Analysis of the AKP Government’s Policy Toward the Kurdish Issue

The Kurdish issue emerged as a result of the Kemalist modernization policy. For many years Kurds and other groups were forced to absorb Turkish values and culture instead of developing their own local identities. For this reason, Kurdish uprisings occurred. By describing these uprisings as ethnic separatist movements, the government authorities instituted military measures against Kurdish groups in order to suppress their demands. But, for the first time in 1992 former President Turgut Özal accepted the reality of the Kurdish issue rather than describing it as an ethnic separatist movement. Accordingly, he suggested taking social, political and cultural measures as supplements to military operations. Özal's approach has been seriously taken up by the AKP government. As opposed to traditional policy, the existing government has noted that the problem emerged from violation of democratic rights of Kurdish people by state authorities and advocated that serious measures be taken to improve the socio‐economic conditions in Southeastern Anatolia.

The AKP government took considerable steps to improve democratic conditions in Turkey despite the PKK attack on the Dağlıca gendarme station on October 21, 2007. Permission to freely use the Kurdish language and changing the names of some towns back to original Kurdish were some of the results.

But the military elites, the opposition parties – the CHP and the MHP – and the Kurdish‐originated PDP party opposed the government's policy. Still, in order to find a peaceful solution to the question, the government has to make fundamental constitutional amendments in order to improve conditions and guarantee the rights of Kurdish people. In the meantime, it has to take serious steps to improve socio‐economic conditions in the region as well as disarm the PKK terrorists.