Good for the Kurds, bad for the Turks?

The Syrian crisis has turned into a crisis testing Turkey's attitude towards the Kurdish question and the Kurds. The likelihood of the Syrian Kurds gaining control of some northern parts of the country and eventually gaining some sort of autonomy from the center has alarmed the Turks and the Turkish government alike.

Almost all commentaries published in Turkish media have told the story with great concern. The prime minister and the minister of foreign affairs have stated that if it becomes necessary, Turkey will not hesitate to intervene in Syria. The opposition has started to accuse the government of idly watching the establishment of a second Kurdish entity on its borders.

Underlying all these reactions is the assumption that developments in favor of the Kurds in the region constitute a threat to Turkey. It is thus inferred that Turkey would prefer the Kurds being ruled by dictators like Saddam Hussein and Bashar al-Assad instead of having a say in their own future.

This is awkward, impossible to justify on any ethical or even practical ground. It is of course obvious that such an unethical position is the result of the security concerns of the state. Or, to put more accurately, it is due to the fact that there are demands from the Kurds of Turkey concerning their political and cultural rights. Once there is an emergence of a new entity populated by Kurds that provides the Kurds with more rights and freedoms, Turkey becomes worried that such improvements may set a “bad example” for its own Kurds. The well-being of Kurds thus is to be prevented by Turkey.

It is futile to try to build a future on the misfortune of the Kurds. Besides, in a world of changes towards democracy and self-government, it is unrealistic to assume that the Kurds will remain under the yoke of this or that nation or dictator. As the world transforms it is normal that the Kurds, too, are increasingly gaining their democratic rights and improving their standard of living.

Therefore this reflex of the government and the public at large of regarding any improvement in the conditions of the Kurds as automatically threatening Turkey is not realistic, prudent or right.

Even if there is a zero-sum game between the Turks and the Kurds, what about the Kurds of Turkey? Which side of the equation are they on?

In this line of thinking, the Turkish public and officials thus miss a fundamental point that there are Kurds in this country, and these Kurds enthusiastically welcome developments both in Iraq and Syria through which their ethnic relatives are likely to be better off politically and economically as a result.

It is not unnoticed or regarded as unimportant that the official prevailing view that what is good for the Kurds is bad for the Turks alienates the Kurds of Turkey from this country. Such an attitude serves to justify the position of the secessionists Kurds. The Kurds of Turkey tend to think that they do not have a common bond with the Turks and the Turkish state.

I think it is time to rethink and refute this presumption. And this requires constructing a new language about the “outside Kurds” who are not outsiders in fact to our politics and society.

So long as the gains of the Kurds are regarded as the losses of the Turks there can be no persuasive argument for a common future between the Kurds of Turkey and the Turks. This is simply because it excludes the Kurds from a common “us.” If we do not include the Kurds as part of “us” in practice, it is impossible to tell them that we really want to live together as equal citizens.

Emergence of the ‘new AK Party'

The Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government enjoys the advantage of being without an alternative. That is certainly a luxury, in a country where the average life of a government in the democratic era before the emergence of the AK Party did not exceed two years.

The ruling party is now in its 10th year in government and still does not have any significant challenger. It is very likely that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will be elected as president in 2014 if things continue as they are, and that his party will win another round of general elections in 2015.

Such predictions of continued success naturally boost the confidence of the party and its leadership. It is extremely difficult to tell a political party that sustains the support of more than half the population that it is doing something wrong.

Even if you tell them they will not listen to you. What counts in a competitive democracy is the number of votes. As long as a political party garners the support of enough people to bring it to power, the very objective of its political activity will be fulfilled. There can be no stronger incitement to change than a drop in the number of the votes, which does not seem to be on the cards with regard to the AK Party.

As a result, the government, instead of deepening democratic reforms, resolving the Kurdish question and making a new constitution, opts for populist conservatism, with economic and social policies designed to satisfy its supporters. This strategy manifests clearly: While the demands of conservative members of society are met with symbolic gestures, such as reintroducing the religious schools, building a gigantic mosque in Istanbul and debating the banning of abortion, funds are deftly spent on social projects for the creation of a loyal conservative bourgeoisie.

The result is perfectly satisfactory both for the party and the people at large, despite expressions of disappointment from some liberal and democrat circles claiming that the AK Party has abandoned its original reformist, democratizing and pluralistic political characteristics.

It is no surprise, of course, to see that this transformative agent of Turkey over the last decade, the AK Party, has also transformed itself. It would be a grave mistake to confuse the current AK Party with the one that emerged in 2002, which was regarded as an anomaly by the establishment, or with the one that was threatened by a coup attempt in 2007 over the election of the president, or the one that faced a closure case in 2008. All have passed, and by passing have transformed the AK Party.

Now the party has established itself within the system and become capable of utilizing the available instruments, including the military, the ideological educational structure and the centralized religious institution, the Directorate of Religious Affairs. By coercive means and through the ideological instruments of the state, the “new AK Party” is now capable of perpetuating its political power, social legitimacy, and economic strength.

Thus the AK Party today occupies all social and political space, leaving almost nothing outside its reach. This is further justified by the discourse that the AK Party is the party of the whole nation and that every person should find a place for himself or herself within the party. This “invitation” to all is understandable. But it also implies that the party sees itself as the embodiment of the nation, the same way the Republican People's Party (CHP) viewed itself in the 1930s.

We should not forget that to claim to represent all different ideas, identities, and interests within a single party is a homogenizing attitude that does not leave a free social and political space for autonomous self-expression of difference. If the agency is monopolized by a single actor that sees itself as the embodiment of the state, there will be no room for democracy and pluralism.

Who can solve the Kurdish question?

Hopes of resolving the Kurdish question are never exhausted. This is not because the likelihood of settling the issue is high and all sides are eager for a solution. I think hopes are always high because we wish to see an end to the bloodshed. Sometimes these high hopes turn us into unrealistic, naïve beings. We tend to see the positive and ignore the negative and exaggerate good-willed steps and play down the obstacles -- in short, blow the slightest possibility out of proportion.

This is obviously risky as we cannot separate between the imagined and the real. One day it is the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan that we invest our hopes in to resolve the Kurdish question, and the next it is Abdullah Öcalan. Once they are unable to meet our expectations for peace we turn to Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) leader Massoud Barzani, or senior Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Murat Karayılan and the “moderates” in the Kandil Mountains.

So the search for peace continues. Whoever appears to give a chance for peace raises hopes across the country among both the Kurds and Turks. The meeting of Leyla Zana with Erdoğan was yet another such occasion. Just before, the meeting between Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the leader of the Republican People’s Party (CHP), with Erdoğan had similarly raised hopes. But within days, expectations for a new process faded as both leaders went back to making heavy accusations against each other.

Does the Zana-Erdoğan meeting mark the beginning of a new process? Again, we hope so… But I have personally gotten tired of disappointments and so try not to raise any hopes for this latest round of initiatives. Besides, I have started to think that the actors capable of resolving the question on both sides are not really willing to resolve the question. The comfort of the current state of affairs, however, marked by violence it is, seems to be preferred to the risks of a settlement. I do not mean, of course, risks for the Turks and the Kurds in general, but the risks for the political leaders on both sides.

Violence and confrontation have become routine, part of daily life and in fact, the meaning of life. Without a Kurdish question, for example, the Kurdish leadership team, the Turkish security forces, and the nationalist bloc are not sure how they can justify their existence. Thus established habits, structures, mentalities and political practices prevent both sides from making decisive decisions to settle the issue.

Take the example of the ruling party. The AK Party leadership team is well aware of the fact that a continuation of the current state of the Kurdish question will not cost it to lose an election. Limited violence and activities of the PKK do not cause much harm but, on the contrary, underlines the need for a strong government, an attribute of the AK Party. Besides no one can blame the AK Party for creating the Kurdish question. The party can always and rightly claim to have changed Turkey’s decades-old policies of denial, thus becoming the one who has contributed to the betterment of Kurds’ lives.

What about the PKK? I do not think that the PKK is ready to risk a solution, either. It is an organization designed to wage guerilla warfare with an outdated ideology. Labeling itself as the organizational embodiment of the Kurdish nation, it does not tolerate any dissenting voices within its ranks or among Kurds. So it is not a “normal” political party that can adapt itself to the conditions of “normal politics” after a solution. Thus they encounter this big question: Is there a life for the PKK after the solution? This is the toughest question for the PKK cadres. They are the ones who have been making sacrifices in the mountains for years, but the “white Kurds” who have not been involved will take the trophy of a solution away in an actual struggle. The best they can hope for is the life of a refugee in a European city.

In short, we have gotten accustomed to living with the Kurdish question and its accompanying violence.

It is thus not surprising that following the meeting of Zana and Erdoğan, all kind of confusing statements came from the PKK, the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) and government circles. I think Zana could no longer resist the pressures of being her own “actor” which she has been experiencing since her release from prison in 2004. But the complexities of Turkish and Kurdish politics are unlikely to give way to the well-intended initiative of Zana. The question is rooted in the structure of the success and survival system of Turkish and Kurdish politics, and thus it can hardly be resolved by individual actors and initiatives. Let’s see what happens to Zana’s initiative, but it is better to be realistic.