Given the ethnic and sectarian roots of Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, some expect that the Republican People’s Party (CHP) under his leadership may take bold, new initiatives to resolve the Kurdish question.
Unfortunately, this has not been forthcoming. Since his election to the highest post in the CHP Kılıçdaroğlu has made no significant policy call to address the Kurdish question. He even tried to hide his Kurdish and Alevi origins. This has been the typical attitude of a “devşirme” ever since the time of the Ottoman Empire -- a person who climbed up through the state apparatus turned out to be the most ardent supporter of state policies to show his gratefulness to the system that brought him up to such a high position.
It appears Kılıçdaroğlu personally owes a lot to the Kemalist regime in which he succeeded to attain a high post in the state, becoming the leader of the CHP. Grateful to the regime, he appears ready to forget his ethnic and sectarian background, both of which are defined by the state as “problematic.”
Furthermore, there are more structural problems for the CHP to change its stance on the Kurdish question. The party represents something more than its current leader; its history, set of ideals and agitated grassroots all stand against a democratic solution to the Kurdish question. Even if Kılıçdaroğlu wants to, he could not transform the CHP.
It is the CHP that holds the copyright to the policies that historically denied the existence of the Kurds, who at first were supposedly nonexistent but were later claimed to be “mountain Turks.” During the single-party rule of the CHP, the main policy towards the Kurds was to suppress and assimilate them. After a trip in the East in 1935, İsmet İnönü, the then prime minister, prepared a report on the “Eastern Question” in which he bravely outlined the need to accelerate policies of suppression to be accompanied by assimilation. In response to such policies, after 1925, dozens of Kurdish revolts took place in the region. During the Dersim revolt in the area where Kılıçdaroğlu’s grandfathers lived, thousands were killed in their villages and mountains by poison gas and air raids.
Following each rebellion by the Kurds, thousands were exiled to western Turkey, where they were excluded and marginalized.
All this was conducted simply because the presence of the Kurds went against the Kemalist idea of a homogenized nation-state for which the Kurds either had to perish or be assimilated. Thus the Kemalist regime was in fact not racist: It accepted the possibility of conversion!
We should, of course, be aware of a broader anomaly in the formative years of the Kemalist regime. The state had problems not only with the Kurds but with almost any “distinct” ethnic, religious, political and ideological grouping. Anyone who did not accept Kemalism as the ultimate source of authority, knowledge, and wisdom was considered disloyal and subsequently suppressed.
This continued uninterrupted until 1950, when the Democrat Party (DP) won the first free and fair elections in Turkey, putting an end to the CHP’s single-party government. The 1950s ruled by the DP were the calmest period in the region, seeing no revolt. Development and democracy were the two key factors to explain this. For the first time in the republican era, the Kurds started to get economic benefits instead of oppression from the center and were able to be represented in the center through Parliament. Thousands who were sent into “internal exile” were able to return home under the DP. The distribution of wealth and participation in the political process eased the Kurdish perception of the central government, though there was still no policy change in the recognition of the Kurdish identity.
But there was a change in attitude. The DP under Adnan Menderes tried to integrate the Kurds into the new state. The CHP at the beginning of this period, however, warned the DP against doing this. İnönü, the president and chairman of the CHP, in late 1945 asked that the founders of the DP not do only one thing: “Do not open party branches in the East.”
But the DP approached the situation differently. Numan Esin, a member of the military junta that overthrew the DP government in 1960, shares information in his memoirs of their visit to Menderes, the prime minister who the junta hanged in 1961. Esin asks Menderes how they planned to resolve the “Eastern Question.” Menderes replied: “Our solution was democracy. By giving the liberties people deserve, we thought to solve the problem.”
Not much has changed in the 50 years since. While there was a proposal to solve the Kurdish question via a “democratic opening,” the CHP refrained from supporting it, even describing it as an act of treason. But it seems the CHP does give full support to military measures the government is working on. I think this tells us a lot. The CHP is still not far from its past policies concerning the Kurdish question. The only way they think of addressing the question is by using military means. We should not be unfair; they also suggest that some economic measures be taken, missing the whole point about the nature of the problem.
19 July 2010, Monday
Unfortunately, this has not been forthcoming. Since his election to the highest post in the CHP Kılıçdaroğlu has made no significant policy call to address the Kurdish question. He even tried to hide his Kurdish and Alevi origins. This has been the typical attitude of a “devşirme” ever since the time of the Ottoman Empire -- a person who climbed up through the state apparatus turned out to be the most ardent supporter of state policies to show his gratefulness to the system that brought him up to such a high position.
It appears Kılıçdaroğlu personally owes a lot to the Kemalist regime in which he succeeded to attain a high post in the state, becoming the leader of the CHP. Grateful to the regime, he appears ready to forget his ethnic and sectarian background, both of which are defined by the state as “problematic.”
Furthermore, there are more structural problems for the CHP to change its stance on the Kurdish question. The party represents something more than its current leader; its history, set of ideals and agitated grassroots all stand against a democratic solution to the Kurdish question. Even if Kılıçdaroğlu wants to, he could not transform the CHP.
It is the CHP that holds the copyright to the policies that historically denied the existence of the Kurds, who at first were supposedly nonexistent but were later claimed to be “mountain Turks.” During the single-party rule of the CHP, the main policy towards the Kurds was to suppress and assimilate them. After a trip in the East in 1935, İsmet İnönü, the then prime minister, prepared a report on the “Eastern Question” in which he bravely outlined the need to accelerate policies of suppression to be accompanied by assimilation. In response to such policies, after 1925, dozens of Kurdish revolts took place in the region. During the Dersim revolt in the area where Kılıçdaroğlu’s grandfathers lived, thousands were killed in their villages and mountains by poison gas and air raids.
Following each rebellion by the Kurds, thousands were exiled to western Turkey, where they were excluded and marginalized.
All this was conducted simply because the presence of the Kurds went against the Kemalist idea of a homogenized nation-state for which the Kurds either had to perish or be assimilated. Thus the Kemalist regime was in fact not racist: It accepted the possibility of conversion!
We should, of course, be aware of a broader anomaly in the formative years of the Kemalist regime. The state had problems not only with the Kurds but with almost any “distinct” ethnic, religious, political and ideological grouping. Anyone who did not accept Kemalism as the ultimate source of authority, knowledge, and wisdom was considered disloyal and subsequently suppressed.
This continued uninterrupted until 1950, when the Democrat Party (DP) won the first free and fair elections in Turkey, putting an end to the CHP’s single-party government. The 1950s ruled by the DP were the calmest period in the region, seeing no revolt. Development and democracy were the two key factors to explain this. For the first time in the republican era, the Kurds started to get economic benefits instead of oppression from the center and were able to be represented in the center through Parliament. Thousands who were sent into “internal exile” were able to return home under the DP. The distribution of wealth and participation in the political process eased the Kurdish perception of the central government, though there was still no policy change in the recognition of the Kurdish identity.
But there was a change in attitude. The DP under Adnan Menderes tried to integrate the Kurds into the new state. The CHP at the beginning of this period, however, warned the DP against doing this. İnönü, the president and chairman of the CHP, in late 1945 asked that the founders of the DP not do only one thing: “Do not open party branches in the East.”
But the DP approached the situation differently. Numan Esin, a member of the military junta that overthrew the DP government in 1960, shares information in his memoirs of their visit to Menderes, the prime minister who the junta hanged in 1961. Esin asks Menderes how they planned to resolve the “Eastern Question.” Menderes replied: “Our solution was democracy. By giving the liberties people deserve, we thought to solve the problem.”
Not much has changed in the 50 years since. While there was a proposal to solve the Kurdish question via a “democratic opening,” the CHP refrained from supporting it, even describing it as an act of treason. But it seems the CHP does give full support to military measures the government is working on. I think this tells us a lot. The CHP is still not far from its past policies concerning the Kurdish question. The only way they think of addressing the question is by using military means. We should not be unfair; they also suggest that some economic measures be taken, missing the whole point about the nature of the problem.
19 July 2010, Monday
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