Turkey. A Kurd on the rise

A fresh voice for a war-weary people?

INSIDE the freshly-painted municipal headquarters, cheerful young officials tap on their computers as residents register complaints. “My goal is to make people feel like first-class citizens, even if we can't meet all their demands,” explains Osman Baydemir, the new mayor of Diyarbakir, Turkey's largest Kurdish-dominated city, which he dreams of turning into a “world-class” metropolis.

At least when he took office in March, such fantasies seemed thinkable. Relative peace had prevailed in the region ever since the rebel Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) called off its fight after the capture of its leader, Abdullah Ocalan, in 1999. The end of a war that claimed over 30,000 lives (mostly Kurdish) hastened Turkey's drive to join the European Union. Peace helped the mild Islamists who now run the country under Tayyip Erdogan to ease curbs on the Kurdish language; it also helped the previous government to commute Mr Ocalan's death penalty.

Such measures, in turn, gave people like Mr Baydemir more leeway to advocate further rights for Turkey's 12m Kurds without risking torture or jail. But hopes of a lasting peace ended on June 1st when the rebels, who now call themselves Kongra-Gel, said they had resumed battle because of the government's refusal to meet their terms - including a full amnesty for some 3,500 fighters in northern Iraq and an end to Mr Ocalan's solitary confinement.

The government will not talk to those it deems terrorists. Public opinion is hardening amid daily reports of Turkish soldiers being killed in clashes. The EU, despite its sympathy for the Kurds, has added Kongra-Gel to its list of terrorist organisations. Pressure is mounting on Turkey's largest pro-Kurd party, Dehap, to condemn Kongra-Gel publicly too. It would then be free of accusations that it is a front for the rebels, and could give millions of Kurds, among whom Mr Ocalan enjoyed much adulation, a new, legitimate representative. Mr Baydemir, a human-rights lawyer who has called for an end to all violence, could ride this wave well.

Will he seize the moment ? The guerrillas seem weak. America has pledged to dislodge them from their mountain camps in northern Iraq. Factional feuds led to the defection last month of Mr Ocalan's brother, Osman, who fled to the Iraqi city of Mosul with scores of fighters, vowing to renounce violence for good. Also, senior Dehap members are daring to criticise Abdullah Ocalan for having called off the ceasefire.

Most Dehap leaders hesitate to speak out publicly for fear of reprisal from the rebels, who have many spies within the party and other Kurdish groups. Many say it was pressure from Kongra-Gel that prompted Mr Baydemir to pay a condolence visit to the family of a rebel killed in a shoot-out with security forces in Diyarbakir last month. The gesture enraged Ankara's top brass because the rebel had taken part in an attack that left a security guard dead. One of Turkey's army chiefs called Mr Baydemir's visit “disgusting”.

Mr Baydemir insists he acted to calm public anger over the week-long siege by thousands of police, backed by tanks and helicopter gunships, of a broad swathe of vegetable gardens and cotton fields where guerrillas were hiding.

Elsewhere in the south-east, the authorities have been more measured: the government is going ahead with plans to resettle and compensate tens of thousands of Kurds evicted from their villages during the war. Such moves have boosted the rating of Mr Erdogan among the Kurds. His party snatched five major south-eastern provinces from Dehap in the March polls.

Mr Erdogan, Turkey's most popular prime minister in recent times, shot to prominence as a good mayor of Istanbul, who broke with his harder-line mentor, Necmettin Erbakan. A good model, some say, for Mr Baydemir.