Turkey's Kurdish question

FOREWORD

How to deal with Turkey's Kurds is the subject of this important and provocative book.

The "Kurdish issue" is Turkey's most difficult and painful problem, one that presents a vast moral dilemma for the country. The issue, as the authors note, feeds Turkey's continuing inflation and is the major source of human rights violations and the biggest irritant in Turkey's relations with the European Union. Its most pronounced manifestation, the war in the southeast against Kurdish insurgents, has left more than twenty thousand dead and many hundreds of thousands displaced. Despite the massive Turkish military effort and some significant gains in coping with the Kurdistan Workers' party (PKK) insurgency, the fighting continues after thirteen years, although it has not reached the major cities of Turkey as many have long predicted.

The issue has been with Turkey almost since the beginning of the republic in 1923. Atatürk stamped out serious Kurdish rebellions in the 1920s and '30s. Modern Turkey has never accepted the notion of a Kurdish ethnic minority with minority rights. Turks have readily accepted Kurds as Turks but have difficulty letting Kurds be both Kurds and Turks. In the past twenty years the issue has been transformed by a variety of factors-demographic, economic, and geopolitical. Perhaps half of Turkey's six to twelve million Kurds(estimates vary widely) have moved out of the southeast and into the western cities of Turkey and have increasingly become integrated into the growing Turkish economy. Large numbers of Kurds have emigrated to Europe, where they finance Kurdish nationalist activity, including the PKK, and promote the Kurdish cause among Western European publics. The insurgency has outside support (Syria and Iran), outside financing, and a refuge inside the internationally policed no-fly zone in Iraq. Moreover, unlike earlier Kurdish insurrections, the war with the PKK gets public attention in the United States and Western Europe, not least because the Gulf War led to a major involvement of Turkey in the predominantly Kurdish areas of northern Iraq.

As the authors correctly point out, the Turkish state has treated the Kurdish issue as if it were identical to the PKK insurrection, as if the problem would be over once the PKK was eliminated. Until very recently, the United States has mostly agreed with this position, but the European states less so. The focus of the Turkish government, except for the spasmodic interest in the economic development of the southeast, has been to wipe out the PKK's military arm.

A month before his death in April 1993, I asked President Turgut Özal, a man of insight and great intellect, the question "What would you do?" Inherent in his answer was that economic growth would ultimately resolve the problem by ending the Kurds' status as a disadvantaged minority. But his explanation had a different thrust. He pointed out that half the people of the southeast had already left, primarily for economic reasons. Private investment would not go there; it is dangerous and costly, and there are far more productive and easier opportunities elsewhere in Turkey. The only answer, Özal believed, is to install incentives to get the remaining population of the southeast to move out. Özal was not just jesting, and he was not oblivious to the difficulties. Sizable emigration and the existence of a large urban Kurdish minority in a vast Turkish sea has already significantly complicated Kurdish perspectives. In any event, no Turkish government is likely to adopt Özal's approach publicly.

This book is the authors' answer to the "What would you do?" question. It is based on extensive study, many interviews with Kurds and Turks, and a long familiarity with Turkey. It is a policy book since the mass of information and analysis is directly geared to finding a better approach to the issue. Unfortunately, no good statistical basis exists for analyzing Kurdish matters, or for generalizing about the views of Turkey's far-flung Kurdish populations. The authors have had to make important judgments on some basic concerns. They call for a solution "within current borders" that inter alia (1) effectively establishes a legal Kurdish identity, (2) radically reduces and alters the current military approach in the southeast, (3) protects rather than harasses or bans Kurdish political parties, (4) allows Kurds education in their own language, and (5) decentralizes the administration of the state. They call for a dialogue, as inclusive as possible, with Kurds of differing political views and from various backgrounds. A basic requirement, in their view, is greater democracy and openness in Turkey, a prescription that in any case would serve Turkey's ultimate interests. Such a proposal as greater government decentralization is also important for Turkey regardless of its impact on the Kurdish issue. Many of these ideas have been voiced before, but until now they have not been put together in such a comprehensive way geared to policymakers and backed up by detailed analysis. I am not sure the authors' solutions will deal with the problem, but I frankly do not have a good prescription. Many Turks will declare them unnecessary and divisive. In the unlikely event that the Turkish government were to agree on the utility of the proposed measures, carrying them out is another question. There are strong and differing views on this issue among important groups in Turkey. But the authors have done a great deal; they cannot also be implementers.

This issue requires ventilation among and between Turks and Kurds alike. While public discussion of the Kurdish issue has significantly in-creased in Turkey in this decade, it is a subject that is handled very tenderly; options are rarely discussed. Turks do not like to be branded as unpatriotic, nor do they want to be threatened with a trial by the state prosecutor. Many Turks in fact still believe that the United States really is trying to split Turkey and carve out a Kurdish state. My numerous denials of such a plan when I was the American ambassador in Turkey were met with a certain skepticism; I felt at times that even raising the Kurdish issue made me suspect in some quarters.

The book's greatest contribution may be its impact in Turkey. It will certainly be widely read and get attention in the media. It will be noted and discussed, and this is of real, if intangible, value and very much what the authors hope to see.

Morton Abramowitz
Washington, D.C.