The Kurdish Question and Migration in Turkey
Mario Zucconi
CSS / CEMES
The Ethnobarometer Programme is a dedicated network of social scientists providing independent and research-based reports on inter-ethnic relations, racism and xenophobia in Central, Eastern and Western Europe. The Programme, a joint venture between the Consiglio italiano per le Scienze Sociali (CSS) in Rome, and the Centre for European Migration and Ethnic Studies (CEMES) in the UK, monitors events and areas of tension. It also aims to identify relevant topics for further research and inquiry.
The Ethnobarometer Programme is supported by AICE, the Association for Innovative Cooperation in Europe, created in 1996 by five European foundations, three of which have so far provided binding for the Programme: the Compagnia di San Paolo, the European Cultural Foundation and the King Baudouin Foundation. The Programme is also being supported by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, the CARIPLO Foundation, the Adriano Olivetti Foundation and the Commission of- the European Union.
The Kurdish Question and Migration in Turkey attempts to assess the importance of different factors - - underdevelopment in Eastern Anatolia, lack of group rights, armed conflict between Turkish security forces and rhe PKK - - in causing the recent flow of migration of Turkey’s Kurds. The military pressure compels people to leave the rural areas in Eastern Anatolia and move to urban centres and abroad. The illiberal legislation of the lurkish state with regard to individual and group rights is bound to produce more problems in the near future as ethnic self-identity increasingly becomes an issue in the way urbanised Kurds participate in modern Turkey’s economic and political life.
Mario Zucconi teaches international relations at the University of Urbino, Urbino, Italy. He is a member of the international Advisory Board of the Turkish Foundation for Research on Societal Problems (TOSAV). His main areas of expertise include Atlantic relations, the Middle East, and the Balkans. Presently, he is working on a project on the international response to the crisis in the Balkans in its different phases.
Contents
1. Introduction: Kurdistan, Turkish Kurds, Kurdishness in Turkey / 7
2. Eastern Anatolian Kurds or “Mountain Turks” / 9
2.1. Structural underdevelopment in Eastern and Southeastern Turkey / 10
2.2. Dynamics of population movements / 12
3. Repression and military confrontation since the early 1980s / 14
3.1. Minority rights and individual rights in Turkish legislation / 15
3.2. Functional adaptation of Turkish politics and state institutions / 18
4. Consequences of forced village evacuations,
of limitations on economic activities and of insecurity in the rural areas / 22
4.1. Direct and indirect causes of the recent exodus from the countryside / 22
4.2. Quantifying the new exodus from the rural areas / 25
4.3. From rural poor to destitute city dwellers / 27
5. Conclusions / 29
Notes / 32
The Author / 41
1. INTRODUCTION:
Kurdistan, Turkish Kurds, Kurdishness in Turkey
The main focus of the present paper is the relationship between Kurdishness and population movements. The Kurdish group it specifically studies is the one residing in or originating from the Republic of Turkey.
Even though Kurds originate from countries that have long produced a steady flow of emigrants, the number of Kurds who migrated into Western Europe has increased in the last decade. At present, the largest group is in Germany - approximately 500,000 strong. In addition, 65,000 Kurds are estimated to reside in France and 35,000 in Britain.1 The especially adverse political conditions in which Kurds live in Turkey and Iraq make it difficult for Western European governments to refuse applications for political asylum.2 In the case of Turkey, the recently increased flow of migrants abroad appears to be only a small part of a massive movement of people mostly streaming from the countryside to the urban centers, both within the Eastern provinces and from East to West.
The hardship suffered in recent decades by the Kurds tends to be immediately translated, in the literature on the issue, into the notion of an undifferentiated, oppressed minority. Moreover, the adversities faced simultaneously by the Iraqi and Turkish Kurds in the 1980s and 1990s induced observers and decision makers, especially in Europe, to look back at the idea of a state of the Kurds — or Kurdistan — as the solution to the “Kurdish question”.3 Studies of nationalism and formation of states often list the Kurds among the “stateless nations. Kurds are often referred to as the largest national group in the Middle East without a state? However, while recognizing that proposals were advanced for the creation of Kurdish states in different moments in history, and that Kurdish organizations within different countries sometimes make reference to common Kurdish culture and other ethnic factors, for the purpose of the present study the most relevant phenomena and developments all appear to be related to the economic, political and institutional characters of the specific country to which one or the other group belongs. In this paper, that means the Republic of Turkey.
It is also relevant to add that although most Kurds originate from a continuous area spread across four different present-day countries — Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria (see map) — they have little in common.5 In fact, through the centuries there have always been differences (religious and linguistic, among others), problems and struggles among the different Kurdish communities. And finally, their leaders were in the past and still appear to be in many cases more interested in their internal tribal rivalries and in enhancing their individual power within the specific state to which they belong than in developing blueprints for a unified Kurdish state.
In northern Iraq, Massoud Barzani’s Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) and Jallal Talabani’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) have a history of frequent, bloody clashes with short periods of cooperation. In the early 1980s, those two organizations intervened in Iran, one on the side of the government and the other in support of the Iranian Kurds. In 1996, Barzani went so far as to invite Saddam Hussein to intervene in Northern Iraq (in the “safe area” established by the UN Security Council in April 1991) in order to prevail upon his rival. Both KDP and PUK have, at different times, conducted protracted battles with the Turkish Kurds’ Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), with Barzani also cooperating with the Turkish armed forces during the raids into Northern Iraq that followed the capture of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan in February 1999. In Eastern Anatolia, Ankara can rely on whole tribes - with thousands of armed men - in its struggle against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party.6 And even a militant nationalist movement (and one that has resorted to armed struggle) such as the PKK limits its agenda to only one country, in this case Turkey. While striving for Kurdish autonomy, or even seeking the creation of a state, the PKK has done so exclusively for the Turkish Kurds.
The problems faced in Turkey by both the Kurdish community at large and the militant nationalist elites today are entirely related to the economy, institutional setting and politics of the Turkish state.
Most Kurds (people who self-identify as Kurds) in Turkey do not even advocate an independent state on Turkish territory. And, if there is a “Kurdish problem” there, as even governmental authorities recently began to recognize,7 that problem appears to be rooted above all in the economic geography of the country and to have been exacerbated in the last two decades by the growing demand for group rights and Ankara’s repressive response to that demand.
Data most frequently indicate that there are 10 to 12 million Kurds in Turkey — about 20 per cent of the country’s population in the higher hypothesis.8 Their area of origin is the Eastern and Southeastern part of Anatolia, a geographically inhospitable and economically underdeveloped region, and since the 1950s a region of rural migration towards the urban centers, the West of the country and abroad. As indicated below, the migratory process from those rural areas has grown in intensity since the mid-1980s as a consequence of the armed conflict between the PKK and Turkish military and security forces.
This essay attempts to assess the relative importance of each factor -underdevelopment, lack of group rights, armed conflict - in determining the recent phase of migration, and to clarify how the combination of those factors in the last fifteen years has created an issue with specific characteristics and of increased relevance. Kurds in Turkey are not discriminated as “Kurds”. They can integrate perfectly with the rest of Turkish society. There were senior officials of Kurdish origin in the Ottoman bureaucracy and there are Kurds in senior governmental positions in the present Republic of Turkey.
Still, this paper suggests that, particularly in relation to the migratory processes, Kurdishness counts above all in two respects: because it reflects underdevelopment in the East and Southeast and the often destitute conditions of those who have moved to the cities; and because, with the emergence of more militant Kurdish nationalist movements, especially since -the 1980s and the repressive response by the state, the living conditions in the region of origin of the Turkish Kurds have greatly and rapidly deteriorated.
2. Eastern Anatolian Kurds or “Mountain Turks”
Due to the main focus of this paper, we have avoided so far - and will continue to do so as much as possible in the following pages — such concepts as minority, ethnic group or nation with regard to the Kurds. The connotations most often associated with those concepts (cultural and possibly political homogeneity, some de jure discrimination) and the remedial policies usually derived from them (minority rights, self-determination) appear to be scarcely or only indirectly relevant to clarify and help correct the phenomena discussed here.
To start with, there are different definitions of who is a Kurd in Turkey. Thus, Zaza speaking people, a mostly Alevi group, are generally considered Kurds, although not so by several other groups of Sunni Kurds.9 Moreover, if the Kurds are identifiable …
Mario Zucconi
The Kurdish Question and Migration in Turkey
CSS / CEMES
CSS / CEMES
The Kurdish Question and Migration in Turkey
Mario Zucconi
Working Paper
May 1999
4 Ethno Barometer
CSS – CEMES
The Ethnobarometer Working Paper Series
The Kurdish Question and Migration in Turkey
by Mario Zucconi
© CSS/CEMES for The Ethnobarometer Programme 1999.
All rights reserved
Designed by Utta Wickert-Sili, Rome Printed by Graphorama, Rome
ISBN 92-9184-003-3
Keywords: Kurds, migration, Turkey
Consiglio Italiano per le
Scienze Sociali (CSS)
Via Brescia 16
00198 Rome Italy
Fax: +39 06 841 71 10
e-mail: cssroma@rmnet.it
Website: www.ethnobarometer.org
Centre for European Migration
and Ethnic Studies (CEMES)
PO Box 4
Torpoint PL11 3YN
UK
Fax: +44 (0)1503 230031
e-mail: Secretariat@cemes.demon.co.uk
Website: www.cemes.org
