Will Turkey end up like Yugoslavia?
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
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MUSTAFA AKYOL
What we are seeing, in fact, is a Kurdish intifada being answered by
Turkish vigilantism. One never knows how fast this political virus of
ethnic nationalism will spread
I know. My headline sounds very pessimistic. But pessimism might be
just blunt realism these days with regard to Turkey’s deeply troubling
Kurdish question.
Things are getting worse, and the country is being dragged into a
terrible ethnic tension between Turkish and Kurdish nationalists.
Let’s see what’s happening. Last Friday, the Constitutional Court
decided to close the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party, or DTP.
People have different ideas about the verdict, and I am among those
who find it extremely unhelpful to the situation.
But I also see that this closure case was not totally as scandalous as
the case opened against the incumbent Justice and Development Party,
or AKP, last year.
The cult of Öcalan
The AKP was accused simply for its views on secularism. The main issue
with the DTP was, however, not its views on Kurdish rights but its
links with the PKK, a terrorist organization.
We should also keep in mind that last year the same Constitutional
Court refused to close a smaller pro-Kurdish party, the Party of
Rights and Freedoms, or Hak-Par, which had even bolder demands on
Kurdish rights, but denied terrorism as a method.
Here lies the main problem with the DTP folks and their militant
supporters: They are not just demanding broader rights for Kurds. If
that were the case, things would have been much easier, for the
government had already started a `democratic initiative’ to grant
those rights.
No, the DTP has a more ambitious goal: The recognition of the PKK as a
legitimate political actor, and, more importantly, the release of its
jailed leader, Abdullah Öcalan, to become a `Kurdish Mandela.’
`Anything besides the release of Öcalan will fail to calm them,’
according to journalist Mehmet Faraç, an expert on the PKK. `All other
issues, such as education in Kurdish, are trivial.’
However, Öcalan is hardly a Mandela. Since the late 1970s, his
organization not only killed some 7,000 Turkish soldiers, but also
hundreds of Turkish civilians and even many Kurdish `traitors’ who
refused to cooperate.
`For the freedom of Kurdistan,’ Öcalan once declared, `a million Kurds
might die.’ To him, as it was to Josef Stalin, the death of millions
seem to be mere statistics.
Moreover, some of those Kurds whom Öcalan is happy to sacrifice for
his agenda are happy to be sacrificed. When Öcalan was captured in
1999 by Turkish security forces (thanks to American help), some of his
supporters, as a form of protest, burnt themselves alive. Later
Öcalan, in his prison cell, proudly wrote:
`When Jesus was crucified, his followers could only cry. When Mohammed
died, people discussed politics over his body. When Lenin died, nobody
killed himself. But when I was arrested, hundreds of Kurdish sons and
daughters were lighting themselves on fire.’
So, Öcalan is greater than Jesus, Muhammad and Lenin – a view shared
by his militant followers whose numbers, as Faraç estimates, reach at
least half a million.
Alas, why is this county so fertile for cults of personalities? We
already had an official one on the Turkish side, now the Kurds have
their own.
On the other hand, for at least 80 percent of the Turkish society,
Öcalan is simply evil incarnated. He is the enemy of their state and
the killer of their sons. Most of these Turks also don’t know much
about the tragedies on the Kurdish side, which is the real root cause
of the PKK.
For decades the Turkish state propagated the idea that the latter was
nothing but a group of bandits and traitors created and manipulated by
`foreign powers.’ That’s still how most Turks see the PKK, and thus
perceive any dialogue with it as weakness, if not outright treason.
A Kurdish intifada
All this means that Turkey is in a terrible deadlock. Kurdish
nationalists will probably not be content with anything besides
Öcalan’s release, but no government can dare to do that because of the
enormous reaction it would receive from the overwhelming Turkish
majority.
Moreover, the bitterness created by three decades of armed conflict is
now amplified by tension in big cities in western Turkey between
radicalized Kurdish immigrants and nationalist Turks who are fed up
with the `Kurdish invasion.’
The latest events in the streets of Istanbul indicate the dangerous
point we have reached: Kurdish youngsters in masks burning cars,
storming shops and terrorizing neighborhoods. Inhabitants of those
neighborhoods, in return, have hit back with knives, axes and even
guns.
What we are seeing, in fact, is what Emre Gönen, a professor of
political science, calls `a Kurdish intifada’ – being answered by
Turkish vigilantism.
What is new here is the changing nature of the conflict. In the past,
it was between the Turkish military and the PKK. Now it is
increasingly between Turkish and Kurdish nationalists. The
battlefields are not just mountains anymore. It is also Turkey’s
biggest cities.
This is all too bad. The chances of ending up like Yugoslavia – with a
horrible ethnic war – are still low, I believe.
But it is not totally out of the question. You never know how fast
this political virus called ethnic nationalism will spread.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress