Bulletin de liaison et d'information - Institut kurde de Paris

Revue de Presse-Press Review-Berhevoka Çapê-Rivista Stampa-Dentro de la Prensa-Basin Özeti
Unprecedented Turns
On Turkey's Kurdish
Question
www.al-monitor.com
By: Cengiz Çandar for Al-Monitor Turkey Pulse.
T
March 11, 2013
urkey is a dazzling country. For years, I have been saying that
nobody can claim to be an “expert on Turkey." Developments in
the last couple of months have proven how right I was.
Actually anyone can reach the same conclusion by looking at two photographs
I saw.
A photograph printed on the first pages of Turkish dailies in July caused
a furor. Two women members of the parliament from the Peace and
Democracy Party [BDP] known to be following the line of the notorious
PKK and accepted as a Kurdish party in the parliament that is perceived
as "Turkey’s Sinn Fein” were in the photograph. One of them is the
current co-chair of BDP and the other was the previous co-chair. They
were photographed embracing armed PKK militants who had cut off a
road and were checking identifications at a point near the Iraqi border.
Many people believed that the BDP people who had taken several journalists
and TV cameramen with them had made a deal with the PKK
and the photographs were scripted. In the hot summer days of 2012,
meanwhile, the war between the Turkish state and Kurdish insurgents
of the PKK were raging in full on the mountainous region near the Iraqi
border. The PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, who is serving in life sentence
on Imrali Island near Istanbul, was in full isolation. Nobody had
heard from him for more than a year.
As women have 50% representation at every level of BDP leadership
structure, as instructed by Ocalan, there is also a woman co-chair. The
obviously delighted appearance of Gulten Kisanak, the current co-chair
and Aysel Tugluk, the previous one, (whom the PKK calls "guerrillas"
and “terrorists” in official Turkish political jargon) caused understandable
anger in Turkish public opinion. Turkish public and political circles
interpreted the possibly scripted meeting and the embraces as an effort
of “legitimatizing terror."
In the last quarter of 2012, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan suddenly
upped the bar and declared that those who “support terror by
embracing terrorists” had no place in the parliament and should
someone propose to lift their parliamentary immunity, his ruling party
[AKP] would support it.
In the last days of 2012, this issue kept Turkey occupied. BDP countered
by saying that if their immunities were lifted, they would withdraw
from the parliament as a political party in entirety. Moreover, lifting parliamentary
immunities would bring about their judicial prosecution and
they would most likely to be arrested.
There was a similar case in 1994. Several parliamentarians of the
Democratic Party [DEP], the forerunner of BDP, were arrested in the
parliament and carted off to prison where they spent long terms, including
three who served 10 years. That period is remembered as the darkest
and worst violent era in Turkey’s history with its Kurdish issue. The
possibility that BDP co-chairs could be arrested brought to mind those
dark days and Turkish citizens entered the New Year with considerable
anxiety.
Then, a few days before the New Year's Eve, the Prime Minister
announced on TV that negotiations had begun with Abdullah Ocalan
and that he was optimistic about the outcome because he was seeing
the light at the end of the tunnel. On Jan. 3, something unprecedented
happened. Two Kurdish parliamentarians were taken to Imrali Island to
meet with Ocalan.
It took one and a half months for the second BDP team to go to the
island. We are told that Erdogan had vetoed a visit by two co-chairs
because of their "embrace of terrorists” in July 2012.
Then three parliamentarians approved by Ocalan, including one ethnic
Kurds take part in a demonstration calling for the release of
Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan (depicted
on yellow flags), in Strasbourg, eastern France, Feb. 16, 2013.
(photo by REUTERS/Jean-Marc Loos)
Turk and another seen as religious-conservative on the “same frequency
with Erdogan," went to Imrali and met with Ocalan for more than
three hours.
If this had been all, it wouldn’t be seen as an important development.
But the delegation left the island with a mission to deliver a letter from
Ocalan to the PKK leadership based at Iraq’s Kandil Mountains.
A short time later the two co-chairs whose visit to Imrali had been
vetoed by Erdogan, and others who had met with Ocalan, went to
Kandil as a single delegation. The officials of Iraqi President Jalal
Talabani’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan escorted the delegation to
Kandil.
Murat Karayilan, who after Ocalan is considered to be at the top of the
PKK hierarchy, accompanied by other top PKK leaders, met the BDP
delegation. The PKK officials were in their military fatigues in front of a
huge PKK flag and Ocalan poster. Gulten Kasanak and Aysel Tugluk
who were in the July 2012 embrace photo were in the same frame,
again looking delighted.
The photograph was distributed by a PKK organ, the Firat News
Agency [ANF]. The Turkish press used the photograph distributed by
the banned ANF in their pages and websites. And, there was no furor
in Turkey this time. It was definite that the PKK-BDP meeting, including
the two co-chairs, was endorsed by Erdogan.
Ocalan was expected to declare a “a lasting cease fire" on the eve of
21 March Newroz celebrated as the Kurdish New Year along with a plan
and calendar for the armed PKK to leave Turkey as Erdogan demands.
Those who had “embraced terrorists” in July 2012 and accused of “legitimizing
terror” were somehow transformed to peace doves flown from
Imrali Island to Kandil Mountain.
Developments are taking place at a pace that exceeds the imagination
of many. Prime Minister Erdogan even opposes the new initiative to be
labeled as the “”Imrali process” that illustrates Ocalan’s authority over
the PKK and his influence over the Kurds in general. Erdogan has
asked the media to use the label “Solution process" instead.
It would be excessive daydreaming to expect the Kurdish issue that
dates back to the declaration of Turkish Republic to solve it in a week
or two, in a couple of months and even one or two years. The said process,
no matter what it is called, is fragile enough to be derailed any
moment. But then we have never had such a process that created so
much optimistic expectation of the right course for a solution and peace.
Now eyes are on the Imrali-Kandil traffic. We are waiting for the response
of Kandil to Ocalan and another BDP shuttle mission, all to culminate
in a historical declaration by Ocalan, to be followed by new
steps Erdogan (who has the most to gain in short run) will take.
Coming days are prone to dramatic developments.
Probably in terms of writing the foreword of this unprecedented process,
we are in the last crucial days. ❐
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