Beating water in the mortar

TDN
15 Aug 05

Opinion by Dogu ERGÄ°L

Dogu ERGIL

People engaging in serious things like taking and giving life and
making larger-than-life political statements on complicated matters
during vacation seasons have both amazed and bothered me. July and
August are vacation months, and for serious people vacation is a
serious business without which one cannot generate the energy to
carry on a successful and creative working year. Those people who do
not take vacations either take themselves more seriously than others
or take their work less seriously than those who take vacations for
a more productive year. I have always been suspicious of people who
don’t take vacations to diversify their lives and interests. A limited
life with fixed agendas is an invitation to stereotypes and perhaps
to fanaticism. Fixed agendas are like beating water in mortar. This is
a lovely Turkish expression meaning to do futile things with no zest.

Summer did not deter terrorists or radicals. They went on with the
only thing they knew, blowing up people and blackmailing governments
and people alike. Al-Qaeda on the international and the PKK on the
domestic scene did not delay the execution of their criminal craft.

They spoiled our vacations and poisoned our spirits, which had strayed
away from all “serious” matters.

Fortunately, a group of intellectuals have publicly denounced PKK
terrorism, finding an instant echo in responsible Kurdish circles that
have neither been intimidated nor co-opted by the PKK. The manifesto
of these responsible Kurdish intellectuals came after the murder of
Fahrettin Fidan, an outspoken political figure in the Kurdish political
camp who lately had started to advocate the futility of violence and
the negative influence of Abdullah Ocalan, the incarcerated leader
of the PKK, on the organization.

Initiation of violence by the PKK at a time when Turkey is preparing
for accession talks with the European Union is obviously blackmail
to halt or threaten to halt the process. The Turkish government has
not been able to find a solution to defuse the PKK.

But more important that, the government was unable to succeed in
convincing the majority of the Kurds to put pressure on the PKK to
abandon violence or to distance themselves from its bloody tactics,
although they for the most part do not condone violence.

The inability of the incumbent government to achieve these ends
emanates from the continuous failure of Turkish public administration
to understand the root cause of the “eastern problem.” The “east”
has always been problematic with its tribal and feudal socioeconomic
formation, massive illiteracy, lack of productivity and employment
capacity and gender inequality due to a traditionalism that is further
exacerbated by religiosity. Lack of individualism and individual
liberties aborted democracy and entrepreneurship and kindled the
spirit of rebellion. So many discrepancies sooner or later would
find their expression in a kind of opposition to the existing system
and its symbols. The PKK insurgency is the last of a long series of
Kurdish intransigencies.

Successive Turkish governments since the last decades of the
Ottoman period have viewed the “eastern question” as a security
liability rather than as a matter of development, democratization,
participation and inclusion. Rebellions, first of the Armenians
(during the last decades of the Ottoman era) and later of the Kurds
were viewed by their consequences, not for their causes, and were
duly repressed. Military methods were followed by evacuations and
displacements. Yet the “east” remained underdeveloped, non-integrated
and suspect for harboring different ethnic groups with a propensity for
autonomy and possibly independence. The lingering “eastern question”
produced yet another problem: the Kurdish problem. The notorious
terrorist Kurdish organization is the fuse of the Kurdish problem,
which has grown in the womb of the “eastern question.”

The recent debate occupying public opinion originated from revitalized
PKK violence and public protest of it by outspoken Turkish and Kurdish
intellectuals. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan showed a healthy
interest in talking to the representatives of this group. The prime
minister wanted to get their opinion before flying to Diyarbakir
and facing the people from whom he would demand support to halt
PKK violence by letting them know that his government is aware of
the difference between the Kurdish problem and ethnically motivated
violence carried on by the PKK.

Both the content of the conversation that has taken place in
Ankara between the prime minister and the representatives of the
intellectuals as well as the public speech he delivered in Diyarbakir
carried positive motives that gave some hope but did not change the
official paradigm in the practical sense.

What raised hopes for a new understanding of the problem were the
following:

1- Official mistakes have been committed in the past in terms of
discrimination against the region and its people;

2- A great nation and state can admit and repair its past mistakes;

3- Nationalism is the wrong approach for solving problems because it
is divisive rather than uniting; and

4- Enlarged democracy and economic prosperity will be the cure of
the problem.

However, this is as far as he could go, given the limitations of the
established official order that he is responsible for carrying on. He
is not on record as being more creative on the issue, which has been
delegated to the security bureaucracy.

What was missing from his speech, delivered in Diyarbakir at a time
of rising hope in search of a lasting solution to this old sore of
Turkey, which has led to so much bleeding and political entropy?

1- He did not offer a definition of the “Kurdish problem”‘

2- He claimed his government had the resolve to solve the problem
but did not say how; and

3- He offered no practical agenda upon which effective policies and
hopes could be built.

Could this be the reason for the lack of enthusiasm of the people who
convened to listen to him deliver his speech? Or could it be that
his limitations were already known and that this fact kept people
at home or at work and away from the public meeting? Whatever the
reason, if this government, which openly disavows ethnic, regional
and religious nationalism, fails to understand the complexity of
the Kurdish problem (and reduces it to security measures as in the
past) and fails to garner the public support of the Kurds to detach
themselves from any method or organizations that see violence as the
only way to hammer in or to obtain rights for the Kurds, then Turkey
will suffer from the impasse for more time to come.

–Boundary_(ID_UKSuWLc9dKwQeRUQXseRrw)–