manage those dangerous divisions and blunt their impact.

Indeed, it’s important not to underestimate what a difference simply being engaged in the EU process over the last decade has made for Turkey in terms of developing civil society, strengthening institutions and the rule of law, and forming a polity that is learning to recognize and accept differences. The opening of EU-funded small business support centers in some of Turkey’s most impoverished areas and the training of lawyers and judges by European counterparts are not the kinds of trends that make headlines. Yet, they are the kind of low-profile projects that have helped make an impact on how the country operates.

Meanwhile, considering Turkey’s limited experience with true democracy—with its history of military coups, powerful nationalism and intense division based along ethnic lines—the promise of joining the EU has created am impetus for enacting reforms that the country might not have otherwise been implemented.

Joining the EU, as one analyst recently put it, is an essential part of Turkey becoming a member in good standing of the “rules and regulations community.” It sounds boring and it is boring. But after four coups and decades of bitter infighting, perhaps what Turkey needs is a bit less political turmoil and excitement, and a bit more of the boring stuff.

You can read the full piece here. Also, be sure to read Nicholas Birch's excellent Al Majalla cover story, which looks at the interplay between Turkey's growing trade and political involvement in the Middle East. The magazine also has two more takes on the Turkey-EU question, one by Huseyin Bagci, a professor at Ankara's Middle East Technical University, and Erdgal Guven, a columnist at Radikal. You can find their pieces here.

An Unsettling Blast From the Past

I have a story up on the Eurasianet website about the release from prison of Mehmet Ali Agca, Pope John Paul II's failed assassin, and the dark memories his release is stirring up in Turkey. From my article:

When he shot Pope John Paul II in 1981 in St. Peter’s Square, would-be assassin Mehmet Ali Agca was, for most of the world, a mysterious and enigmatic figure, one who seemed to come out of nowhere.

In Turkey, though, Agca was already a known commodity, arrested in 1979 for the murder of Abdi Ipekci, a prominent left-leaning journalist, only to escape from jail while on trial and then resurface on that fateful day in Rome.

Ipekci’s killing took place during a time of extreme political turbulence in Turkey, marked by daily, violent clashes between leftist and rightist groups. The disorder ultimately led to a military coup in 1980.

Agca emerged a free man on January 18, after serving 19 years in an Italian jail for shooting the pope and then another 10 years in a Turkish prison for Ipekci’s murder. In Turkey, Agca’s release has been met with a certain sense of trepidation -- his reappearance a reminder of both the violent period he first emerged in, and of how much the shadow of that period still hangs over the country. "His release is a reminder of a dark time, one of the darkest of our history. It’s something that we dread," said Mehmet Ali Birand, a veteran Turkish journalist who interviewed Agca while he was in prison in Italy.

As he exited prison, the 52-year-old Agca was met by a small group of relatives and well-wishers who greeted him with drums and pipes, a traditional way to celebrate a prisoner’s release in Turkey. The media was less welcoming, though. "Abdi Ipekci Murdered Again," was the headline on the front page of Milliyet, the newspaper that the slain journalist was the editor of at the time of his killing. "That Murderer Is Among Us Now," was the headline of Sabah, another daily.

Many commentators pointed out that Agca’s release came only a day before the third anniversary of the murder of Hrant Dink, an outspoken Armenian journalist shot in front of his Istanbul office by a young man who, like Agca, was linked to ultranationalist forces. Like Agca’s release, Dink’s murder also stoked memories of the turbulent 70’s and 80’s, when journalists and intellectuals were frequently the victims of ideologically inspired violence.

The Dink murder trial has been going on for three years, but - as with Ipekci’s killing - many circumstances surrounding the case, particularly its links to the "Deep State," a phrase used to describe a shadowy zone where state interests intersect with lawless and corrupt elements of the bureaucracy, military and the security establishment, remain untouched. "No distance has been covered regarding these murders. The tip of the iceberg has been broken, that is it. This is the dark face of Turkey," columnist Ali Bayramoglu wrote in the Turkish daily Yeni Safak following Agca’s release.

You can read the full piece here.

The fact that Ipekci's murderer was released the day before the anniversary of Dink's killing does seem like a very cruel twist of fate, considering that, though 30 years apart, there are so many disturbing parallels between the two murders.

I didn't get a chance to write about the Dink case, but a line from a column by Soli Ozel in the Haber Turk newspaper caught my attention and seems to sum up the case's significance. "This case is a test of what kind of society we are and what kind of society we would like to be," Ozel wrote. "Every day that passes without a resolution in the Dink case should embarrass the state and the government."

(photo -- Mehmet Ali Agca on the day of his release, in Ankara)

Constitutional Crisis

The troubling closing of the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party by Turkey's highest court can be blamed on a number of actors and factors. Joost Lagendijk, a former member of the European Parliament who now writes a column for the Hurriyet Daily News, notes that the closure is not really a matter of Turks versus Kurds, but really part of a battle between "Turks and Kurds who are willing to find a political compromise on one side and Turks and Kurds who are not interested in finding a solution on the other side....The decision by the Constitutional Court to close down the Democratic Society Party, or DTP, is just the last domino that is falling over, set in motion by a perfidious coalition of Turks and Kurds who are willing to do everything to stop the process of reconciliation that was recently started by the government."

(You can read the whole column here.)

But also behind the closure case is the same problem that lies at the root of so many of the other roadblocks standing in the way of Turkey's democratization process: the need for a new constitution.

Turkey's current constitution, written after the 1980 military coup, is essentially designed to defend the state and its institutions. The rights of individuals or minority groups (especially those that are perceived to threaten the state and its integrity) take a back seat to preserving the statist status quo. In that sense, enacting major reforms in Turkey without first significantly changing the constitution could be very difficult. It's a bit like trying to run sophisticated software on a computer that's still running an old operating system -- the applications won't run and trying to run the machine with them could even lead to a crash.

Constitutional reform was actually a major part of the 2007 national election campaign in Turkey, with both the AKP and the DTP talking about it's importance. The AKP even gathered a group of legal experts who drafted a new constitution, but the issue was dropped soon after the elections. Disappointingly to many, the only thing the AKP did after the elections with regards to the constitution was pass an amendment (with the help of the ultra nationalist MHP) that removes the ban on wearing the headscarf in universities and public offices (Turkey's top court annulled the amendment, ruling that it violated Turkey's secular system). For many, the move seemed more like an opportunistic political effort, rather than a real attempt at constitutional reform.

Perhaps realizing that completely changing the constitution will require waging a major battle, the AKP government has decided to take an incremental approach for Turkey's reform project, frequently through administrative -- rather than legislative -- moves. But as Yavuz Baydar, a columnist with Today's Zaman, notes in a column in today's paper, the government may find serious constitutional reform unavoidable. From his column:

As I wrote recently, all roads inevitably lead to a new constitution and adoption of all major laws to that. Ever since the erratic pattern of partially changing the Constitution, the AKP seems determined to avoid a full challenge (a new leap for seeking consensus on a new constitution), and it also seems doomed to face enormous hardships that threaten to weaken it. It refuses, or is too afraid, to see that unless you replace the main denominator with a modern one, the judiciary will continue to base its decisions on the worn-out texts of law; its top court will continue to close parties; all the segments of society, whose demands for reform remain unchanged, will continue to feel suspicious, fearful or angry; the maximalist opposition will continue to seek ways, in law, to block all efforts for change; and politics, as it has always been, will be ruled by instability, raising hopes for the sworn enemies of democracy to consolidate for good the system of tutelage.

(You can read his full column here. His previous column on the same subject is here.)

(Photo -- members of Turkey's Constitutional Court, standing in front of Ataturk's mausoleum in Ankara)

The Closing of the "Kurdish Opening"?

The winds of political change in Turkey often tend to change direction quite abruptly. This seems to be the case with the government's recently announced "democratization initiative," popularly referred to as the "Kurdish opening." The initiative, which is being rolled out in small bits, consists of various reforms designed to give Turkey's Kurds increased political and cultural rights and put at end to the decades of bloody conflict that the Kurdish issue has resulted in. (For some more background on the initiative, take a look at this previous post. To get a sense of how Turkey's foreign policy ambitions are helping push Ankara's new approach to the Kurdish issue, take a look at this post.)

The government's reform plan certainly represents an important break from previous approaches to the Kurdish issue and has led to the discussion of topics that only a few years ago would have been off limits. But now there is some concern that the initiative could be in serious trouble. From a Eurasianet article of mine looking at recent developments regarding the Kurdish reforms:

Official rhetoric in recent months has fostered hope that Turkey can implement a civilian - rather than a military - solution to its decades-long Kurdish problem. Those hopes, however, remain fragile -- a fact underscored by the opening of a court case that could result in the banning of the country’s major pro-Kurdish political party.

Over the summer, Turkish Interior Minister, Besir Atalay, speaking during a nationally televised news conference, said that the government is actively working on a comprehensive plan, one based on democratization and expanded rights. "We have the intention to take determined, patient and courageous steps," he said. "This can be seen as a new stage."

On November 13, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government unveiled in a historic debate in parliament parts of this "democratization initiative," which include the easing of restrictions on private Kurdish-language television stations and Kurdish language faculties in universities, as well allowing towns and villages to use their original Kurdish names once again.

"Today is the beginning of a new timeline and a fresh start," Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told parliament. "We took a courageous step to resolve chronic issues that constitute an obstacle along Turkey’s development, progression and empowerment, and we are very sincere."

But now there are growing concerns that the government’s efforts could be undermined by renewed tensions in Turkey’s predominately Kurdish southeast.

Protests were held in several cities in the region this past weekend, including one where a 23-year-old university student was killed by a bullet to the back. The trigger for the protests were reports that conditions have worsened for jailed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan since he was moved into a new facility on the island prison that has been his home since 1999.

Meanwhile, Turkey’s highest court on December 8 started hearing a case which could lead to the closure of the Democratic Society Party (DTP), the only pro-Kurdish party in parliament. Prosecutors contend that the party has violated Turkey’s constitution and has acted as a front for the outlawed PKK. An indictment seeks not only the party’s closure, but also the banning of some 220 of its members from participating in political activity.

The DTP is the latest incarnation of a string of pro-Kurdish parties that have been previously closed by court order, and observers worry that its closing could further stoke tensions among Turkey’s Kurds.

But there is also concern that the party itself is standing in the way of the government’s Kurdish reform program. Although party leaders initially supported the government’s initiative, members are now distancing themselves from it, with DTP chairman Ahmet Turk recently calling it "insufficient."

"For us, the ’democratic initiative’ is over," Emine Ayna, a top DTP official recently told the Radikal newspaper....

....Despite the recent hardening of the DTP’s rhetoric, observers say that shutting the party down would be a mistake. "I totally disapprove of their behavior but I oppose the party’s closure," said Sahin Alpay, a professor of political science at Istanbul’s Bahcesehir University.

"It was such a mistake to close down these Kurdish parties in the past," Alpay continued. "Had they not been closed down, they would have become much stronger than the armed wing of the Kurdish movement. But what we have here now is the opposite."

(You can read the full article here. Click here for an informative Human Rights Watch Q&A on the DTP closure case.)

The government's reform plan right now seems to endangered by both Turkish and Kurdish nationalists. Turkish leaders, to their credit, have publicly stated their intention to continue with the reform process. But there are clear challenges ahead. The closing of the DTP (though flawed, the party is an important political force in the southeast) will leave the government once again searching for a Kurdish interlocutor and will be a major setback for the development of a mature Kurdish political movement in Turkey. Meanwhile, if the tension and violence surrounding the Kurdish continue to rise, Ankara may find that moving ahead on the Kurdish reform program might simply be too costly a move for the time being.

(Photo -- a Kurdish demonstrator clashing with police. AFP)

Ergenekon's New Clothes?

Gareth Jenkins, a veteran Turkey analyst and an expert on the country's military and security affairs, has a new report out that takes a comprehensive look at the complicated Ergenekon coup plot trial and investigation. Although Jenkins has been a consistent critic of various aspects of the Ergenekon case, the report -- published by the Silk Road Studies Program at Johns Hopkins -- strikes me as fair and objective. Still, after reading the report, it's easy to see what Jenkins's verdict on Ergenekon is: the case has very few legs to stand on, and even those are rather shaky. What I found particularly interesting about the report, which also provides very good background about the history of the "Deep State" in Turkey and of the Ergenekon story itself, is its look at how Turkey's predilection towards conspiracy theories might be tainting the Ergenekon case.

From the report (pdf), entitled "Between Fact and Fantasy: Turkey's Ergenekon Investigation":

Whether among those formally indicted as part of the Ergenekon investigation or those detained in the police raids and subsequently released without charge, many appear to have been guilty of nothing more than opposition to the AKP. In fact, there is no proof that the Ergenekon organization as described in the indictments exists or has ever existed.

Indeed, the indictments are so full of contradictions, rumors, speculation, misinformation, illogicalities, absurdities and untruths that they are not even internally consistent or coherent.
This is not to say that the Ergenekon investigation is simply a politically motivated fabrication. There is no reason to doubt that most of those involved in prosecuting the case sincerely believe in the organization’s existence and are unable or unwilling to see the contradictions and irrationalities that are endemic in the indictments. The indictments themselves appear to be the products of “projective” rather than deductive reasoning, working backwards from the premise that the organization exists to weave unrelated individuals, statements and acts into a single massive conspiracy. The more elusive the concrete evidence for Ergenekon’s existence is, the more desperate the attempts to discover it become. Rather than convincing the investigators that what they are looking for does not exist, this elusiveness appears merely to make the organization more fearsome and powerful in their minds; and further fuel their desperation to uncover and eradicate it.

A predilection for conspiracy theories is nothing new in Turkey and can be found across the political spectrum. Both a large proportion of AKP supporters and many of those in law enforcement genuinely believe that a malicious conspiratorial cabal – which most associate with the Deep State – has been not only manipulating the political process but supporting or guiding a large proportion of the political violence in the country. Amongst
AKP supporters, attention tends to focus particularly on violence carried out in the name of Islam; where their sincere horror at the carnage that is sometimes perpetrated in the name of their religion has created a culture of denial, and a refusal to believe that their fellow Muslims could be responsible.

The report takes a good look at some of the problems with the evidence, indictments and judicial procedures in the case. About the case's first indictment (there have been three released so far, and a fourth is expected), Jenkins writes:

The indictment was also marred not only by repeated examples of flawed reasoning but numerous absurdities and contradictions. Most remarkably, despite its extraordinary length, the indictment produced no evidence that the Ergenekon organization it described even existed, much less that the accused were all members and engaged in a coordinated terrorist campaign to overthrow the government.

Indeed, rather than being based on deductive reasoning, the indictment appeared to project onto a collection of disparate events and individuals – not all of whom are necessarily innocent of any wrongdoing – a conspiracy theorist’s template of a ubiquitous, and almost omnipotent, centrally controlled organization which had not only penetrated every sphere of public life but been responsible for virtually every act of politically-motivated violence and terrorism in modern Turkish history….

…. some of the claims in the indictment about Ergenekon’s deeds and ambitions extended beyond the bounds of credibility. For example, the indictment claimed that the organization had met with the then U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney to discuss toppling the AKP government and replacing it with a more acceptable alternative. Even more absurdly, the indictment maintained that investigators had uncovered evidence that the “Ergenekon Terrorist Organization” planned to “manufacture chemical and biological weapons and then, with the high revenue it earned from selling them, to finance and control every terrorist organization not just in Turkey but in the entire world.”

In the end, Jenkins calls the Ergenekon case a "wasted" opportunity:

From a broader perspective, the public debate triggered by the discovery of the crate of grenades in Ümraniye in June 2007 could have provided an opportunity for the establishment of an independent truth commission which could perhaps have enabled Turks – including both secular nationalists and Islamists – to come to terms with the realities of recent Turkish history. But, in the short-term, a more pressing concern is not the wasted opportunity for Turkey to confront its past but what the Ergenekon investigation might be saying about its future, and the disturbing questions it raises about the prospects for democracy and the rule of law in the country.

Clearly, there are other views out there about the merits and the strength of the evidence of the Ergenekon case, but Jenkins's report is highly recommended reading for anyone interested in this complex story.

Ergenekon's Side Effects

As the historic trial and investigation of an alleged coup plot – known as “Ergenekon” – continues to grow in Turkey, the whole process is also have some very interesting side effects in the country. (For some background on the Ergenekon case, take a look at this article I wrote for the Christian Science Monitor.)

The case itself has been, at times, too complicated – and occasionally downright bizarre – to easily explain to audiences outside Turkey. But what I’ve found particularly interesting about the case is how the investigation of the alleged coup plotters – some of them current and former military officials – is helping shed light on some other dark chapters in Turkey’s recent past. This is particularly true in the predominantly-Kurdish southeast, where the Ergenekon case has given new life to the issue of the people who went missing during the 1980’s and 90’s, when Turkish security forces were locked in a bloody battle with the guerillas of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Human rights groups estimate that some 5,000 extrajudicial killings were committed during this period and that some 1,500 went missing, mostly at the hands of state elements.

“The Ergenekon investigation has allowed people to talk about their feelings and ask for their rights, especially if they have missing relatives. It has encouraged people to talk about the past. People feel safer to talk about what happened,” Tahir Elci, a lawyer in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir, which was also the scene of extreme violence during the 1980’s and 90’s, told me during a recent visit there. “Kurdish society knows very well the people who are now in jail. We know what they did. Now the rest of Turkish society is going to learn.”

In recent months, excavations of suspected mass graves and at cemeteries holding what had initially been ruled unidentified bodies have been conducted in several locations in the southeast, with the digs yielding bones that are now undergoing DNA testing. At the same time, numerous families have asked Turkish prosecutors to reopen their relatives’ dormant cases in the hope of finally resolving the question of what happened to them.

Outside the town of Cizre, near Turkey’s border with Syria and Iraq, I met Ata Ergul. His brother Hasan went missing on April 23, 1995, when plainclothes policemen picked him up while he was riding his tractor home. This past April, following information given in testimony by a former member of JITEM, a police unit believed to be behind many of the disappearances and unexplained killings in the southeast, the Ergul family started looking at old files of unclaimed bodies found in the region. In one of the files, they found pictures of a body that resembled the missing Hasan. Since then, they were able to convince a local court to have the body, buried in a potter’s field, exhumed and sent for DNA testing, which proved positive. This past June, Ergul’s family was finally able to give their relative a proper burial.

“Before, we were scared to say anything, but because of [the Ergenekon] investigation we saw other people asking about their missing relatives. We realized we were not alone,” the 41-year-old Ata told me, sitting in the courtyard of his missing brother’s house, shaded by a massive grapevine.

“It’s unbelievable that these people are in jail,” Mr. Ergul continued, talking about some of the military and police figures now in jail as pat of the Ergenekon case. “These people were the gods of this region. We’re not surprised by the names of those arrested, but that they’re in jail is unbelievable. It’s like a dream.”

“We hope that all those who are responsible for the killings stand before a judge,” he added. “Our pain and sadness are very deep.”

Back in Cizre, I met with Nusirevan Elci, director of the local bar association in, who these days finds himself more and more dealing with families now ready to look for their missing. Last December, sensing a change, Elci’s office decided to start writing petitions to local prosecutors to reopen the files of the missing. Since then, some 120 families have come asking for help. The bar association has also pushed investigators to start excavations at several suspected mass graves, with more to come.

“We tried to do these investigations before, but the empire of fear was still very strong here. We had to force families to talk about who they lost. They were not only afraid, but they were also hopeless about getting any results,” Elci said.

“Ergenekon is a big opportunity for Turkey. The state needs to look at its past and come to terms with it,” he added.

If the Ergenekon trial allows Turkey to actually do that is questionable. But as the new search for the missing in the southeast shows, the case is already unraveling much more than just the coup plot that it initially set out to investigate.

The Truth on Trial?

Ogun Samast, the youngster accused of murdering Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, faces 20 years in prison if convicted. Nedim Sener, a journalist with the Turkish daily Milliyet, could face 28 years in jail for writing a book that details the the police negligence and intelligence failures that led to Dink's murder.

From Hurriyet:

Milliyet daily reporter Nedim Şener’s book "Dink Murder and Intelligence Lies" focused on the intelligence deficiencies by security agencies before and after Dink was shot dead, leading to a police officer and three senior Police Department intelligence chiefs filing complaints against him....

....After the book’s release in January of this year, Muhittin Zenit, a police officer working at the intelligence division at Trabzon at the time Dink was assassinated, filed a criminal complaint about Şener for "targeting personnel in service of fighting terrorism, obtaining secret documents, disclosing secret documents, violating the secrecy of communication and attempting to influence fair trial" through his book.

After the investigation’s end, Prosecutor Selim Berna Altay charged Şener with "making targets of the personnel in service of fighting terrorism, and obtaining and declaring secret information that is forbidden to be declared," asking for a prison term of 20 years. Since they do not fall under his authority, Altay sent the dossier on "violation of the secrecy of communication" and "attempting to influence fair trial" to theIstanbul Second Court. In the meantime, it was also claimed the book contained the offense of "insulting governmental institutions," and that too was added to the second investigation. Prosecutor İsmail Onaran handled this investigation and filed a second case against Şener asking for his imprisonment for three to eight years.

There is another case ongoing in a Trabzon court against eight personnel from the Trabzon Gendarmerie Command who are accused neglecting their duties regarding Dink’s death. The accused are facing up to two years in prison if found guilty.

"Some of the security personnel that sued me are under investigation for neglecting their duty for Dink’s murder. They want to punish the journalist writing about the responsibilities of those people," said Şener.

In his defense, Şener has noted that the information in his book was already in the public domain and easily found online. (Take a look at this Bianet article for a bit more on the case.)

Although Şener may not be convicted, the fact that a prosecutor decided to press ahead with the case is very troubling, the message of the prosecution appearing to be that even publishing the truth can be a punishable offense. The case also serves as another indication that, despite training programs for prosecutors and judges and efforts at reform, Turkey's judiciary main concern remains protecting the state and its institutions, rather than safeguarding the rights of individuals.

For Turkey, A Domestic Violence Case with International Implications

The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg has issued a historic ruling in a case brought forth by a Turkish woman whose mother was killed by her abusive ex-husband. From the Wall Street Journal's article about the court's ruling:

The case is a landmark ruling for Europe. For the first time, it classifies such cases as gender discrimination, giving the Strasbourg court jurisdiction in cases of domestic violence.

Andrea Coombers, legal practice director at the International Centre for the Legal Protection of Human Rights in London, said describing gender-based violence as discrimination "is what the rest of the world has thought for at least a decade. It is a significant step in the right direction by the European Union."

Mesut Bestas, the lawyer for Ms. Opuz, added: "European legislation on freedom of expression, freedom of assembly and right to life is clear, but when it comes to the issue of women's rights, the legal framework is murky. ... This trial begins to shed light on that murkiness."

Nahide Opuz, a woman living in the southeastern Turkish city of Diyarbakir, brought her case to the court in Strasbourg, France, after exhausting avenues in Turkey. As a member of the Council of Europe, Turkey is subject to the Council's human-rights court.

Ms. Opuz, now in hiding, started complaining to Turkish police in 1995 that her stepfather and his son -- her husband -- repeatedly assaulted and threatened her and her mother.

Her husband, Huseyin Opuz, was convicted of trying to run over Ms. Opuz and her mother in a car, but his three-month sentence was later commuted to a fine. Mr. Opuz was also fined for stabbing his wife in 2001.

On March 11, 2002, Mr. Opuz shot and killed his mother-in-law as she and her daughter were loading furniture on a truck to flee the area. He was convicted in 2008 and sentenced to life imprisonment, but the sentence was reduced. He was freed from jail having served several years, taking into account that the offense was a result of "provocation by the deceased."

On Thursday, a judge in Strasbourg demanded the Turkish state pay Ms. Opuz €30,000 ($41,700) in damages. The court ruling criticized "the overall unresponsiveness of the judicial system and impunity enjoyed by the aggressors" in Turkey.

(Take a look at this Bianet article for a good rundown on the history of Opuz's case.)

Turkey's record on dealing with domestic violence has been fairly dismal. Statistics have shown that nearly 50 percent of Turkish women have faced some from of family violence. There is a severe lack of shelters for abused women and the judiciary and police often don't take seriously the complaints made by threatened women. For some background on the issue, take a look at this article I wrote several years back. Unfortunately, the information is essentially still up-to-date.

Jail the Children, Pt. II

In a previous post, I linked to a report that talked about the problem of minors being jailed as part of strict new anti-terrorism laws passed by the Turkish parliament in 2006. I recently went down to southeast Turkey to do some reporting on this issue and filed a story which was just posted on the Christian Science Monitor's website. From my article:

Hebun is one of hundreds of minors, some as young as 13, who have been arrested and jailed in Turkey over the past few years under strict new antiterrorism laws that allow for juveniles to be tried as adults and even be accused of "committing crimes in the name of a terrorist organization" for participating in demonstrations. Critics and rights defenders say the amended antiterrorism laws are deeply flawed and also violate international conventions on the detention of children.

"There is a lack of proportionality between the crime and the sentence," says Emma Sinclair-Webb, Turkey researcher for the New York-based watchdog group Human Rights Watch. "Counting what these children do, such as throwing stones or damaging property, as a terrorism offense is a problem."

"You are subject to a court system that doesn't see you as a child," adds Ms. Sinclair-Webb.

As part of its European Union membership drive, Turkey has updated its penal code to more closely reflect European and international standards. But observers say the country took a step backward with a 2006 amendment to the country's antiterror law that made it possible to try minors between the ages of 15 and 18 as adults when the crime is deemed to involve terrorism.

That same year, Turkey's Supreme Court of Appeals ruled that children taking part in demonstrations supported by the PKK could be charged with aiding or acting in the name of the organization.

According to Turkish officials, 1,572 minors were prosecuted under the antiterror law and 174 of them were convicted during 2006 and 2007. Hundreds more court cases against minors have been launched since then.

"The court's decision is very dangerous for the rule of law and for individual freedoms," says Tahir Elci, a Diyarbakir lawyer who is defending several of the jailed children. "According to the high court's decision, prosecutors don't need evidence to claim that somebody committed crimes on behalf of the PKK. Just participating in a demonstration is evidence enough.

"We accept that these kids may have thrown stones, but they didn't do it in the name of the PKK," he adds. "They are children...."

....Turkish prosecutors have defended the heavy sentences given to the children arrested in protests, saying they are a response to an effort by the PKK to mobilize Kurdish youth against the state.

But Sinclair-Webb, of Human Rights Watch, says that sending children off to jail could backfire.

"It's a very hardening process for children and psychologically very damaging," she says. "If you go in as a child who was just having a lark throwing some stones, you may come out as a full-fledged militant.

"If you are trying to win hearts and minds and get people to not join the PKK, this is not the way to do it," she adds.

One teenager, imprisoned for 13 months after participating in a demonstration and now out on bail while he awaits trial, says he was "changed" by his experience in jail.

"I became more aware," says the 16-year-old boy, who asked not to be named because of his upcoming court case, where he could face seven years in prison if convicted.

"The things I learned in prison about myself, about the Kurds, about the PKK, it was like an awakening."

You can read the full article here.

The Deep State's Deep Roots

The Middle East Institute, a Washington-based think tank, has a lengthy new report out about Ergenekon, the sensational coup plot case that has been dominating Turkish politics and headlines for the last few years. (For some quick background on the case, take a look at this article of mine from the Christian Science Monitor.) The report, written by H. Akin Unver, a visiting scholar at the University of Michigan, takes a close look at the Ergenekon case and its ties to Turkey's "Deep State," the name given to a phrase used to describe a shadowy zone where state interests intersect with lawless and corrupt elements of the bureaucracy, military, and the security establishment.

What I found interesting about the report was some of the background Unver gives about the Ottoman and Cold War roots of the Deep State in Turkey. From the report:

The bipolar system of the Cold War was seemingly simple. On the one hand, there was the Iron Curtain, which covered a massive area stretching across Asia and Eastern Europe, and on the other hand there was NATO, which represented the “free world.” Along clearly defined borders and possible flashpoints, both sides remained on alert and ready for a major field war, in addition to building and stocking a nuclear arsenal that would act as a deterrent or means of retaliation. Yet, there was also a less visible preparation in the NATO countries: the establishment and organization of secret paramilitary networks — what Daniele Ganser had dubbed “NATO’s Secret Armies”15 — which would act the same way against the Soviet occupation, as the Allied Resistance had acted against the Nazi invasions during the Second World War. Throughout much of the Cold War, “special units” from NATO countries participated in a silent mobilization and organization directed by the CIA and the British Secret Intelligence Service against possible invasions by the Soviet Union. They were trained to be ready to perform espionage, sabotage, and assassination missions. Such operations were generally termed as “stay behind operations” and included sub-operations or regional agencies….

…. Turkey was one of the first of the countries to join NATO’s stay-behind networks, as an initial recipient of the Marshall Fund in 1950, and remained the only country where this network remained unpurged until very recently. The first institutional extension of the Turkish branch of the European stay-behind operations was Seferberlik Taktik Kurulu [Tactical Mobilization Committee]. It was founded in 1952 and later tied to the Office of Special Operations [Özel Harp Dairesi] under the General Staff. Similar to Gladio’s extra-judicial mass killings that took place in Italy, there have been numerous such acts in Turkey attributed to the Counter-guerrilla Branch and the Ergenekon.

You can read the whole Ergenkon report (pdf) at the MEI's website.

Jail the Children

The Turkish legal system has come up with a powerful method to teach Kurdish children not to join protests -- jail them. 

From a report issued by International Freedom of Expression eXchange (IFEX), a Canada-based watchdog group:

A 15-year-old boy will spend more than three years in prison for taking part in a protest organised by the Kurdish militant group the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), a Turkish court ruled last month. He's just one of the dozens of children who has been tried or sentenced under anti-terrorism laws, report IFEX members in Turkey the Initiative for Freedom of Expression (Antenna-TR) and IPS Communication Foundation (BIANET).

The teen was tried and convicted for committing a crime on behalf of an illegal organisation - PKK - for allegedly attending one of the group's street protests in Adana and throwing stones at police officers. He initially faced 7.5 years in jail, but the sentence was reduced because of his age and good conduct in court. The child was taken into custody on 1 November 2008, and has been in Pozantı prison since.

A 2006 Anti-Terrorism Law amendment allows Turkish courts to charge teenagers aged 15 to 18 years old as adults. Human rights activists have pointed out that the amendment was made after protests took place in Kurdish-majority Diyarbakır in the southeast of Turkey….

….Similarly, 10 children who participated in protests in Diyarbakır during the visit of Prime Minister Recep Tayyıp Erdoğan last October are currently on trial in Diyarbakır - some of them as young as 13. They stand accused of membership of an illegal organisation, namely PKK, and some of them are charged with "committing crimes in the name of a terrorist organisation". The prosecution has sought jail time of more than 20 years for some of the accused.

(You can read the full report here.)

Bianet, meanwhile, has a bit more on the issue and about the launch of a human rights campaign asking the Turkish government to change the law that allows for minors to be tried in criminal court.