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).

The Democracy Agenda

I have a new policy briefing out for the Project on Middle East Democracy that looks at Turkey's recent elections and what the results mean for the country's ongoing democratization project. From the briefing:

Turkey’s free and fair parliamentary elections on June 12 were yet another important achievement for a country that over the decades has seen four military coups and various other interventions in its democratic process. The poll was also a historic milestone for the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), which won its third straight election and which again managed to increase its share of the national vote, this time reaching close to 50 percent.

But the AKP may have little time to celebrate its victory. While the party has broken significant political and economic ground over its nine years in power, the upcoming period might prove to be the most difficult yet. In the coming weeks and months, the AKP will have to address an overheating economy, turmoil in next-door Syria, escalating tension over the Kurdish issue, as well as questions about how it intends to push ahead on its plans to introduce a new constitution and to revive the stalled European Union (EU) membership process. At the same time, the AKP and, in particular, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, are likely to continue facing charges both at home and abroad that Erdogan’s leadership style has become increasingly autocratic and that some of the democratic gains made in Turkey—particularly regarding freedom of the press and freedom of expression—are under threat.

How Erdogan and the AKP respond to these issues will have profound implications for the continuing development of Turkey’s democracy and will also require close monitoring by the United States. While policymakers and pundits alike have focused almost exclusively on Turkey’s possible “drift away from the West,” it is the internal drift from the path of domestic reform that should be the major cause for concern. Washington should coordinate closely with Ankara on the international front—particularly regarding events in the Middle East—but it must also keep a close eye on domestic developments in Turkey and be prepared to put Ankara on notice for any backsliding on the democracy front.

You can read the full piece here.

Turkish Elections 2011: The Post-Mortem

The results of today’s parliamentary elections in Turkey are a bit deceptive. The Justice and Development Party (AKP), of course, can claim to be the day’s big winner, but the three other parties that made it into parliament can also claim something of a victory. That said, the victory parties shouldn’t last that long. Each party – the AKP included – comes out of this election facing some significant questions about what the future holds for it.

Some thoughts regarding each party and its performance:

AKP
According to current results, the AKP won the election with nearly 50 percent of vote, an increase of some 3.5 points over the last election and the party’s third consecutive victory at the polls. At the same time, because of Turkey’s parliamentary arithmetic, the party’s seats dropped from 341 to 326. In that sense, the AKP’s victory should be tempered by the fact that it failed to achieve its goal of winning at least 330 seats in this election, something which would have then allowed the party to pass a new constitution and then send it off to a national referendum, which it would have likely won.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in an effort to get above 330 seats, ran a blistering campaign that saw the AKP turn up the nationalist rhetoric in order to woo the voters of the rightist Nationalist Action Party (MHP) and keep that party from reaching the 10 percent threshold necessary to enter parliament. In the end, the MHP still managed to pass the threshold, the AKP didn’t get the 330 seats it so desperately wanted, and Turkey is left with a Kurdish population that feels like it was badly burned by the PM in this election (the AKP lost quite a bit of ground in the Kurdish southeast region in this election) and a MHP that believes it was the government that was behind the “sex tape” scandal that seemed designed to bring the party to its knees. Obviously, this is not a good recipe for creating the kind of atmosphere needed to get the different parties in parliament to work together on drafting a new constitution, which is what Erdogan promised he would try to do in his victory speech. With its win, does the AKP use the occasion to further consolidate their power, or does the party work towards uniting what has become an increasingly fractured nation? After his party’s decisive win in the 2007 elections, Erdogan also promised to lead a government that represents all of Turkey, but that sense of inclusiveness soon fell to the wayside.

The election also leaves the AKP with unanswered questions about Erdogan’s future. Heading into the elections, the party’s forward plan revolved around introducing a new constitution that created a strong presidential system, with Erdogan moving into the president’s office after what would be his last term as PM. But its not clear if the AKP can get the other parties to agree to a new constitution that has the presidential system change in it (many in the AKP, especially current President Abdullah Gul, are apparently also not fond of the system change idea). The question then is what does Erdogan do after this term as PM, which is supposed to be his last according to his party’s bylaws? Does he become president under the current system, taking over a less-powerful position that would require him to play the role of non-partisan national paterfamilias? Does the AKP, which could very well find itself adrift without Erdogan at the helm, revise its bylaws to allow him to run again?

CHP
The main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) saw its share of the vote increase from 20 percent in 2007 to just over 25 percent, while its number of seats in parliament rose from 112 to 135. Again, party leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu can claim a kind of victory, but the party’s showing falls short of the 30 percent of the vote that it had hoped for. Despite barnstorming the country and riding on what seemed to be a wave of increased enthusiasm for the CHP, Kilicdaroglu still only managed to do well in Turkey’s western Aegean region, a long-time CHP stronghold, and in the eastern province of Tunceli, where he was born. In that sense, the CHP failed to break out in this election, and even fell back in some areas that had previously supported it.

For the CHP, the election raises questions about what are the natural limits of what a left-leaning, social democratic party can achieve in electoral terms in Turkey and just how the party can realistically manage to return to power some day. For Kilicdaroglu, today’s vote was also a referendum on his position as leader of the CHP. He can claim that he has led the party to its most successful showing since the early 1980’s, gaining some 3.5 million new voters. But there will be voices within the party that will accuse him of having failed to capitalize on an opportunity to gain even more votes and get close to the 30 percent mark and that will blame this failure on the party's departure from the the strict vision of Kemalism that it had espoused under its previous leadership. This will leave the party, which must find a way to update and modernize its Kemalist vision, again susceptible to the kind of infighting that Kilicdaroglu had to deal with when he first became party leader.

MHP
Since the MHP was in danger of being shut out of this parliament because of the “sex tapes” scandal that plagued it, by getting over the 10 percent threshold and winning 53 seats (as compared to 71 in 2007), the nationalist party can also claim victory. But the party comes out these elections an undeniably diminished one, failing to make a significant showing in any part of the country that counts and with mounting questions about its relevance and future direction. Just what does it mean to be a “nationalist” party in 2011 and does Turkey really need one? If the party wants to survive, does it do so by (dangerously) doubling down on the nationalism or by rebranding itself as a more traditional center-right party? Like the CHP, the MHP also has to come to terms with the built-in limits on how many votes it can obtain and what that means for its future viability on the national level. And, like the CHP, it is likely to see an internal leadership struggle emerge in the coming weeks or months.

BDP
The pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), could be seen as one of Sunday’s big winners, gaining an expected 36 seats, up from 2007’s 22 (the party, in order to avoid the threshold question, runs all its candidates as independents). With its tight focus on the Kurdish issue and with its base of support mostly limited to the southeast region, the BDP will remain an identity-based party whose role in parliament is to advocate on behalf of a set of issues that have a limited ethnic and regional appeal, a kind of Turkish Bloq Quebecois. Clearly, the party has benefitted from Erdogan’s backsliding on the Kurdish issue, but getting that issue back on track will require the BDP to deal with the AKP, which is promising to get back to working on its “Kurdish opening” after the elections. Can the BDP and the AKP work together after this bruising campaign, or will Erdogan once again ignore it and render it ineffective? Can the party step back from the more provocative statements made by some of its more militant members and step out from under the shadow of the PKK, which would enable it to become a more “mainstream,” but possibly more effective, member of Turkish political life? Either way, it’s clear that any serious movement on the Kurdish issue will not be possible without the inclusion of the BDP and its parliamentary group.

Collectively, this election – which failed to give the AKP the ability to determine Turkey’s political future on its own terms – represents a potential “growing up” moment for the four parties that made it into parliament. Can they move beyond the political polarization that has increasingly characterized Turkish politics for the last decade and work together on drafting a new constitution and a new political climate that can take Turkey forward? Can the parties envision a shared sense of Turkish national identity that they can all work towards building and strengthening? If Erdogan can preside over and guide such a process, then his position in the pantheon of great Turkish leaders would be truly sealed. On the other hand, if he helps create an atmosphere that brings out the worst in his rivals, his legacy will be tainted.

(photo: Inside the AKP's Diyarbakir headquarters. By Yigal Schleifer)

The Kurdish (Cultural) Opening

The New York Times (which seems to have discovered Turkey in recent days) has a good piece out about some of the interesting changes taking place on the Kurdish cultural front -- a move towards "cultural autonomy" as the article puts it. From the article:

A BALEFUL love song wafted from the Vizyon Muzik Market. Not so long ago playing Kurdish music over a loudspeaker into the streets here might have provoked the Turkish police. Just speaking the names of certain Kurdish singers at one time could have landed a Kurd in prison.

These days hundreds of CDs featuring Kurdish pop singers fill one of the long walls in the small, shoebox-shaped Vizyon Muzik. The discs face a few

dozen Turkish ones. Abdulvahap Ciftci, the 25-year-old Kurd who runs the place, told me one sunny morning not long ago that customers buy some 250 Kurdish albums a week. “And maybe I sell one Turkish album,” he calculated, wagging a single finger, slowly. “Maybe.”

Turkey is holding elections in a few days. For months pro-Kurdish activists have been staging rallies that during recent weeks have increasingly turned into violent confrontations with the police in this heavily Kurdish region of the southeast. Capitalizing on the Arab Spring and the general state of turmoil in that part of the world, as well as on Turkey’s vocal support for Egyptian reformers, the Kurds here have been looking toward elections to press longstanding claims for broader parliamentary representation and more freedoms, political and cultural.

(The full piece can be found here.)

The article hits upon an interesting paradox that I wrote about previously on this blog (see this post), which is that while on the political front Turkey's "Kurdish opening" has mostly fallen flat on its face, developments in the realm of culture have been much more encouraging. In terms of film, theater, music and books, Kurdish culture is becoming a much more visible and natural part the cultural landscape in Turkey, particularly in places like Istanbul, where this wasn't the case even a few years ago.

The question now, it would appear, is at what point does a move towards "cultural autonomy" start impacting or strengthening what is also a call in southeast Turkey for some kind of "political autonomy," mostly through the decentralization of the Turkish state, and how will the government respond to that?

(photo - poster for "Min Dit," a Kurdish-language film recently shown in Istanbul. By Yigal Schleifer)

Rockin' the Kurdish Vote

A new Economist article points out why for Kurdish politicians in Turkey this summer's parliamentary elections might different than previous ones. As the article points out, this time around campaigning in Kurdish will be allowed, while the existence of a new Kurdish-language state-run television station and the arrival of several private Kurdish television and radio stations could also change the political landscape.

Credit for these changes should be given to the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), which has done more than many of its predecessors to liberalize and reform the Kurdish issue (despite the fact that its much-heralded "Kurdish opening," announced in 2009, failed to get too far). So why is the AKP expected to take a big hit at the polls in the southeast, while the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party looks set to make big gains? The Economist explains:

There are several reasons for AK’s ailing fortunes among the country’s 14m Kurds. They are no longer swayed by free coal and talk of Islamic fraternity. AK’s “opening”, which was meant to lead to an amnesty for PKK rebels untainted by violence, has been shelved. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister, blames the Kurds. He says the PKK provoked Turks in 2009 when fighters returning from Iraq started delivering “victory” speeches.

The government’s response was to lock up thousands of Kurdish politicians, including BDP mayors. Selahattin Demirtas, a BDP leader, reels off the figures. At least 2,300 Kurdish activists have been jailed since 2009. Sentences sought by prosecutors in an array of cases against the BDP’s 22 parliamentarians, including Mr Demirtas, add up to a staggering 2,350 years.

Egged on by Mr Ocalan, the BDP has raised the bar with a civil-disobedience campaign that has seen a Kurdish female parliamentarian slap a policeman. Kurds are spurning mosques staffed by state-appointed imams in favour of Kurdish-language prayers in fields. Their campaign will not end, they say, until BDP prisoners are released, an amnesty is given to PKK fighters, education in Kurdish is permitted and the 10% threshold is lowered.

The strategy is paying off. Analysts reckon the BDP could win some 30 seats in June’s election. AK’s case has not been helped by the lacklustre candidates it is fielding in the south-east. This may be a good thing. The more Kurds there are in Ankara, the more comprehensive will be the new constitution Mr Erdogan promises to deliver after the election.

A senior AKP official I recently spoke with told me that the government's two main post-election priorities are passing a new constitution and restarting the stalled Kurdish reform initiative. The big questions remain how well can the AKP and a stronger BDP work together in parliament (based on what we saw in the current parliament, not so well) and how much confidence will the AKP have to take the political risk of making significant reforms on the Kurdish front (again, based on what we have seen before, questionable). Another failed "Kurdish opening" could prove to be very dangerous.

(Today's Zaman takes a look at the BDP's clever list of candidates here. On a related note, for more on the rise of the southeast's pro-Kurdish imams, take a look at this Christian Science Monitor article of mine from a few years back, and at this more recent Today's Zaman story.)

(photo -- BDP leader Selahattin Demirtas campaigning near Diyarbakir, Turkey, in 2009. By Yigal Schleifer)

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.

The Kurdish Problem, Again

The signals coming out of Turkey's predominantly-Kurdish southeast region and from along the border with Iraq are not comforting. In recent weeks, Turkish soldiers are being on an almost daily basis in attacks by the resurgent Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). Turkey's state-run news agency happily reports that 46 PKK members have been killed in the past month, failing to mention that most of them are also young Turkish citizens whose bodies will be returned home to be buried and mourned. Turkish jets have been bombing targets in Northern Iraq with increasing regularity, while Today's Zaman reports that military checkpoints have now been reintroduced in the southeast and that a previously-abandoned ban on herders taking their flocks up to the region's high plateaus has also been reinstated.

It seems like the hope and good will created by the Turkish government's "democratic opening," a reform initiative announced last summer that's mostly designed to deal with the decades-old Kurdish problem, has very quickly evaporated. Cengiz Candar, an astute analyst whose warnings are worth listening to, writes in a column in today's Hurriyet Daily News:

The democratic initiative is not going anywhere. It has come to a halt, deviated even. We have an endless number of signs showing that we are back to the square one....

....The pre-1990 conditions settle in the Southeast again. We are going back to a state in which people are fed up with check points and barricades.

The full column (worth reading, though poorly translated) is here.

Open and Shut

More troubling news for the Turkish government's initially promising "democratic opening," a reform initiative announced last summer that's mostly designed to deal with the decades-old Kurdish problem.

As the Turkish press reports today, ten members of a group 34 Kurds who returned to Turkey last October after several years in exile in northern Iraq have been arrested after being charged with supporting the PKK. The group's return (several of them were former PKK members) was one of the first visible signs -- and tests -- of the government's new initiative (sometimes referred to as the "Kurdish opening"). More groups of exiled Kurds were supposed to come after the first one, but the heros' welcome given to the initial group and the fact that jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan said they returned at his command, turned the whole thing into something very costly for the government, and plans for further returns were put on hold.

Since then, everyone in the group of returnees (save for four minors) has been charged with making statements on behalf of the PKK and are currently standing trial for "supporting a terrorist organization." So much for amnesty and reconciliation.

Take a look at this Eurasianet article of mine for more background on the "Kurdish opening."

These arrests, when put together with the recent increase in clashes between the military and the PKK in Turkey's predominantly-Kurdish southeast and an ongoing court case against a large number of Kurdish politicians who are also accused of supporting the PKK, paint a troubling picture. For now, Ankara appears to be struggling to find a way of pushing forward its much needed Kurdish initiative while at the same time keeping Ocalan and the PKK -- who still hold a considerable amount of influence -- out of the process.

A New (Old) Front in the Turkey-Israel Fight

As if more fuel was needed to be poured on the fire burning in the wake of last week's tragically botched Israeli flotilla raid, a new campaign is being mounted in Turkey to link Israel with increased activity by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

The main impetus for this is the fact that around the same time that Israeli commandos were sliding down their ropes onto the deck of the Mavi Marmara, the Turkish cruise ship turned naval embargo buster, PKK guerillas attacked a naval base on the southern Turkish coast, killing six sailors. The implication is that Israel was using the PKK attack as a kind of virtual smoke screen against the Turkish-led flotilla and sending out a warning shot to Turkey to not push things too far.

Turkish officials have certainly been hinting at that being the case. “We do not think the two attacks are a coincidence,” Huseyin Celik, deputy chairman of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), said. Turkey's interior minister, Besir Atalay, also expressed his concern that the two events were somehow connected and said any links will be investigated. In an article in Sunday's edition, Today's Zaman runs a fairly long piece entitled, "Suspicion growing about possible link between PKK and Israel," quoting a host of analysts who make some fairly inflammatory accusations (Israeli agents training PKK terrorists in how to "penetrate" cities and that captured PKK guerillas have confessed that they were trained by Israel, for example) without offering much evidence.

In a column in the same paper, Andrew Finkel -- one of the few voices of caution in the overheated Turkish media -- sees the attempt to link Israel with the PKK as part of a worrying trend. From his column:

....It is this sense of events slipping out of control which is among the most worrying aspects of Turkey’s current standoff with Israel. As if the nation did not have enough issues to deal with, it has now taken on responsibility for the Middle East. If the government appears to be taking a hard line on Israel, public opinion is shouting that it should take a harder line still. A recent public opinion survey undertaken by the MetroPOLL organization reports that 60 percent of the population believe the government has under-reacted to events. If pressure continues to build then Turkey will continue to back into uncharted waters.

There must be suspicion among the cynical few that the government is not displeased with the current crisis with Israel. Its total command of the headlines and the uniformity of the popular outrage has usefully overshadowed debates over constitutional reform, unemployment and the resurgence of the PKK. However, such cynicism would be misplaced; a more realistic view is that the government is genuinely concerned that those of its citizens trying to run the blockade in Gaza are now wagging the dog of Turkish foreign policy. One can only assume there is debate among the highest echelons between those who believe that the last week has served to redefine Turkey’s new soft power in a positive way and those who worry this exercise is getting out of hand; the contrast between a Turkey which enjoys more prestige and one which risks dismantling its carefully nurtured image of an ambassador between different regions. Distaste for the policies of the Netanyahu government aside, a Turkey able to speak to Israel presents a very different picture to the world than a Turkey which might adopt the anti-Zionist discourse of the Middle East.

Full piece here.

Making a link between Israel and the PKK/Kurds is not a new trope in Turkey. It was raised a few years ago during the American war in Iraq, when Turks were particularly worried about how the war might empower the Iraqi Kurds and the PKK and threaten Turkey. At the time, the rumors didn't only involve suggestions that Israel was training Kurdish peshmergas and helping the PKK, but also included the mother of all rumors -- that Iraqi Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani is in fact Jewish (there was a line of rabbis in Kurdistan, which until recent decades had a large and thriving Jewish community, named Barzani). His being "Jewish," of course, would explain everything very neatly. Follow this link to an article I wrote at the time about this particular "who's a Jew" campaign.

A full-scale diplomatic war is clearly going on between Israel and Turkey right now. But there are clearly also efforts being made to drive a further wedge between the two countries, something both sides should be very vigilant about.

The Kurdish Shabab

Nicholas Birch has an interesting article up on the Eurasianet website about the breakdown of discipline and the chain of command in Turkey's Kurdish movement, much of it fueled by angry youths in Turkey's southeast. It's a trend that should certainly raise alarm bells among both officials in the Turkish government and the Kurdish movement. From Birch's article:

....Many observers see the rise in urban violence as a sign both of the growing vacuum at the heart of the Kurdish nationalist movement, and the changing dynamics of the PKK's support base.

"In the old days, there was a clear chain of command," says one Yuksekova politician. "The PKK would tell the politicians 'the shops will be closed today' and the politicians would pass that on to the shopkeepers. Today, they both say 'don't close the shops down', but then some 18 year old claiming to be the right-hand man of a PKK commander comes along and countermands their orders."

Locals say the break-up in the PKK hierarchy began in 2005, when three separate PKK groups began to set up civilian support organizations in Hakkari Province. The PKK has always used civil 'militias' to spread its message and ensure a steady influx of provisions and money. After 2005, however, the rapid growth of militias, and the lack of a clear chain of command, led some members to use the PKK trademark to enrich themselves.

In 2008, two Yuksekova men were found dead, allegedly murdered by the PKK for running a protection racket under the guise of collecting for militias. Some locals say the group has since moved to professionalize what were once volunteer militia units, to avoid a repeat of the same problem.

"In the old days, rhetoric about the Kurdish struggle was enough to bring people onside," says Irfan Aktan, a Yuksekova-born reporter who writes widely about the Kurdish issue. "But war has left a whole generation in poverty. They have nothing to lose. Money is infinitely more important to these people than ideology."

A journalist based in Diyarbakir, Ahmet Sumbul sees no evidence that the PKK is professionalizing itself to ensure the loyalty of its supporters. But he agrees that urban violence is on the rise, and changing too. In the past, he says, protestors used to stone police stations and state offices. "Over the past five years, they have started throwing stones at everybody and everything. Small shopkeepers get the worst of it."

"The PKK can use these people, but they can't control them. It's just unfocussed anger. Kids no longer listen to their fathers. Kurds no longer listen to the mountains," Sumbul added.

You can read the full piece here.

The "Kurdish Initiative": Now in Theaters!

Although, on a political level, the government's "Kurdish initiative" -- a democratization program announced last summer that's designed to tackle the decades-old Kurdish problem -- seems stuck in the muck (see this previous post) of Turkey's political polarization, interesting things are happening on the cultural front.

Case in point, the recent opening in Istanbul of "Min Dît," the first Kurdish-language film to get a full theatrical release in Turkey. The film tells the story of three Kurdish children in Diyarbakir who witness the murder of their parents by a paramilitary group. I took the photo above, of a marquee advertising the film (the title is roughly translated as "I witnessed"), while walking down Istanbul's Istiklal boulevard the other day. Considering the restrictions that were in place up until only a few years ago on the public use of Kurdish, the fact that a billboard in Kurdish could be put up in the heart of downtown Istanbul without much fanfare or reaction struck me as significant. (That said, it should be noted that there are still politicians on trial in Turkey for campaigning in Kurdish and that a court in Diyarbakir recently sentenced the former editor-in-chief of a Kurdish newspaper to 166 years in prison for having "disseminated the propaganda of a terrorist organization." Read about it here.)

Today's Zaman recently interviewed the film's director, Miraz bezar, who won the "best director" award at last month's Istanbul Film Festival. You can read the interview here.

Kurdish-language cinema has come far in Turkey. A few years ago, when the restrictions on Kurdish language in Turkey were starting to ease up, I went down to Diyarbakir to profile what was then a budding homegrown movie making scene. At the time, it was an extremely low-budget, though highly resourceful scene that was strictly serving the local market. You can read the story, in Canada's Walrus magazine, here.

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)

On Kurds, Syria Bucking the Trend

Human Rights Watch has just issued an interesting and thorough report about the repression of Kurdish political and cultural life in Syria (Kurds make up about 10 percent of the population there). While Iraq's Kurds are getting closer and closer to something approaching statehood and Turkey is discussing significant changes in how to approach its Kurdish minority, Syria appears to be heading in the other direction. From the report, entitled "Group Denial":

In March 2004, Syria’s Kurds held large-scale demonstrations, some violent, in a number of towns and villages throughout northern Syria, to protest their treatment by the Syrian authorities—the first time they had held such massive demonstrations in the country. While the protests occurred as an immediate response to the shooting by security forces of Kurdish soccer fans engaged in a fight with Arab supporters of a rival team, they were driven by long-simmering Kurdish grievances about discrimination against their community and repression of their political and cultural rights. The scale of the mobilization alarmed the Syrian authorities, who reacted with lethal force to quell the protests. In the final tally, at least 36 people were killed, most of them Kurds, and over 160 people were injured. The security services detained more than 2,000 Kurds (many were later amnestied), with widespread reports of torture and ill-treatment of the detainees.

The March 2004 events constituted a major turning point in relations between Syria’s Kurds and the authorities. Long marginalized and discriminated against by successive Syrian governments that promoted Arab nationalism, Syria’s Kurds have traditionally been a divided and relatively quiescent group (especially compared to Kurds in Iraq and Turkey). Syria’s Kurds make up an estimated 10 percent of the population and live primarily in the northern and eastern regions of the country.

The protests in 2004, which many Syrian Kurds refer to as their intifada (uprising), as well as developments in Iraqi Kurdistan, gave them increased confidence to push for greater enjoyment of rights and greater autonomy in Syria. This newfound assertiveness worried Syria’s leadership, already nervous about Kurdish autonomy in Iraq and increasingly isolated internationally. The authorities responded by announcing that they would no longer tolerate any Kurdish gathering or political activity. Kurds nevertheless continued to assert themselves by organizing events celebrating their Kurdish identity and protesting anti-Kurdish policies of the government.

In the more than five years since March 2004, Syria has maintained a harsh policy of increased repression against its Kurdish minority. This repression is part of the Syrian government’s broader suppression of any form of political dissent by any of the country’s citizens, but it also presents certain distinguishing features such as the repression of cultural gatherings because the government perceives Kurdish identity as a threat, as well as the sheer number of Kurdish arrests. A September 2008 presidential decree that places stricter state regulation on selling and buying property in certain border areas mostly impacts Kurds and is perceived as directed against them.

(You can read the full report here.)

The situation of the Kurds in Syria (which I imagine is reflective of how political opposition in the country is treated in general) certainly has implications for Turkey. The success of Turkey's new "Kurdish Opening" -- a series of democratic reforms which could ultimately lead the disbanding of the PKK, which includes Syrian Kurds among its members -- depends, to a certain extent, on the other countries in the region with large Kurdish populations (Iraq, Iran and Syria) also taking conciliatory steps on the issue. The question for Ankara, it appears, is can it use its rapidly improving ties with Damascus to push the Syrian regime to start taking those steps?

Ankara's Road to Damascus

I have a new piece up on the Christian Science Monitor about how Turkey's foreign policy ambitions are forcing it to confront some of the "domestic" problems that for decades have been no go areas for the country. Without solving these issues (Kurdish, Armenian and Cyprus problems, in particular), Ankara's ability to achieve many of its foreign policy goals in the region could be severely limited.

From the article:

Stymied by European resistance to its bid for EU membership, Turkey's government has forcefully realigned the country's foreign policy over the past few years. Led by the liberal Islamic Justice and Development Party (AKP), it has sought to engage more with the surrounding region and to establish itself as a neighborhood soft-power broker.

But observers say that Ankara's foreign policy ambitions are tied up in first resolving what were, until recently, taboo issues – particularly the Armenian, Kurdish, and Cypriot problems – that have cast a heavy shadow over Turkey's domestic politics for the past few decades.

"Turkey wants to play internationally, and to play internationally it has to put [its] house in order," says Henri Barkey, an expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

"With their strong military and economy, they have the hard power, but what they are trying to do now is build up their soft power. Turkey is lecturing other countries, like Israel and the Chinese, about human rights issues, and here you have a country where the Kurdish language is illegal. That is absurd," he says.

Ankara has been making moves on these issues. On Oct. 10, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu signed a deal in Switzerland that paves the way for restoring diplomatic ties with Armenia and for the two countries to review their mutually contested history. Four days later, Turkey hosted Armenian President Serge Sarkizian for another round of "football diplomacy" – a World Cup qualifying match between the Turkish and Armenian national teams.

The same day, Mr. Davutoglu was in Syria, signing yet another important deal, this one abolishing visa requirements between two powers that only a decade ago were on the verge of war after Ankara accused Damascus of supporting the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

Turkish leaders have also made clear their intent to soon introduce a broad democratization initiative to deal with the Kurdish issue. And Turkey has given its support to reunification talks between the Greek and Turkish governments of divided Cyprus.

The Turkish government's moves are being enabled, on the one hand, by a gradual change in society and political life that has made it easier to talk about these issues.

"Until very recently, the public had been conditioned to accept things from the perspective of statism, nationalism, and chauvinism," says Dogu Ergil, a professor at Ankara University. "But the dominance of the state over issues and making them taboo and undebatable is fading."

Ankara also appears to be driven by a realization that these taboos were hurting Turkey's ability to make an impact abroad. "That position was limiting.... Until recently, Turkish foreign policy was mostly reactive, it didn't take any initiatives, and it didn't do things beyond its own borders," says Mr. Barkey.

You can read the whole piece here.

Dances With the AKP

Just what is it about Turkey and Kevin Costner? He may be remembered in the United States for “Dances With Wolves” and several other hit films (as well as for “Waterworld” and “The Postman,” two of the most spectacular cinematic duds ever), but he’s certainly no longer the star he once was.

Not so in Turkey, where the Costner magic still seems to be at work. It all started two years ago when Costner and his “rock” band, Modern West (don’t tell me you’ve never heard of them!), came to play a benefit concert in Istanbul for a children’s aid group. During the visit, it was even suggested that perhaps Costner could play the role of Ataturk in a proposed biopic about the secularizing founder of the modern Turkish state. High praise, indeed!

Earlier this year, meanwhile, Turkish Airlines deemed Costner’s star bright enough to recruit him for a massive (and strangely ineffective) ad campaign promoting the airline’s new and improved first class service. Soon his face was plastered on billboards all over Turkey, telling Turks that now they, too, can “feel like a star.” (You can watch the English-language television commercial, where Costner works his charm on a lithe flight attendant, here.)

But now things are getting even more serious. According to reports in the local press, Costner is now getting involved in Turkish politics. In a Friday report in the English language Today’s Zaman, we are told “American actor and director Kevin Costner [has] joined the ranks of celebrities supporting Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's democratic initiative aimed at addressing various problems, including the Kurdish issue.” According to the article, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) had actually invited Costner to attend the party’s upcoming congress, but wasn’t able to make it. Still, according to a statement released by party deputy chairwoman Edibe Sozen (a former professor of “communications,” it should be noted), Costner “conveyed his support for the democratic initiative because it shows the value Turkey attaches to human rights.” (A brief about this in the semi-official Anatolian Agency news service makes it sound like the invite was only issued after Costner himself contacted the AKP to give his unprompted support for the government’s new initiative.)

The Turkish government has been busy laying the groundwork for the unveiling of its highly-anticipated “democratic initiative,” which is mostly aimed at dealing with the long-standing Kurdish problem. A big part of laying that groundwork has involved meeting with civil society groups and other political parties. But now it looks like the government is pulling out the big guns by unveiling “celebrity” endorsements for the initiative. Of course, the ultimate endorsement of the initiative would be the one given by the Turkish people (Kurds, in particular), but having Kevin Costner on board certainly doesn’t hurt.

(UPDATE -- Speaking of celebrity endorsements, the Turkish papers have been running front page headlines about U2's decision to add an Istanbul leg to their current world tour. According to Hurriyet, Egemen Bagis, the government minister who is handling Turkey's European Union membership process, even promised the band that if they come to the country, he will arrange for them to play a gig on one of the bridges crossing the Bosphorus, which would allow them to play at the spot where Europe and Asia "meet." The last ones to try this bi-continental stunt were a pair of top-ranked Chinese and Austrian ping pong players, who played a 30-minute match earlier this summer in the middle of one of the Bosphorus bridges. Motorists in the city of 18 million were not amused.)

(UPDATE II -- The Costner story keeps heating up. Now Turkey's opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) is crying foul over Costner's purported support for the government's democratization initiative. According to news reports, CHP leader Deniz Baykal, speaking at a "grape festival" in Antalya, had this to say: “Who on earth are you? What is it that you know and speak? If they put a map in front of you, you wouldn't be able to locate Şırnak [a city in Turkey's predominantly Kurdish southeast]. You mind your own business."

Baykal even suggested that the government is using Costner's "endorsement" in a deceptive manner. “The prime minister is hiding the truths from the public regarding the opening. He has a project on his mind and plans to make it accepted slowly in the face of possible reactions from the nation. Is it the prime minister’s job to deceive people?” he said.)

(photo -- Kevin Costner and Turkish president Abdullah Gul during a 2007 meeting in Ankara.)

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 Kurdish Gambit

I have a piece up on the Eurasianet website looking at what the Turkish government's upcoming "Kurdish Initiative" -- a reform plan aimed at resolving the long-standing Kurdish issue -- might look like and what are some of the challenges facing it. There are a number of internal and external factors pushing Ankara to finally take a decisive (and non-military) step in dealing with the Kurdish issue, one of the more interesting ones being the fact that jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan is planning to release his own "road map" on how to solve the Kurdish problem.

Things are certainly moving forward on the issue in Ankara, with one of the more interesting and positive developments being the announcement that Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan has finally agreed to meet with members of the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP). Erdogan has previously refused to even shake hands with the DTP's parliamentarians, saying they must first denounce the PKK.

More on this issue from my Eurasianet article:

After decades of conflict and repressive policies, Turkish leaders appear to be taking concrete steps toward resolving the Kurdish issue. But analysts warn that domestic opposition and the lack of consultation with Kurds themselves could limit any plan’s chances for success.

In recent months, Turkish leaders have sent strong signals that an initiative to deal with the Kurdish issue is in the works. In May, President Abdullah Gul said that Turkey had an "historic opportunity" to address the issue, while Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, just before departing for a recent trip to Syria, told reporters: "Whether we call it the Kurdish, the southeast or eastern problem, whether we call it the Kurdish initiative, we have started work on this."

In late July, meanwhile, Turkish Interior Minister Besir Atalay said during a nationally televised news conference that the government is actively working on a comprehensive plan -- one based on democratization and expanded rights. Although he didn’t offer any specific details or a timeframe, Atalay told reporters, "We have the intention to take determined, patient and courageous steps."

Writing in the English-language Hurriyet Daily News, political analyst Mehmet Ali Birand said the government’s anticipated initiative does represent an important shift. "The Turkish Republic has now accepted the existence of a Kurdish issue and a [Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)] problem, and has started comprehensive efforts towards finding a solution. Until now, these issued were accepted, but ignored," he wrote.

"Now, for the first time, the Kurdish issue is being separated from the PKK issue, and again for the first time, a plan is being developed that will influence Turkey’s future," Birand continued.

According to reports in the Turkish press, the government’s plan may include a series of moves on the cultural rights front, including the establishment of private Kurdish-language television stations and Kurdish language faculties in universities, as well allowing towns and villages to once again use their original Kurdish names. It is not clear if it would include a wide-ranging amnesty program for members of the outlawed PKK. The group continues to attack Turkish security forces, mostly from its hideouts in northern Iraq.

Observers say a series of domestic and regional developments are forcing the political and military establishments in Ankara to confront the Kurdish issue in a new way. "The Turkish military is finally coming to grips with the fact that it cannot win this war, no matter what happens [to the PKK] in northern Iraq. It’s finally dawning on them that some kind of political solution is necessary," says Henri Barkey, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington and an expert on Turkish politics.

Barkey also says Turkey’s ambitions to play a larger role on the world stage, particularly as a regional mediator, are also forcing Turkish leaders to take stock of the country’s own problems. "Turkey is lecturing other countries, like Israel and [China], about human rights issues and here you have a country where the Kurdish language is illegal. That is absurd," Barkey said. "They have to do something. There is a discrepancy between domestic Turkey and the image it is trying to project abroad...."

....The big question now being asked is, once the government announces its plan, what are its chances for success? The [International Crisis Group's Hugh] Pope says an important element of the current debate, which may help any government initiative succeed, is that it is mostly domestically driven. "Ten years ago everyone in Europe would be lecturing Turkey about the Kurds. This current talk about a Kurdish opening is domestically driven, which makes it a lot more legitimate," he says. "Before, when Turkey was being lectured from the outside, it caused people to circle the wagons and stop listening."

Dogu Ergil, a professor of political science at Ankara University, says the Kurdish initiative could be hurt by what he sees a lack of consultation between the government and other key players - particularly the Kurds themselves - about how to best approach the problem. "We lack a definition of what we are trying to solve and some people have gathered behind closed doors and decided they have the solution," he said.

"For the Kurdish people in Turkey, it is still a state initiative," Ergil continued. "The method has not been democratic enough so far. ... That’s the problem. The whole thing is a mystery."

Some analysts suggest that the AKP government may find itself in a bind on the issue. "They are going to have to sell this to a skeptical public and the opposition is going to raise hell," noted Barkey.

Ultimately, the government’s main challenge may be to come up with a plan that is politically viable, but which also meets rising expectations. "The problem with things like this is that when you raise expectations so high and then you don’t do something, it’s like setting a match to a tank of gasoline," says Barkey.

You can read the full article here.

A Final Crack in the Ilisu Dam Project?

Back in December, I wrote about the problems faced by the controversial Ilisu dam project in southeast Turkey, especially after its main financial backers -- Germany, Austria and Switzerland -- suspended credit guarantees for the project. Now the countries have announced that they are pulling out of the dam project completely. From Reuters:

Three Western export credit insurers quit Turkey's planned Ilisu dam on the Tigris River on Tuesday because it is failing World Bank environmental and heritage standards, throwing the 1.2 billion euro ($1.68 billion) project into doubt.

The dam is due to provide 3.8 billion kilowatt hours of electricity a year and help wean Turkey off reliance on energy imports. But it will also swallow up more than 80 villages and hamlets by the time of its planned completion in 2013.

Work on the project was halted in December when the three insurers -- Euler Hermes Kreditversicherung of Germany, Austria's Oesterreichische Kontrollbank and Swiss Schweizerische Exportrisikoversicherung -- ordered suppliers to stop working on the dam for 180 days.

"The agreed contractual conditions regarding the environment, cultural heritage and relocation could not be fulfilled," the insurers, which were providing credit guarantees for the German, Austrian and Swiss suppliers, said in a joint statement.

You can read the full article here.

Environment minister, Veysel Eroglu, said a few days ago that work on Ilisu would continue even without foreign backing, but it's not clear if Turkey has the financial or technical resources to build a dam like this. This latest news may not mean the end of the Ilisu project, but it certainly will delay its construction in a meaningful way.

For more background about the Ilisu dam project and the wider issue of water management in the southeast, take a look at this article I wrote last year for Eurasianet.

(Photo -- A view of the historic town of Hasankeyf, which would be flooded if the controversial Ilisu dam were to be built. By Yigal Schleifer)