Little over a month has passed since Abdullah Öcalan, the jailed leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), made a historic call to his followers to lay down their weapons and engage in negotiations with the Turkish government. The enthusiasm with which both Turks and Kurds had welcomed the resumption of dialogue has now been replaced by a more realistic and somber realization: the path to peace is long and there is no guarantee of success at the end of the road.
Reset DOC, 29 April, 2013
The talks, which began last November, are casting a glimmer of hope on the possibility of resolving decades of internal conflict in Turkey and ending the surge in violent attacks which made 2012 the deadliest year since 1999, with nearly 700 people killed on both sides.
The long-distance handshake between Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the Kurdish leader Öcalan has paved the way for a new diplomatic opening and both leaders are directing this process with carefully choreographed moves.
The future of the three-decade long Kurdish struggle for recognition of greater rights in Turkey seems however no longer to depend solely on the political wisdom of its leaders. New actors are emerging on the Kurdish scene in Turkey and while their impact on the negotiations remains unclear, there is more to this process than meets the eye.
Suspicions in the Kandil Mountains
Öcalan’s message, forwarded through the PKK’s field commander Karayılan to the Kurdish operative base in the Kandil Mountains is facing resistance from the more extremist wings of the movement.
While the Turkish government is promising PKK militants safe passage from their shelters, historic defiance and ongoing suspicions may gain the upper hand and overshadow good intentions for peace. The lack of trust is the major issue at stake and the dreadful memories of a previous withdrawal in 1999, when 500 PKK militants were killed by government troops, serves as a reminder of the risks involved. Notwithstanding government assurances, Karayılan is requesting a clear statement of legal protection by the government. Bringing the issue to parliament seems not to be a viable solution, however, given the stiff opposition coming from the nationalist-kemalist front, which has historically opposed any recognition of Turkey’s ethnic minorities.
With the PKK clinging to its guns, the Turkish government is trying to appeal to Öcalan’s authority. A new exchange of letters has been allowed between the imprisoned leader and PKK commanders still held up in the mountains along the borders with Iraq. The content of the messages have not been disclosed but attention remains focused on these exchanges in the hope that they may lead to a genuine peace process.
The constitutional context
In the meantime, on a different but nonetheless related battlefield, Prime Minister Erdoğan is engaged in a parallel struggle to outmaneuver the parliamentary opposition coming from the social-democrats to the task of rewriting the constitution.
While all parties agree there is a need to revise the charter, which was written during the political turmoil following 1980′s military coup, opposition parties are not willing to accept the Prime Minister’s ambitious dream of a stronger presidency à la française, given that it is widely believed that Erdoğan is preparing the ground for his candidacy in the 2014 elections.
This is where the peace process comes in. To gain sufficient votes for such a reform, Erdoğan needs the support of the 36 parliamentary members of the Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP). Should the peace process be successful, this support will be more forthcoming.
Less certain, however, is what the Kurds will get in return for their support. A possible softening of the emphasis on the “Turkishness” of the Kemalist Republic, in order to legally recognize the Kurdish ethnic identity, has inflamed a hot political debate. Three hundred prominent intellectuals have already signed a declaration warning against the possible erosion of the integrity of the state founded by Atatürk.
No distinction on the basis of ethnicity was ever drawn even during Ottoman times, when a certain degree of autonomy was granted only to non-Muslim minorities under the “Millet” system. Thus, it is not so much a constitutional reform that is needed but a deeper public debate and soul-searching – a “psychological operation” as Erdoğan stated pragmatically.
For this purpose 63 “wise men” were given the task of leading the debate on the Kurdish issue through meetings and conferences in seven different Turkish regions. The group gathers a heterogeneous mix of well-known journalists, writers but also popular singers and movie stars. Unprecedented as it may be in the history of the Republic, the experiment of the “wise men commission” may not be sufficient to persuade nationalist strongholds in the country, such as the Aegean region, where 49 percent of the population still openly opposes peace with the Kurds.
A new actor on the Kurdish scene
While the Erdoğan-Öcalan duo is seeking to save the fragile peace talks, new unexpected clashes in the Kurdish southeastern city of Diyarbakir reveal the silent emergence of a new potential actor.
Clashes began on 8 April, when members of the DUO-DER, a student organization associated with the Kurdish BDP, tried to prevent other students from handing out fliers regarding an event to honor the Prophet Mohammad. These were members of an association affiliated with the Hüda-Par, a new Islamist Kurdish party allegedly linked to the Sunni extremist group Hezbollah (not to be confused with the Shi’ite Lebanese movement). The clashes, which also spread to Ankara’s Middle East Technical University (METU), lasted three days, with police helicopters eventually dropping tear gas to end the riots. Ten people were injured and 30 students detained.
The widely-reported clashes enabled the new Kurdish-Islamic Hüda-Par (Free Cause) party to move into the spotlight. Established last December, the party is said to be related to the Turkish Hezbollah, an outlawed Islamic group which fought a violent “conflict within the conflict” against the PKK until 2002. Enjoying good relations with Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, the Hüda-Par is slowly becoming a third contender between the BDP, the PKK and Erdoğan’s AKP in Turkey’s southeastern Kurdish provinces.
“The BDP is supported by only 19 percent of Kurds in the country” – stated Ibrahim Güçlü, a Kurdish intellectual – “The fact that there is no major alternative makes Kurds support the BDP”. Thus, the new party hopes create an alternative to the more established Kurdish parties and to attract the Kurdish Islamic vote, given that its followers feel not only frustrated by the moderate policies of the BDP but also unrepresented by the militants of the PKK.
The AKP is carefully monitoring the rise and eventual political weight of the Hüda-Par Party, fearing the emergence of a new strand of extremism along its southeastern borders. It is difficult to foresee the role this party will attain in the municipal elections scheduled for March 2014, but it is nonetheless important to note that the Kurdish minority has internal divisions which neither the BDP nor the AKP should underestimate.
The unfolding of events reveal a highly unstable context, the future dynamics of which remain largely unpredictable. The process seems not to depend so much on guns or retreats but on the legacy of suspicion, contrasting beliefs and those national feelings deeply rooted in the history of the Kemalist state.
What appears certain is that despite the hopes and commitments of both sides, the peace process will be longer and more strenuous than some had originally predicted. The unexpected reluctance of PKK commanders to lay down their weapons, the ongoing constitutional bargaining between Turkey’s various political parties and the emergence of a new Islamist actor in Turkey’s Kurdish regions are all aspects that will further complicate Turkey’s and the PKK’s uneasy journey towards peace. Only time will tell what impact these emerging dynamics are likely to have on Erdoğan and Öcalan’s combined efforts to reach a long-lasting and decisive end of the Kurdish struggle.
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Emanuela Pergolizzi is a student in a double master’s programme between the University of Turin and Sciences Po Grenoble. She is currently carrying out an internship at the Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI) in Rome in the framework of the project “Global Turkey in Europe”.
Image: Kurds celebrating Newroz in Istanbul, Turkey
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