FIFTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON THE EU TURKEY AND THE KURDS

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FIFTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON THE EU, TURKEY AND THE KURDS unlike, I understand that Prime Minister Erdoğan only sees the backwardness of the south-east region in economic terms, which has been explained to us, as an economic problem. It clearly is not just an economic problem; none of us would think that it was. It is clear that daily life is disrupted by the conflict. How can you carry on and develop a prosperous economy if people are displaced? We know there have been 3 or 4 million people displaced over the last twenty years and forced to migrate. There all of the disruptions of that, not only to speak of the deaths obviously, but also the physical mental and emotional toll that takes on people. The impact on villages and agriculture has been severe. Secondly the ban on using one’s mother tongue in education or in the public sphere, which clearly is something that is unacceptable, is an inhibition to equal opportunities in education and the economy. We’ve heard about the disproportionately low level of public spending on essential public services and on infrastructure investment. Things like education and health are starved of money as Mayor Baydemir has made clear. When it’s counted up, although it’s got 16% of the population, only 9% of public spending goes to the south-east, and of that a large part is military barracks or prisons, rather than schools, bridges, hospitals, or roads. That is no way to finance regional development, and I think there is a very clear case for some sort of positive discrimination towards the south-east in allocation of EU funds, as well as local democratic accountability for the spending of those funds. The Mayor has also pointed out the failure to follow through on the promise of a comprehensive GAP project as an integrated regional development plan. There has been a lopsided development of energy investment, the most of which is presumably exported to the rest of Turkey, rather than in other aspects that would be locally supportive. I don’t know what his view is but I’m personally glad to see that more European countries have pulled the plug on export credit guarantees for the Ilısu dam. I was an early member of the Ilısu Dam Campaign. I hope that it will be stopped and that the shocking cultural crime of flooding Hasankeyf will be avoided. In 2000- 2001, Feleknas Uca, Jean Lambert and I visited Hasankeyf. Rather than be flooded, it should obviously be developed for tourism and the whole tourist potential of the region recognised. Clearly there is archaeological, historical and biblical tourism that could be developed. All the statistics on poverty in the southeast are shocking, as well as the level of unemployment, and not to be forgotten is the role that corruption plays in inhibiting economic development and in keeping people poor, not least because you’ve got to pay money to corrupt public officials. But I don’t need to labour the point about how corruption inhibits a healthy market economy. Then I just wanted to turn to the discrimination not only against the region but also against Kurdish people and I was just going to quote from a Kurdish Human Rights 58
FIFTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON THE EU, TURKEY AND THE KURDS Project publication. Kerim is here and can I just say what great work Kerim Yildiz and KHRP do. I also have a quote from an International Crisis Report. The KHRP report from last June says that ‘physical but equally psychological intimidation is a tool of governance in the region. The (fact finding) mission was told by many with whom it met that they believe the military is carrying out a psychological war against the Kurdish people illustrated by the fact that the forces continually insult the Kurds through words and actions treating them like second class citizens.’ 5 International Crisis Group quotes someone they talked to saying ‘we are at the breaking point. Over the past years there are 3 million young Turkish men who have done their military service in the region. They have hostile feelings, not just to the PKK but to Kurds. Its getting into society, you can’t get peace out of this.’ 6 You can’t get a flourishing and healthy socioeconomic scene if you have that level of hostility and discrimination. I would link the inhibitions on economic development to the authoritarian state, which classifies critical comment as insult to the state, the nation, or government. You can’t have flourishing society or economy if there’s no freedom of speech or association, as well as the denial of identity. You all are familiar with the problem still of Article 301 and its restriction on the freedom of expression and also other articles of the penal code, criminalizing offences against public order, and the Anti-terror Law. These between them have a huge effect on academic, intellectual and educational life as well as the press, journalists, and individuals like trade unionists. People lose their jobs, and people become afraid to say what they ought to be able to say in a free society. And these prosecutions go on. I believe there were 79 journalists prosecuted in three months from April to June last year. We’re supposed to have seen the back of the worst of these prosecutions but it’s not true. Then there are the lawyers and human rights defenders as well of persecuted for nonviolent expression of opinion especially on the Kurdish issue or for ‘disseminating separatist propaganda’ which I believe is the normal expression. And this goes down to the level of the street. It inhibits families and people in their daily lives, not just exalted intellectuals and writers and so on. If people feel discriminated against, insulted, threatened, monitored, surveyed, they are going to be fearful rather than outgoing, they are going to keep their heads down rather than be enterprising, they’re going to keep their mouths shut, rather than communicate and inspire. Turkey routinely bans YouTube and one thousand websites, we heard on the human rights subcommittee visit last November, are blocked at the moment. You can’t have a modern economy with modern jobs which depend so much on communication and networking when you’re banning things like YouTube. I believe that as of last 5 KHRP Fact-finding mission report Return to a State of Emergency? Protecting Human Rights in South-East Turkey, KHRP London June 2008 6 International Crisis Group Report Turkey And Europe: The Decisive Year Ahead, Europe Report N°197 – 15 December 2008 59
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FIFTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON THE EU TURKEY AND THE KURDS

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