Looking for best way to handle the Kurds

Date: 29/09/05

Recep Tayyip Erdogan's acknowledgment of the 'Kurdish problem' has brought the issue back into sharp focus. David Cronin reports

Not for the first time, Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has broken new ground.

Last month, while visiting Diyarbakir, the largest town in Turkey's largely Kurdish south-east, the premier conceded that officialdom had been responsible for "certain errors and injustices" in handling the conflict with the Kurds which erupted in the 1980s.

It was the first time that one of the country's prime ministers had uttered the phrase "Kurdish problem" since the entry into force of the 1982 national constitution, which does not recognise any national or ethnic designation other than Turkish.

While many commentators felt that Erdogan was simply facing up to reality, his remarks caused disquiet among certain quarters in the political and military establishment, including among some of his colleagues in the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). Reports at the time indicated that the still-powerful generals in the Turkish army felt that they should have been given the chance to vet Erdogan's speech before he delivered it and that he should instead have referred to a "terrorism problem".

Analysts are divided about why the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) has resumed violence after a five-year truce. Senem Aydin from the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), writing in this newspaper, suggests that greater democratisation has "eroded" the PKK's support base and "seems to threaten the grounds on which the terrorists felt comfortable". Jonathan Power, contributing to the International Herald Tribune, blamed frustration with the Erdogan government's "slow delivery" of promises to allow full-scale Kurdish-language broadcasting, its teaching in primary schools and to improve the economic well-being of the country's 15 million Kurds.

Whatever the reasons, there is no doubt that the 'Kurdish problem' will be the subject of international scrutiny for the foreseeable future. Last week, the European Court of Human Rights delivered its verdicts on around 30 cases brought by Turkish citizens, most of Kurdish descent. Although it struck down some of the claims, the Strasbourg-based court found the Turkish authorities guilty of torture and of failing properly to investigate allegations of ill-treatment. Baki Karayigit, arrested in 1999 on suspicion of PKK membership, was awarded €15,000 in damages after suffering torture.

"In Diyarbakir, Erdogan stated that Turkey has a 'Kurdish problem' but since then he has been silent on this issue," says Kariane Westrhein, chairwoman of the EU-Turkey Civic Commission, an alliance of human-rights groups. "We see his speech as a positive step but it has to be followed up with real reforms."

The Civic Commission is in favour of Turkey being given the green light to start EU entry talks next week. At a conference in the European Parliament earlier this month, the organisation stated that EU accession offered an "unprecedented opportunity to finally see Turkey embrace European democracy, human rights and the rule of law".

Westrhein says that Olli Rehn, the European commissioner for enlargement, has taken a keen interest in the Kurdish problem. "The EU has been trying to highlight it," she says. "But this is not enough. We want to push on the agenda questions that are followed up in a more proper way." Among these various conundrums are how to ensure the disbandment of the 'village guards', the Kurdish militia allegedly paid by Ankara to help wage war on the PKK, and the future of internally displaced people. Estimates by non-governmental organisations put the number of Kurds uprooted by civil war at one to three million.

The tentacles of the 'Kurdish problem' stretch beyond Turkey's frontiers. As well as hiding several thousand guerrillas in remote areas near the Iraq-Iran-Turkey border, the PKK has also cultivated links with militant groups in Iraq and Iran.

The Turkish military has also long fretted about the possibility that the limited autonomy enjoyed by the Kurdish majority in northern Iraq could evolve into an independent Kurdistan on their borders. Since the mid-1990s, about 1,000 Turkish troops have been deployed in four villages in northern Iraq.

Khaled Salih, a lecturer in Middle East politics in the University of Southern Denmark, wrote recently, however, that the prospect of a larger scale military intervention there "seems highly unlikely". Military action would, he noted, put an immediate halt to Turkey's EU entry talks and damage the commercial interests which Turkish firms have developed in northern Iraq.

"If the Kurdish population in Iraq is well off this is in part due to Turkish assistance - both financial and military - since the early 1990s," says Oguz Demiralp, Turkey's ambassador to the EU. "But there is no international dimension to what is called the 'Kurdish question'. There are many ethnic communities who are not limited to their own countries, so we should not create a trans-boundary ethnic question. That would be very dangerous."

Author suggests that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's acknowledgment of the 'Kurdish problem' at the occasion of a visit to Diyarbakir in August 2005 has brought the issue back into sharp focus.