ERDOGAN AND THE KURDISH QUESTION
Abdallah Iskandar

Dar Al-Hayat
Oct 31 2007
Lebanon

When President Ahmedinejad cut his visit to Armenia short last week,
official circles in Iran justified this step as a way to avoid visiting
the Armenian Genocide Memorial in Yerevan, and hence as a means to
avoid a crisis with Turkey which rejects treating those victims as
a form of genocide. Cutting the visit short also coincided with a
number of significant domestic developments in Iran which reached
the national security council as well as potential changes within
the ministry of foreign affairs. Both issues directly concerned the
president whose governing team faces increasing internal opposition,
not to mention the major and tense nuclear crisis and its repercussions
that could possibly lead to war.

In all cases, the symbolic link established between a domestic Iranian
affair with the Turkish position toward the Armenian victims is not
a hidden one. One of the possible implications, even if the Iranians
present it as a form of justification, is that the Iranian position
itself recognizes an exceptional sensitivity that others should
deal with very cautiously. Direct attention to the Armenian issue
soon diminished once the American Congress withdrew its bill which
recognized the Armenian genocide and as a result of the prevalence
of the Kurdish issue which in turn imposed a new agenda on Turkey
and its foreign affairs.

It is worth noting that the relationship between Ankara and its
minorities is the dominant issue of interest for the Justice and
Development Party-led government in Turkey, prime minister Receb
Tayyip Erdogan, and head of the state president Abdullah Gul. This
is at a time when the party and its leadership had been through
a serious crisis with the "Ataturkish" military establishment. It
also comes after the party, supported by a sweeping popular majority,
successfully introduced fundamental constitutional reforms that would
have been rejected by the military establishment under different
circumstances since in the long term, and through the electoral
process, these reforms reinforce the separation between the civil
political decision process and the Higher Military Council which had
always posed as guard to the country’s secular constitution.

The constitutional reforms passed swiftly between two crises involving
minorities in Turkey. In return, the Justice and Development
party caved in on a number of issues such as the reconciliation
of the Islamists with the modern history of Turkey which in turn
involves the minorities question and the normalization of Turkey’s
foreign relationships, especially the ambition to join the European
Union. Internally, the cost of the swiftness desired by the Justice
and Development Party was a resort to positions demanded by the
chauvinist military establishment which rejects paying any price
for joining the EU, especially if this price is a diminished role
for the army and its involvement in politics. Yet, the consequential
restoration of the influence of the military establishment will turn
it into a source of real threats to the constitutional reforms that
were snapped by the Justice and Development Party at the peak of the
Armenian and Kurdish crises.

On the other hand, Turkey’s accession to the EU is currently off
the table for European reasons, but negotiations are still ongoing
between Ankara and the EU including talks to prepare the accession
files. In this context, a question is raised about the possibility of
linking the Turkish government’s desire to facilitate this step and
its announcing war plans in northern Iraq and as a result of which,
the EU will find itself engaged in a war at its borders, and for
motives related to causes that it defends, namely recognizing the
full citizenship rights of minorities as well as developing their
cultures and languages, and on top of all, their rights to education,
accommodation, development, and decent living. Without tangible steps
in this direction, and as long as the drums of war continue to bang
against the Kurdish, Ordogan cannot resolve the Kurdish question
inside Turkey and will not be able to qualify his country to play
the desired role in the region or in Europe.