ARE KURDISH INTELLECTUALS FREE OF POLITICAL SIN?
Huseyin Bagci
New Anatolian, Turkey
Jan 16 2007
The most-asked questions in Turkey are about what’s going to happen
in Iraq and what peace Turkey is seeking.
The new Iraq plan announced by U.S. President George W. Bush last
Wednesday isn’t very promising, but rather it indicated that the U.S.
isn’t inclined to leave Iraq in the foreseeable future.
Even the confession by President Bush that the U.S. occupation has
brought more instability to the region doesn’t exclude the fact
that the Bush administration must have calculated this. The cardinal
question isn’t whether the U.S. is losing, but it is rather whether
the U.S. will stay in the region even longer than the British Empire
stayed.
The replacement of power in the Middle East between Great Britain and
the U.S. happened in the early 1950s, but now it looks that the U.S.
will stay — with all its technology and military might — and Iran,
Syria and some other Arab countries will face the stark reality that
the new Iraq has already joined the team as a "new strategic ally"
and "strategic partner" of the U.S.
In this framework, Turkey shouldn’t be considered a loser but a
country whose strategic importance has fallen to some extent, which
will further push it to make a new shift regarding its foreign policy
towards Iraq.
Indeed, Turkey’s concerns are growing. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan’s accusation that the U.S. doesn’t understand Turkey’s problems
regarding its fight against the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party
(PKK) and that the U.S. has been acting one-sidedly are certainly
true. Turkey, while so difficult to accept, has been described as a
"second-rate country" in U.S. strategic plans since March 1, 2003,
the day Turkey refused to back the U.S.’ Iraq invasion.
The Iraqi government in Baghdad realizes that northern Iraq is under
U.S. protection and no country can undertake any military operation
against the Iraqi Kurds. Today Massoud Barzani is so strong and
self-confident that not he personally but his spokesman threatens
Turkey that if it becomes involved in northern Iraq, some other
countries would also intervene in Turkey’s internal affairs.
Doesn’t this fit with the statement uttered by renowned writer Yasar
Kemal? In Ankara on Saturday at a conference entitled "Turkey is
seeking its peace," he said, "The best friends of Turks are the
Kurds." Doesn’t this also mean the Iraqi Kurds?
Turkey is facing a new challenge and this year, this problem will
dominate Turkish domestic politics. During the conference all the
speakers stressed how important domestic peace is but nobody offered
concrete steps to establish it.
With few exceptions, all the speakers could be considered the "usual
suspects" who have given over their lives to turning Turkey into a
socialist country since the ’60s. In their second fight to resolve
the Kurdish question without denouncing terrorism and separatism,
another failure seems preordained.
Nobody rejects the idea that the Kurds are there, but the Turkish
Constitution is still valid and there is only one nation. Foreign
Minister Abdullah Gul’s statement that the Kurds are relatives of
the Turks is a good acknowledgement, but the issue is neither whether
there is a kinship nor is it how Turkey will cope with this problem
without further bloodshed.
Now, ahead of two crucial elections this year in Turkey, the Kurds
in Turkey also must make up their mind about what they actually want.
Suggestions like confederation or arguments that Turkey is composed
of the Turks and Kurds, as put by Democratic Society Party (DTP)
leader Ahmet Turk in an interview, do not heal the wound that PKK
terror caused in this country.
Modern Turkey, with all its institutions, is now facing the challenge
of the century and there is no concrete plan for reconciliation,
if it is described like this in the conference.
The Kurdish reality in this geography is a fact, as is the revenge
of Saddam Hussein since the first Gulf War. The genie is out of the
bottle and no doubt every country in the region faces this challenge.
The more the U.S. stays in the Middle East, the more the Kurds in
general get stronger.
It has already been written that the Kurds, besides the Turks, Arabs
and Iranians, are now the new political element that can shape the
Middle East with all their peculiarities and specific political
motivations.
No government in the Middle East can deny that the Kurds are also
part of European business circles and, in the age of globalization,
governments including Turkey’s can’t prevent this technological
infiltration with political ideas in the minds of the people.
Take the example of Roj-TV in Denmark. The Turkish prime minister’s
"nationalist behavior" preventing him from holding a joint press
conference with Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen when he
visited Denmark in 2005 was applauded in Turkey, but Roj-TV is still
there and they broadcast in Turkish, too.
Europeans have two questions to ask of every Turkish citizen: Why
don’t you recognize the Armenian "genocide," and why don’t you give
the Kurds their freedom and land?
Let’s face it, even Kurdish intellectuals, including Yasar Kemal,
who declared for the first time in a Der Spiel interview in 1995
that he is a Kurd, but was known by Turks as the master of Turkish
language in writing, are also responsible for what happened in the
last 24 years concerning PKK terror. Still none of them has rejected
ethnic terrorism or told the Turkish people that the Kurds are the
best friends of Turkey as if it is something new.
There’s no need to rediscover America. There are more than 1 million
families having both Turkish and Kurdish origins. "Turkish" therefore
describes all citizens living in the Turkish state.
Moreover, Turkey’s social structure has been facing this reality,
but now the Kurds have to prove that there is still one Turkey and
every Turkish citizen, including those of Kurdish origin, agree on
the point that Turkey should be a democratic country of social welfare.
The regional and global challenges force everybody to work together.
What views do the Kurdish intellectuals have — for instance that
Turkey has to stop the population spiral in eastern and southeastern
Anatolia and end the tribal understandings that trigger "honor"
killings as well as prevent families from sending their daughters to
school? Kurdish intellectuals and politicians also have to declare
what their future perception of Turkey is. If Turks have failed
to modernize this region, which is partially true, what kind of
modernization plans do they have? There are many questions to ask
this year and in the years to come.
In all our writings, we have stated that this government under Erdogan
has been the most liberal and able government ever. But the prime
minister has also disappointed and so showed great resignation.
The simple question is why the Kurdish intellectuals who convened in
Ankara over the weekend did not give him enough political support.
Former socialist and communists, from Yasar Kemal to Vedat Turkali
and many others, should actually be self-critical in this respect.
They have done this before, and now it’s time to do it again.
Blaming Turkish governments and the Turks doesn’t solve the problem.
The main question on what they have put on the table that is viable if
they want to negotiate rather than fueling ethnic terrorism and killing
30,000 people remains open. Before they pelt the Turks, the Kurdish
intellectuals should ponder the sins they have committed over all these
years. A fresh beginning can only start if both sides get clean enough!